If you want a cooler version of a heat gun, try a hair dryer.
Have your wife pick it out, so if it doesn't work, she can use it.

If it's latex, you're in luck. Some chemicals will aggressively attack, wrinkle and release latex paints while not harming the underlying oil-based paint or varnish. I found Awlgrip T0031 reducer would do that, but raid your chemical cabinet and "try everything" - enamel reducer, lacquer thinner, isopropyl alcohol, cheap paint stripper perhaps diluted, any sort of acrylic or polyurethane reducers you have in the shop.

I'm not a chemist and cannot argue the point. In the lead worker safety training course we sent one of our people to, they were taught that conventional heat guns of 800 degrees and more get hot enough to generate lead vapor. HUD does not allow heat guns that generate temperatures above 700 degrees and most of the online resources on the topic talk about safe limits around that range too. The 2010 EPA rules prohibit the use of heat guns that generate temperatures above 1,100 degrees.

It is so easy to take steps to limit the potential for lead poisoning. Please be safe.

Back just before the last ice age, when I was in college, I rented an apartment in a 1874 wooden Victorian house (built as an apartment building)

One day I came home to find the building smoking... a painting crew had been stripping part of the trim while prepping for paint, and the heat gun they used had been hot enough to start a smoldering fire behind some trim... I found it 2 hours after they stopped working, and just as it transitioned from smoldering to a real fire...

Lots of water and a visit from the local fire department, who tore much of the trim off the building, just to make sure, and all was declared safe...

I have used heat guns, but am very very careful about a fire watch for at least a couple of hours afterwards.

I have a suggestion - dry ice blasting - safe for use on wood. Can be pricey, but only paint chips to clean up and no solvents or lead vapor.

Just a thought...

Mike

We stop working with heat guns several hours before the end of the day to be as certain as possible that we don't have the problems Randy Hees described. I have seen a temporary fire sprinkler system installed in a wooden car under reconstruction as an added protection.

Dry Ice blasting has its place, but not for interior woodwork. It is still an abrasive, and will cut into the wood as sand would. Dry ice is brittle, and requires much higher air pressure.

It has some nice properties, for example, it is great for removing gum and other crap from rubber transit flooring... The cold makes the gum or other gooey stuff (grease?) hard, allowing it to be fractured by the ice. Similarly, as noted, there is no contaminated blasting media... Just the removed material.

In general it won't touch rust. It is much more expensive...

At one time I worked for a dry ice company... We played with it a lot, trying to understand the advantages of its use. For transit, for flooring, grafitti abatement it was unmatched. It was ok for stripping lead paint from large wooden beams for salvage... but in most cases other media was better

Randy