Stripping Paint on Schneider-Kreuznach Tele-Xenar 200mm Tube

[mackeral]

Hey everybody. I recently got a mint deal on a vintage zebra striped, Schneider-Kreuznach 200mm M42 mount. Gotta love Croatian markets.

This lens is notorious for the black paint flaking off and unfortunately some of those flakes end up inside the lens. The lens itself is easy enough to dismantle and separate the exterior body elements so I wanted to strip the paint and either leave it stripped and paint the etched markings like the distance indicator etc., or maybe paint it up fresh.

As far as stripping it goes, I normal paint stripper should work, correct?

Also, when repainting an entire lens from scratch, what paint is good to use?

Thanks in advance, and I may have more questions further down the line regarding this lens too.

[Lloydy]

some paint strippers react badly with aluminium and eat into the surface. Also, lower quality aluminium can have some porosity so the paint stripper will get in to the surface and then affect any new paint.
But there are paint strippers made for aluminium, auto repair shops that respray Land Rovers will use it, but I don't know what it is called or who actually makes it.

[mackeral]

Interesting. I'm not sure if the body is aluminum though it is very light.

[SonicScot]

[philslizzy]

[Lloydy]

I was talking to my friend who has a body shop today, the problem with stripping paint from aluminium is pretty much limited to Land Rovers, there's a surprise The alloy L.R. use was called 'Birmabright' which was specially made for them - it was rubbish. Some paint strippers did etch the surface and were hard to wash off.
But on other aluminium body panels and parts he uses Nitromors paint stripper. And this guy does a lot of custom motorcycles where he sprays alloy parts.

[mackeral]

Yeah, the more I look at it, the flaking layer of paint may just be easier to brush off than an attempt at stripping it.