Bets paint stripper to get emulsion off copper

I think you'll be lucky to find any paint stripper that works on anything these days, outside of industrial stuff. The active ingredient of the old

- which worked just fine - seems to have fallen foul of H&S or whatever.

Had some Nitromors lying around - yonks old - and used it to start stripping ordinary gloss paint. Which it did beautifully. Ran out and bought some more. Which didn't touch it at all - despite the high price.

If you do find one which works, let me know. ;-)

Probably more than Tim needs ...

Swarfega and a bit of time is one way that works fairly well for me. The paint will soften after about an hour and come off in strips fairly easily. It works on some gloss paints too.

Try and avoid scratches too.

Coca Cola

That's rather interesting! Worth a go.

And yes, I am desperate to avoid scratches :)

Over 40 years ago I qualified as a heating and ventilation engineer. It was common practice to file gloss paint of copper piping and use a compression fitting. Last time I did this was in 1999, somebody had smacked a Yorkshire elbow on the copper pipe to a fire hose and it was pissing out. We used a compression fitting as we were not geared up for soldering. I was not in plumbing, I was in fire protection and we had to go to B&Q for the fitting. I'm sure that if you just sand the emulsion off the copper, a compression fitting will be fine ------------ bit of PTFE tape just to make sure.

Grab the end of the pipe with wire wool in a gloved hand, and work with a twisting motion. Works for me.

Just use a wet plastic scourer and a drop of washing up liquid? Much as you might use on alight fitting that's caught a splash of paint. I wouldn't have thought that'd cause scratching deeper than the wire wool you're going to use anyway . . .

Some emery cloth strip, followed by wire wool...

Steam cleaning works ok sometimes.

PTFE on a compression? I'll pass :)

The art here is not to bugger up the pipe!

But for this application I'd try steam.

Good point...

It works very well where there could be doubt about the surface of the copper. It worked very well when I had to use a compression fitting on the copper to the fire hose, after using a file. Many plumbers do it.

Sandpaper will not bugger up the pipe! Or, use steel wool.

I've never had problems with sealing after removing paint with wet-or-dry. Although I do use very fine WOD, and make sure the scratches, fine as they are, go around the pipe, and not along it.

I was thinking that.

I'll try the swarfega idea - not a lot can go wrong there!

Tim Watts scribbled

Sandpaper it.

I have never had a problem cleaning paint off pipes using a combination of emery cloth (used the way as shown in John's article here [1]), followed by a polish with fine wire wool. Even when fitting compression fittings. (common example being cleaning up rad tails prior to fitting TRVs)