No-one mentioned the new version of the old-fashioned way, hot air guns are cheap, the better ones are adjustable, and they don't need the high level of skill and safety required by blow torches It's quite hard to set fire to the peeling paint or the wood below with a gun, but almost inevitable with a torch. They are great for peeling off plastic tiles, softening plastic pipe, and helping BBQs along when you are done with paint scaping Caustic soda aka lye is used for industrial stripping sometimes, so you've got an option there with other answers. Olde-fashioned method is blowlamp until soft then scrape.

Wood Stripper Tools



Wood Stripper Tools | Home Guides | SF Gate
This may be the least exciting method of paint removal, but I have found it to be one of the best ways to remove decades of old paint quickly and cleanly. I love cool tools! This is an ingenious hollow-bodied scraper that attaches to your shop vacuum hose. It comes with a changeable 2-sided carbide blade. This little thing is fantastic for scraping flat surfaces!


Buyer’s Guide: The Best Paint Strippers
When the paint is peeling on a house, many homeowners opt for replacing it with fiber-cement siding or covering it with vinyl siding. But if you've got an old house with a great exterior, such as real clapboard , you may not want to hide its beauty. Then exterior paint stripping is your only option. Stripping paint is hard, dirty, and, in the case of lead-based paint, dangerous. Fortunately, you have several methods of stripping paint at your disposal.



Being in the business of restoring old houses, I do a lot of paint stripping. And much of that paint is lead paint so I have to be extra careful to make sure we keep our dust under control. Here are the best paint stripping tools I have used over the years. Some work better than others, and their performance often depends on the type and condition of the paint you are removing.