Lead paint removal on sandstone

[the_gr8t_waldo]

either cut off the 1/4"( or so) or take the peice to a comm. sandblasting outfit....maybe a change to a different medium will yeild better results ( the opperator will advise ya on the best approch, here)....either way it's going to cost! if you take it to the latter, he'll probably be able to do it along with another project, saving a lil. i have a question...how do you KNOW that it's lead based paint? tested? if you did one of thoes home test kits, how did you isolate the paint test sample from the sandstone? after all, lead does natrually occure in rocks. reguardless, i wouldn'r emphasize the word "lead" when talking with anyone. anyone who is in this for money will know how to do it safest,-- personally slapping another coat of paint over the sandstone, would be a great pitty pretty much lacking in any sensitivity to the beauty of natural stone !!!!, might as well have the area blacktopped!

[P B G]

I would try a heat gun on a side and see if it peels off the stone.

Of course be mindful not to torch your house.

[jules083]

Originally Posted by the_gr8t_waldo

either cut off the 1/4"( or so) or take the peice to a comm. sandblasting outfit....maybe a change to a different medium will yeild better results ( the opperator will advise ya on the best approch, here)....either way it's going to cost! if you take it to the latter, he'll probably be able to do it along with another project, saving a lil. i have a question...how do you KNOW that it's lead based paint? tested? if you did one of thoes home test kits, how did you isolate the paint test sample from the sandstone? after all, lead does natrually occure in rocks. reguardless, i wouldn'r emphasize the word "lead" when talking with anyone. anyone who is in this for money will know how to do it safest,-- personally slapping another coat of paint over the sandstone, would be a great pitty pretty much lacking in any sensitivity to the beauty of natural stone !!!!, might as well have the area blacktopped!

Because I know who painted it, and what paint he used. My uncle used to keep his lead based paint a secret, and bought a ton of it when they were stopping production. He always said that you can't buy good paint anymore, and once they took the lead out it was all junk.

The stone is currently sitting in front of my garage on 4x4's, and the steps going to the house are sitting on some scrap lumber. I agree that painting over the stone would be a pity.

[kantuckid]

Have you tried a 12ga. with maybe 8 or 9 shot?
Seriously, I agree with another poster that it's hard to imagine a real sandblaster not removing the paint. I can easily agree to soda or walnut or pecan shells or glass bead or corncobs or other "soft" blast media not taking off paint from stone. I just googled "how to remove paint from stonework" (which has certainly been done many times before!!!) and got 460,000 hits. It may not be free, nor your stone easy to haul around but I say it's an easy job for the right approach. It gets done on old building restoration a lot! Google "restoration of painted stone buildings" as another e.g. of where to find the info..

[jules083]

Originally Posted by kantuckid

Have you tried a 12ga. with maybe 8 or 9 shot?
Seriously, I agree with another poster that it's hard to imagine a real sandblaster not removing the paint. I can easily agree to soda or walnut or pecan shells or glass bead or corncobs or other "soft" blast media not taking off paint from stone. I just googled "how to remove paint from stonework" (which has certainly been done many times before!!!) and got 460,000 hits. It may not be free, nor your stone easy to haul around but I say it's an easy job for the right approach. It gets done on old building restoration a lot! Google "restoration of painted stone buildings" as another e.g. of where to find the info..

What I think I'm going to do is put the step back and quit for now. I'm spending a ton of money building this house, and paying someone to sandblast a rock isn't really in the budget right now. Later on down the road I'll take the stone out and haul it somewhere, get it done right. Hauling the stone around is actually pretty easy, I have a front end loader and a flatbed pick-up. Removing the stone is easy as well, just hold the steps up, pull the stone out, and set the steps down on a 6x6.

Thanks for the tips everyone, this is getting out of DIY range and into professional sandblaster range.

[PeterW]

Lead paint is really nasty, hope you are using a mask and catching the dust that's coming off.
Find some paint with a sandstone texture/colour, paint it, sprinkle with fine sand when wet, repaint. ?.

Pete

[jules083]

Well I had an old timer stop out yesterday, he wanted a crack at this thing. He's 87 BTW, and still working. He said he can shape sandstone, and has made these steps before.

He started out deciding that paint removal isn't enough, he wants to smooth the surface out. I was confused as to how he does that, but he came back with a 4" wide chisel and a ball peen hammer. Sure enough he got the chisel out and started smoothing this thing. Generally no hammer work is needed, he was just dropping the chisel from about 3 or 4 inches up repeatedly.

Sure enough, with the first few hits the paint was chipping off, and as he went along it was chipping off small pieces of sandstone and getting smooth. There's a ton to do still, but he's coming out on monday and we're going to try to finish it. I'll take pictures as I go.

He said to get some paint remover and just see what happens, it'll be easier to form if the paint is gone. When I asked about staining the stone he said don't worry about it. Since he's smoothing it out the top layer of stone will be chipped off, and anything that's left will bleach out after a few years in the sun. Makes sense to me.

Pictures will come soon, but none of him actually doing the work. He told me that nobody's ever seen him work with this stuff before, and not to tell anyone that I was taught to do this, or that he even knows how to do it. He said that nobody taught him, so he's not teaching anyone. I wish the older guys didn't think like this, there are a lot of skills that are dying off quickly. We're right at the age where everyone that knows how to do all of the old tricks are in their 80's, and most of them aren't able to do them anymore.

Once power tools came along the old craftsmanship died.

Story time:

I have a friend/co-worker that lives a few miles up the road, he's in his 50's and still tries the old way, mainly just to see how to do it. Great guy. Once the 'real work' is done at his farm he'll burn a few joints, then grab the antique tools and see what happens. We learned together one of those nights how to make a beam with an ax. He said it was possible, so we gave it a shot. Sure enough it took forever, but we made roughly a 6x6 from a tree, using double bit axes. It's better than I thought it would be, but not nearly as good as the older guys did it 150 years ago.

His project right now is to build a storage shed the old way. He's modeling it after his barn, just on a much smaller scale. He felled the first tree by hand, the rest have been done with chainsaw. Other than that every beam has been hand-made by him, and he wants to notch them and use wood pins the way it used to be done. He's getting the male end of the notches down pretty good, still playing with the female end on getting everything square and cut-out without splitting the log. He also has a small saw-mill, it's the style that the old steam tractors ran but driven with modern equipment.

I went over there a few years ago, he was white-washing the stone pillars holding his barn up and some of the wood on the back side of the barn. He mixed everything himself, and said he was just curious what would happen. Sure enough, that stuff works better than probably any paint on the market today, and is much cheaper. It's not as fast or long lasting though, which explains why it's gone out of fashion.

We made locust fence posts once, the old way, and I will say it's easier to split them without the proper tools than with them. He made a wedge out of a piece of locust, got the split started with an ax, and drove the 'wedge' all the way through. I was using an assortment of wedges, splitting maul, ax, sledgehammer, and a bumper jack prior to him coming over. His way was quicker and easier than anything I could come up with.

[jules083]

Originally Posted by PeterW

Lead paint is really nasty, hope you are using a mask and catching the dust that's coming off.
Find some paint with a sandstone texture/colour, paint it, sprinkle with fine sand when wet, repaint. ?.

Pete

I know about the lead paint. I don't like the 'masks', I have an actual respirator that I wear. Half mask with an N99 filter, it's rated for about everything this side of chemical attacks. Although I don't have the license anymore I was certified for asbestos abatement, and have the majority of the PPE for the job here in the house. Never did it at work, and didn't have the equipment to do the job properly on my own, so I let the license expire.