Tried a heat gun vs. a hair dryer for softening old leatherette on a Praktica

Last weekend I was trying to peel off the leatherette on a crusty old Praktica LTL3 and figured my wife's hair dryer would save me a trip to the basement. Nope. The hair dryer barely got the glue tacky after 10 minutes. Walked down, grabbed the heat gun on low, and had the whole cover off in under 2 minutes flat. Anyone else have a tool they thought was a shortcut that just disappointed?

3 comments

3 Comments

williamhenderson20d ago

Picked up one of those little electric scrapers thinking it'd make quick work of old leatherette glue. What a joke. It just vibrated the glue into a sticky paste that got all over the place and I still had to go back with a plastic razor blade. The hair dryer story, that's exactly what happened to me with a heat gun on a Pentax Spotmatic. The heat gun works like a charm but you gotta be real careful or you'll melt the plastic underneath. I actually melted a small corner of a Minolta body once because I got too close, learned that lesson the hard way.

the_oliver20d ago

Man that's wild that the heat gun almost melted your Minolta! I gotta ask though - did you try using a lower setting first or just crank it up? Because I've seen way too many people grab a heat gun and blast it on high right out of the gate and that's almost always a disaster waiting to happen. Even on low you can mess stuff up if you hold it too close for too long. But here's my real question - what kind of glue residue did you end up with after the electric scraper turned it into paste? Because I ran into that exact same issue trying to get old leatherette off a Zenit and ended up having to rub the whole body down with alcohol wipes for like an hour just to get the sticky off. Was yours a pain to clean up too or did you find some trick I missed?

young.michael20d ago

Oh yeah, I had a buddy who tried the heat gun on a Yashica and ended up with a kind of sticky, gooey mess that was like warm honey. He spent the whole evening with Goo Gone and a toothbrush just to get the body clean. And @the_oliver, you're right about the low setting - he swears he had it on low the whole time and it still turned into a nightmare.