Wagner 0513040 Paint Eater Paint Strippers and Removers, Disc Sanding Tool

The Painteater did what it was advertised to do. However on surfaces that are vertical and or above my head I was unable to control the paint eater because it is stronger than I am. I had to be able to stand above the surface and the Painteater and the surface needed to be horizontal for me to be able to use it. My sons were able to do the vertical surfaces. Still it did make a nice smooth surface when it was finished.

Great for removing paint from serfaces to prepare for painting.

After searching YouTube vids by professional painters , a lot seemed to use this tool, works well, comes with one abrasive disc but you can buy more. Helped a lot while prepping my house for an exterior paint job PS wear a dust mask

GREAT working tool for paint removal. Much, much better than hand scraping. Wish they had this 30 years ago. Price of abrasive wheels worth the price of no hand fatigue.

I bought a 76 year old frame house with an exterior that had paint peeling, chipping off, bare spots, every imaginable situation. No one had touched the exterior for 25 years. I took to the house first with a pressure washer, then with the PaintEater, then with the Wagner Paint Gun, then the sanders. The PaintEater saved me so much time and effort and was key in removing all the paint and taking it back down to the bare wood. I used it for 1 year (weekends) before the switch for the pad replacement broke. I contacted the company and they sent me not the switch but an entire product. This product was a lifesaver.

I bought this to speed up the scraping part of the prep work before painting my 80-year-old home exterior. I don't think I saved any time, but in the same amount of time, I have better results. It was hard to know when to stop scraping. There were about 6 or 7 coats of paint on some parts of the house. This paint job was overdue by several years, and there were many places where paint was cracked and peeling, with the bare wooden siding exposed. In many places, pulling the scrapper across the surface resulted in paint chips streaming away, leaving bar wood. Most of the time, some chips remained, but a couple more scraps would pull them loose. There were also places where the paint was chalk-like, and required sanding. The PaintEater gave mixed results, depending on exactly how the old paint was failing. The course, fibrous wheel that came with it was good at quickly smoothing bare wood that had been roughed up while scraping. It was good at quickly cutting through several coats of old paint, and smoothing the transitions from bare wood to thick paint that didn't scrape off. But it didn't replace the scrapper when removing paint chips that were only loosely stuck to the surface. In this case, the PaintEater actually sanded down THROUGH the paint chips. There were several times when I treated an area with the PaintEater, which smoothed the area, and it would have looked fine under a fresh coat of paint. Then I scraped that same area, and paint chips easily came loose, exposing bare wood. After experimenting, I concluded that the best process for me on this house was to scrape an area first, then smooth the paint edges with the PaintEater. I spent less time scraping, but instead spent that saved time going over the area with the PaintEater. That gave me a smoother finish.

I bought this to help remove badly aged, chipping paint on wood siding. It has turned out to be only mildly useful, probably not worth the $60 it cost. I also had 1-2 coats of soft latex paint peeling from my porch railing. It seems the primer had never bonded well to the wood (too wet?), so it was coming off. The PaintEater worked very well on that job--it took off all the paint and primer and left the wood smooth and looking good. Since that paint was relatively new (only 2 years old) and flexible, there wasn't much dust, either. The main job was removing decades of dry, flaking paint (probably 4-5 coats) from clapboard siding, and it was pretty much ineffective for that. While it does OK at feathering the edges of the paint that remains, it can't get under the chips to pry them up and break them off, so it leaves them there and smooths the top surface, generating a lot of dust. I guess there's no substitute for spending days on a ladder with a putty knife, prying and scraping these chips off one by one. Once that's done, I can use the PaintEater like a sander, to feather the edges before I repaint, but it won't have saved me any time or effort.

This product does not live up to its name. It did not eat paint. I was even just hoping to use it to sand down/knock away the loose areas of paint but it didn't even do that. I went over every area of chipping paint and sanded away, paint flying everywhere. I feathered edges. Then I look back over it and there are loose chips I can pick off with my finger that the "Paint Eater" did nothing to. I didn't find that it feathered all that well either, but I didn't care much about that. I just wanted to knock off all the loose paint and it couldn't even do that. It's getting returned.

I bought this product to remove a bunch of old latex paint on my mothers porch. The paint eater, as it is called, was a joke at removing paint. It was a much better sander. It is being returned.

Purchased this and tried it out on removing paint from a concrete surface.... Does Not work as advertisied!!! have to press very hard just to get it to even start working !!!!!