<HTML>Greg, You have a good point.  It is similar to using tobacco  --  which is better, to smoke or to chew?  And I have no definite answer, except it is better to do neither. The same with stripping.  I find that I can usually soften the finish enough for scraping without getting to the smoking point.  Sometimes I go past that point and it smokes.  I don't believe there is such a thing as a perfect way to do this in a home workshop setting. So I normally do this outdoors under a shed with the wind blowing through.  If there's no wind, I provide it artificially.  Just makes sense.  There are also places and pieces that can't be readily stripped this way.  And like any mechanical method it is not absolute, i.e., there are spots that still need more work.  I tend toward the sandpaper method for the cleanup, but if the veneer is very thin, I'll resort to a chemical stripper.  I'm definitely not a purist. It is like any other trick in your bag of methods.  If it is the best one for the job, use it.  If not, pull out another trick.  This is just the method that I try first, for a job that I don't particularly relish. Loren Hedahl </HTML>