1957 Cardinal travel trailer restoration

Last weekend we moved our only child into her college dorm, which, for those who've never done it, is a uniquely stressful experience, big life transitions and all that. Sunday was the day, and in the interest of stress management we'd planned Saturday for low-key hanging out and packing. That was not to be. At 8AM I got a call from our local police department. Remember the first post here, where I talked about our stolen '78 Apache? Yeah, this one It was in an impound yard, having been recovered just over eleven months after thieves had cut through a locked cyclone enclosure and a couple of hitch locks to liberate it. When it was stolen, I was fairly certain that within hours it had suffered the fate of most stolen popups- converted via reciprocating saw into a utility trailer, probably with a snazzy coat of flat black rattle can to hide the crime, and filled with various bits of stolen junk heading for the scrap metal buyers. Turns out the truth was much weirder.

Overthinking things as usual, I reasoned that, while I'd normally save cosmetics for last, it made sense to strip the paint from the aluminum skin prior to disassembly. The stripper would undoubtedly attack the new putty tape if I waited until after reassembly, and chasing loose skin around a shop floor sounded like zero fun. Unfortunately, I had to choose between stripping in my driveway (blistering direct sun and breezy, this time of year) or inside our rented storage space (no water). I'd planned on using aviation stripper, which is generally water-neutralized (that is, I'd have to hose it off), but given the weather, fear for my enviro-credentials, and fear of invoking the wrath of my fellow enviro-neighbors, I finally decided to do it inside the storage space, which means no bad fumes, and no water rinse. I bought a test jug of Citristrip, an environmentally-safe stripper which per conventional wisdom generally does the job, has no bad smells, neutralizes with odorless