Ed -
Funny, you should ask how to remove bonded lining material from brake shoes! I just did this for the first time on Wednesday. Bonded brake linings that I had installed on brake shoes 15 years ago in Phoenix squeaked from Day One, no matter what I did: periodic sanding of the drums and shoes, use of Brake Medic anti-squeal spray, moving the drums outwards, etc. NOTHING worked. The shoes squealed right away. I had been using bonded modern linings with cast iron drums for years prior to this with no such problems, but the local company I had used all that time went out of business. So, I tried a different brake shoe company. They must re-lined the shoes with a different composition because they have been unsatisfactory for almost 15 years. The car is seldom driven, so it has been an on-again/off-again irritant.
Anyway, I decided last week that enough was enough - the bonded linings had to come off and be replaced with woven linings. In all my years of fooling around with Model A's (50+), I had never personally removed bonded linings from shoes prior to having them re-lined. I let the brake shoe company do that. Well, now I'm living in a different town, where the tradespeople know and do as little as possible. In other words, 99% of the time I'm on my own. I wasn't sure how to do this, though. Grinding would have produced clouds of dangerous brake shoe dust, besides taking forever to complete. So, I took a chisel and hammer and began driving between the lining and the metal brake shoe, pulling upwards when the chisel had penetrated a bit. As I continued to do this, I could only pull up chunks of lining material, not strips. But then I found that if I could pry up a flap in the middle, I could place the chisel lengthwise and pry up more of the lining in each direction. It took several attempts, but in five
minutes the majority of the bonded material had been peeled away in this manner. The remnants of isolated chunks that did not peel away cleanly were first chisleled away, followed by the grinder to achieve 100% exposed metal. The first shoe took the longest, of course, until the secret of prying from the middle was stumbled upon. I would say it took fewer than five minutes to completely remove all the bonded lining material from each shoe once the rhythm was established. A heck of a lot cheaper and faster than taking the shoes to a brake company!
Yesterday I installed the new woven linings with the tool available from the vendors. It works very well, although I would like to have seen the rivet spreader be made of a more hardened steel. The tip is kind of mushed over now. Anyway, try this suggestion and you'll be surprised how easy this seemingly daunting task can be mastered. I'll post pictures a little later this morning.
Marshall