Could dipping knacker my old wooden doors?

[Carolcool]

My Victorian house has some original internal doors that are caked in layers and layers of old paint. I've found a company called Strippers of Yorkshire that will take them away and dip them to strip back to just wood then put them back.

Is there a risk this could damage them? I remember my parents getting this done to our doors when I was young, they came back a bit shocked looking with a few splits in the panels.

The doors were shocked looking, not the parents!

Yes. They can warp and/or split. (I’ve moved into two Victorian houses with warped or damaged doors due to dipping).
It’s laborious, but I’d have thought the best solution is sanding.
The other thing is - but I’m sure pigletJohn will soon give informed advice rather than my gut feeling - once the door has the paint removed, you need to apply something (eg wax or varnish) to prevent the wood drying out, as this splits it too.

Yes that makes loads of sense. I think the doors in my childhood hole were just put back stripped.

There's somewhere near my that offers sanding and waxing instead of dipping.. I'll look into it, it sounds expensive! Also I am only having it done if they will take away and sand elsewhere. Sanding the skirtings and door frames was an horrific ordeal because of the vile sanding dust everywhere.

Home not hole! It wasn't a hole despite the split doors.

I got mine dipped after getting pissed off at trying to sand one. It took forever and bits of ancient paint seemed impervious to the sander. The dipped ones were left with no paint on at all! I still had to smooth and varnish them though. They did have some damage which was probably there under the paint anyway, which is why the victorians painted them in the first place, so they could get away with making doors from much cheaper cuts of wood. Oh... And be careful with sanding old paint - it's full of poisonous lead etc. You don't want clouds of that stuff around you, on skin etc.

We moved into a house in Yorkshire with dipped doors, they were very warped and cracked. It looked pretty bad, so they can definitely do that.

I pity you your personalised advert results now you've typed 'Strippers Yorkshire' into Google.

Stripping really dries the wood out - that's why they can crack and / or warp.
Either try notromors paint stripper (vicious stuff) or a heat gun. If you go for the heat gun, go very carefully as you could scorch the wood underneath.