[Greenbuilding] stripping paint off old doors

[Reuben Deumling]

I recall several lengthy & useful discussions about removing old (lead)
paint from wood work on this list. Perhaps additional folks have tried
various approaches since then? In any case I just inherited a bunch of
5-panel solid fir doors from an 80-100 yr old house. I want the paint off
and to replace it with an oil finish. The doors appear to have only one coat
of paint on them. What I have done in the past with cedar doors that had
many more layers of paint and generally featured mouldings with narrower
grooves is to have them dipped. This costs me about $90 per door plus a lot
of hauling to and fro, and I was medium fond of the resulting hue and rough
(driftwood) surface.

This time around I am curious to try to do this myself. I'm wondering if
folks who've tried this could say two words about
(a) using a torch and scraper,
(b) goop and scraper, or perhaps
(c) some combination of these, or
(d) other DIY methods.

Thanks in advance.

Reuben Deumling