Ceramics question

[gentlekilling.livejournal.com]

so, he's my problem...

i bought these ceramic skull tea light holders a while back for crazy cheap. I've got about 30 of them. I've sanded and painted 6 so far and they turned out really awesome (gave them to a friend for a wedding gift and she looooved em)

but my problem is... the baked on ceramic clear coating is a BITCH to sand off. after sanding away at 6 of them my Dremil sanding bits were toast. This coating is insanely hard! So I was wondering if there's any sort of chemical stripper that I might be able to use to remove it instead of having to spend 45 mins minimum sanding each candle holder. I'd end up going through a dozen sanding bits to get all 30 of them done! It'd be great if I could drop em in a bucket of some toxic junk and pick em out all stripped and ready to be painted.

my brother offered up some stripper he used on his car and it did nothing at all. it seems like battery acid wouldn't even tarnish this stuff!

any tips? PLEASE!