How do you remove oil enamel paint from wood?

I had a 'portable closet' made of wood that I painted with an oil enamel paint. I made a mistake and tried to paint a coat over the area I messed up and made things worse.





It seems like I will need to remove the paint off the section of wood now and repaint it. How would I go about removing that oil enamel paint? Sandpaper? If sandpaper, considering how thick the paint is, would I need to use a fine or coarse grain?





Any other suggestions from someone experienced with this would be very welcomed and appreciated.How do you remove oil enamel paint from wood?
A heatgun will lift the paint off. Chemicals may cause the paint to soak into the wood and stain it.How do you remove oil enamel paint from wood?
If you simply want to smooth it back out you can just use wet sand paper and water to smooth out the area if it is small. If it is a large area the use some furniture grade stripper. Put it on a little thick and let it sit for a little while. Don't ever let stripper dry before you scrape it. Make sure you tape and cover the parts of the furniture you don't want stripped.(Just in case.) Once you've stripped it down, let the wood dry overnight, give it a final sand with sandpaper medium to fine to extra fine. Prime let dry , sand and finally finish coat it. Always let enamel dry completely before going over with the next coat.
apply ';Strip Ease';(Home Depot) with a brush, let sit for about 30 min, gently scrape right off, you may need a second application for difficult areas, to clean it when stripped, rub down with paint thinner, let dry for about 1 hour, lightly sand (fine) entire area going WITH the grain, brush away dust, if you're painting, prime it first, otherwise stain and poly it
You can use a chemical paint stripper (methylene chloride based) available from hardware/paint stores or use a hot air gun to melt %26amp; then scape off.
Two things here, either let the paint dry good then paint over or, use ';Zip-strip'; from Ace hardware and take the paint off this way.
Through the closet away and buy a new one, or just come out of it.
sandpaper
Laqure thinner. be carefull if you don't want to damage wood underneath.
There are two options...





1. Use a heat gun and a scraper to remove the paint. This is a good means to remove many layers of old paint without the mess of a liquid stripper. The down side is the detail areas such as mouldings and fancy scroll work are very hard to do.





2. A liquid stripper will also remove multiple layers of paint. The down side here is the mess of the process and the possibility of some residual col;or being left behind in the grain of the wood that will require sanding to remove.





GOOD LUCK!!!