Dashboard Varnish Stripping

[ttaunton]

I am trying to strip my S3 dashboard. It is not the original one, but was bought from Christopher Neil in about 1978. The (very thick) varnish has cracked, espacially on stressed areas (around the glove box and radio hole etc) All the veneer appears fine though, so a re-varnish appeared the solution.
I have tried Nitromors Automotive and Nitromors Paint and Varnish remover (from Homebase) but neither appears to attack the surface which I assume is epoxy.
Anyone got any ideas/experience of this?

[david.g.chapman]

I used Nitomors on my original dashboard last winter, with thick cracked varnish. When I first applied it nothing seemed to happen. I repeated it and covered the wet stripper with cling film. After an hour or so the varnish became "floury" and things started to accelerate.

I still needed to use an entire tin on one dashboard, but the results were very good. If you haven't done the above give it a try.

Dave Chapman.

[ttaunton]

What a good idea! Funnily enough I made a quick "unauthorised" (wife at work/I'm meant to be doing the garden/whatever) visit to the workshop just now and put a large blob of Automotive Nitromors on the dash and left it, and a small area did go "floury" and softened. There is certainly no bubbling up that you normally get with Nitromors, even though the Automotive version is recommended for epoxy. The normal "Paint and Varnish" version appears not to work at all. The clingfilm idea prevents the stripper drying out and losing effectiveness. Good idea.
Thanks for the suggestion.

Tony Taunton

[robertverhey]

You could try a heat gun, with care. Easy to scorch the wood....but was very effective on my Cortina dash

Robert