Wagner Spraytech 0513040 PaintEater Electric Palm Grip Paint Removal Sanding Kit, Orbital Disc Sander

I have 13 old oak doors in my old house. They have about 8 coats of paint on each door - the top 4 are latex paint and the bottom 4 are oil based enamel from what I can tell. I have tried orbital sanders, belt sanders, paint strippers and heat guns. All of them can get through the latex, but it takes hours to get through the enamel that has been on for decades. I had the most success with the heat gun and scraper, but it still took me about 8-10 hours a door to strip the paint. I bought the Paint Eater and tried it for about 15 minutes tonight. It chewed right through the latex like it was nothing and after a few passes made it through the enamel. I got about 1/2 of one side of the door completed - definitely a time saver and stripped it clean down to the bare wood.I do have a few complaints though... The motor is 2600 RPM's, so when you pass over the paint it will sometimes bite it really hard and throw you around a bit - it took me off guard the first time and it nearly flew right off my table. Definitely need 2 hands and a tight grip to hold onto this thing. It spins so fast that if you leave it in one area too long it will begin to melt the paint which just spins the paint around and clogs up your pad. Also, after only 15 minutes it got so hot that it was uncomfortable to hold around the motor and when I stopped smoke was coming off of it - I assume the paint chips that were trapped in the arbor.Overall, the few complaints don't outweigh the time that this has saved me just from my little test tonight. The pads seem a little pricey, but it will probably be about the same price as the amount of sanding discs I was using before for each door.

Great product if you have a DIY that involves sanding large areas!

I've been using the paint eater to prep cedar siding before re-painting my entire house.It works quite well and will strip the paint off if you need to remove it all and you can feather pretty good also with it if that's all you need to do. I found where I have old boards with 4 layers of old paint on pine siding it was hard to feather as it was making some deeper rough edges so I used a palm sander to help feather those. On the newer sides of my house it's all cedar and has only one primer and paint layer and it feathers much better on that and I didn't need to do extra sanding on mostly all of that. Overall it was worth buying because it does very well when you haven't got several old layers to deal with. If I had a situation with really bad siding with 4 layers of old paint in really bad shape I would try one of those diamond blade strippers as I think they will strip off old paint a lot faster than this will. This will strip off all the paint if you want, but it would take longer than the diamond blade strippers from what I've seen. Good product to have though and happy I have it for my project as it's doing a great job on the cedar siding with only a couple layers of old paint which hasn't got too much peeling and where it is peeling it seems to feather it well. Also on the old pine siding their was never a primer applied before it was originally stained so I think that is causing it to be harder to feather as it wants to just strip it all off to the bare wood, this probably wouldn't be happening if it wasn't for the lack of a primer on the original solid stain paint job, as the primer would hold the solid stain on better so if can take the sanding without coming completely off.

Excellent for prepping deck for finishing. Saves a lot of hand sanding. I am using on a deck with cedar railings. Must use a good mask and eye protection! The deck rail has a Fiberon cocktail rail which overlaps the supporting 2x6 cedar. The sander can remove material very near the overlying rail without removing any of the plastic. The novel metal disk is far better than sandpaper.

I am a DIYer who tackled the task of prepping and repainting soffit/eaves and fascia in my home. I Heard wonderful reviews from reputable sources about the Paint Eater, so I was very confident this was the right tool. I spent 3 days scraping peeling paint with a 5-in-1 tool and then used the Paint Eater. Eventually it dawned on me that I was taking way too long and it wasn’t producing good results … there had to be a better way. I came across two alternatives. The first was the Paint Remover Pro, but this tool was just too expensive ($800). The second alternative was using a disc sander. I first tried the dewalt 5” disc sander. Results were better but required to much sand paper changeout. Finally I tried the Makita gv5010 5” disc sander along with 7” discs (those made by Makita). The Makita discs are very durable and do t require too much disc changout. This tool was way better than the Paint Eater. Way faster and far better results. I’m not sure how the Paint Eater got such great reviews. Maybe it’s good for small areas like window, door, or interior trim. But for larger exterior home projects such as eaves/soffit, don’t waste your time or money with the Paint Eater. Try the Makita gv5010 5” disc sander with 7” 50-grit sanding discs (only those made from Makita as these last way longer than those from other brands). If you have a very, very large area you might even opt for the Paint Remover Pro.

I used this a LOT to grind the paint off my wood lap siding house. The paint was thick, 80 years or so worth. It WILL grind it down but it was much easier to scrape off the thick stuff by hand. On a smaller project you could use this to grind it all off. What was left after I hand scraped this tool did excellent.One side of my house I only hand scraped. The other side I used this after and it looks much much better.Its a hardy little worker, a bit jumpy at times but I'm very happy with the final result. Replacement pads are cheaper at Menards than on this site.