Day 1 - Deconstruct bike and strip paint

Jonny (my housemate): "Sure so bigman, are you not going to get a power tool to strip the paint off your frame there?"
Me: "No, that's not necessary, I'll just use paint stripper and then scrape it off. It'll only take half an hour."

Unfortunately my confidence in that last statement lasted approximately 15 minutes.

I had assembled all the necessary equipment - Nitromors (to strip the paint), a wire brush and sandpaper, safety equipment including goggles, breathing mask and gloves. I started by taking the bike apart:

It was going well at this point, and I subsequently removed the other pedal arm and the forks. I was raring to go and very excited - note the happy, almost demonic expression:

Finally everything was ready to go - frame stripped to its bones and given a clean - next came the safety precautions. I was to be using nitromors to strip the paint, which is extremely dangerous if ingested or got on the skin, so I was taking no chances:

I also had a breathing mask (not pictured). So I began. Off came the top of the nitromors, in went the paint brush, and on to the frame and forks did it go. Then I waited.....and waited.....another application of the nitromors....more waiting.

After about half an hour of essentially waiting for paint to dry, not a lot was happening, although I could see a few areas of paint starting to peel, more so on the forks, so I started on them with the wire brush and sandpaper. Needless to say, it was tough going, although I did manage to get a fair bit of the paint off.

Annoyingly I can't seem to find the picture I took of the forks - I'll take another one tomorrow - there's more metal than paint, but it's not completely stripped. Let's move to the frame:

As you can see, essentially nothing has changed. There are areas where some of the paint has come off, but after about an hour of waiting for my copious applications of nitromors to actually do something, I gave up and called it a day. The wire brush was useless, the sandpaper not much better. I might give wire wool a go but I think I'll have to listen to Jonny and employ the use of some sort of power tool.

Thought for the day: Why did I think this was a good idea?