I hope im not going mad; I found some old (at least 10 years) paint stripper in cupboard and started to strip an eggshell painted plastered wall, no worries it bubbled up nicely and easy to strip it. Anyhow the tin run out so bought some no-nonsense stuff from screwfix and its absolute carp, it don't do anything and it smells like shampoo. So my Brother gave me some "Starchem Synstrip", said it would remove anything, in fact he says you cant even buy the stuff unless youre in the trade cause its so strong ect ect. So just tried that and nothing, a tiny bubble of paint and that's it. Now im left with half a wall stripped, and the other half wont budge even with the strongest paint stripper available. Its a travesty of justice imo that the EU decided to ban the old paint stripper, anyone have any ideas ?
Dichloromethane is a very nasty solvent, although it's very good at doing what it does. It will also be banned in the US soon. It is a pity that the alternatives so far aren't great.
Try Paramose industrial paint stripper, look on ebay. you need to fill in an online form stating that you are a professional user. ( ! ) . A bit on the expensive side, but strips everything .
When I stripped all the paint off the bricks on the front of our house a few years back, I bought my stripper from here: https://www.stripperspaintremovers.com/
As above Paramose is very good of you can get hold of it, I use it at work to eat through 2k lacquer. I can see why they try not to sell it to the general public as it is vey nasty, burns like hell if it splashes on skin.
You can still buy Dichloromethane on eBay as it's sold as a solvent rather than a paint stripper. It's excellent as long as you're careful.
The annoying thing is that Nitromors used to contain Dichloromethane, and was very effective, especially the" "Original" Nitromors in the red tins, which was much thinner than the water washable stuff. The Nitromors available nowadays is pathetic. I have not been able to discover if anyone ever suffered long term ill effects from it, A bit like Creosote, which is now banned apparently.
Coal Tar Creosote is actually still available for farm use & other certain professional trades, but banned for ordinary peeps to have & use. I can still get it from agricultural merchants.