Will conventional paint stripper remove enamel paint as well as acrylic and normal gloss/emulsion paint that it is advertised as being for?
We have a house-name sign on our gate, embossed letters on a flat background, probably made of cast iron. It has been painted with enamel paint several times in the past (before we bought the house), and this enamel and what looks like a top coat of lacquer had started to peel off.
I removed as mush as I could using a wooden scraper (a old wooden kitchen spatula that I sharpened with a sander to make a "sharp" edge - I was aiming to chip off as much of the enamel as possible without leaving score marks in the underlying metal. I got the surface of the letters very good, but the background had sections where the enamel was adhering much more firmly than in other places. I hoped that it was smooth enough, after sanding, that the different levels would not show when I sprayed it with enamel paint.
Except it wasn't enamel. It turned out to be acrylic paint that we'd bought. After a couple of coats of that, the surface is terrible: it seems to have lifted the enamel in places, and others are lumpy and/or like orange peel.
So I want to take the sign back to bare metal if possible and start again - this time with black enamel paint (either spray, if it is available or else brushed-on). Then the raised lettering can be painted with white enamel paint.
Is paint stripper the right thing to do, our will I need to try to scrape the paint off again?