Army foot locker rehab Help ??

[DSWalker]

My coworker has these 2 army issued foot lockers that were her husband's while serving. She wants to paint them in some Lite colors and use in their daughters rooms.

Her first question was how to get rid of the sticky tape residue.

Second question was how best to paint or possibly even color them a Lite blue color tone.

She said it isn't a true leather, but has that leather 'feel'.

Just looking for some suggestions on how to do this project...

OR

If you are interested or know someone that might be interested in working on this, let me know.

Thanks! Located in Fayetteville, NC

 

[tghsmith]

vinyl and frabric paint might be something to look at,, some "goo-off" products might work on the sticky stuff, but I would test the stuff..

 

[Jack A.]

As mentioned, test all adhesive removers on a discrete area first.

Start with goof-off. If that doesn't work, I have yet to find a residue that the 3M adhesive cleaner can't remove: https://www.3m.com/3M/en_US/p/d/b40070712/. You can order it from Amazon or pick up locally at O'Reilly auto parts.

 

[Westpacx3]

Another option might be peanut butter. I think i recall that the oil in it help remove glue. I have a few lockers like this from the 70s, that is a very thin film over basically a cardboard. I use mine for camping gear. They are not as nice as the older wooden ones.

 

[Gofor]

I have had good luck with using naptha for tape residue. It is(was?) used to "dry clean" leather garments, so should not hurt the material, and will remove any oils before painting. May have to let them air a day or so to get rid of the naptha smell.

If you don't have a can of naptha, Coleman lantern fuel and cigarette lighter fluid used to be naptha based, so if you have any around, you could try it.

 

[Al Olme]

I use cigarette lighter fluid [Ronsonol] for a lot of delicate cleaning. I was using naptha but I can't find any smaller containers, everyone wants you to buy a gallon. I'm 78 and pretty sure I'm wouldn't use it up before... Anyway, the 5oz. Ronsonol is very convenient and uses a pretty good dispenser top.
Ronsonol used to list naptha as an ingredient but now the bottle just says "light petroleum distillate", pretty sure it's still naptha.

 

[mpeele]

I would Goo Gone its a citrus oil based solvent I have used many times to remove tackey and dried tape residue. It is available everywhere. I would not use Goop-off. I use it to clean overspray paint from my paint sprayer. It will take the shine off oil based alkyd paints and remove water based acrylic and latex paint.