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429 Posts
most nail varnish removers will take the paint of metal modles very fast not so good for plastic models
one i recomend:
superdrug own brand
one i recomend:
superdrug own brand
How To Strip Paint!
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6 Posts
Ok I have tried both Simple Green and Super Clean to strip my models so here is my 2 cents on them
Both are Bio-Degradeable which is a plus, and both are fairly inexpensive (around $15 to $20 a gallon from what I have found.)
I find that Super Clean works faster then Simple Green. With Simple Green I had to let them soak overnight to start to get primer off, with Super Clean, it took a few hours. Plus, Super Clean softens up super glue alot better then Simple Green. And actually, on a couple of my plastic models, Simple Green did a slight amount of melting to them. (Which is weird, considering it is a degreaser.) Wasn't bad, and easily fixable / hideable, but still something I wasn't expecting.
However, Super Clean tends to leave alot of white residue on the models, which I have found can be a pain in the a** to get off. I eventually had to boil water, let it cool a little bit as to not hurt my models, and then soak them in the hot water for about 6 hours, then take the electric toothbrush to them again to get it all off.
Again, these are my personal experiences and opinions on the 2. My personal preference is to not have to strip paint at all.
Both are Bio-Degradeable which is a plus, and both are fairly inexpensive (around $15 to $20 a gallon from what I have found.)
I find that Super Clean works faster then Simple Green. With Simple Green I had to let them soak overnight to start to get primer off, with Super Clean, it took a few hours. Plus, Super Clean softens up super glue alot better then Simple Green. And actually, on a couple of my plastic models, Simple Green did a slight amount of melting to them. (Which is weird, considering it is a degreaser.) Wasn't bad, and easily fixable / hideable, but still something I wasn't expecting.
However, Super Clean tends to leave alot of white residue on the models, which I have found can be a pain in the a** to get off. I eventually had to boil water, let it cool a little bit as to not hurt my models, and then soak them in the hot water for about 6 hours, then take the electric toothbrush to them again to get it all off.
Again, these are my personal experiences and opinions on the 2. My personal preference is to not have to strip paint at all.
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108 Posts
never use boilnig water/oil to strip paint, I found out the extremely painful way not too, after my model took 5 hours setting 6 on a stove to boil the paint away using cooking oil, I inflicted a serious burn on myself. never use heat to strip models of paint...EVER, simple green really rocks, I don't mind paying £2.25 to import it from america, I'd pay double that just to pay for the adheisive I use to put together metal models
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2,314 Posts
Dude, use Brown Dettol, works in the EXACT same way!
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723 Posts
is this a joke? you used boiling oil? crazy. pewter melts around 230°C. most oils easily reach 200°C and higher before boiling. did you need a skin transplantation afterwards? what would you have done if it would have flamed? poured water on it? i don't think it's good to post such things here. gives some people wrong ideas. this is just dangerous.
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249 Posts
what kind of stores carry Simple Green in the US? Should I be able to pick it up at any grocery store?
I've tested some widely available items from the U.K. for stripping paint, these were the results...
1) B&Q's own paint and varnish remover (around £5?).
Works well and quickly, only need to soak models for about an hour tops. Paint comes off well and superglue turns gooey and comes off easily. May need to use something sharp to get paint off some of the small details. Also need to wash parts after.
Downside...stinks! and may burn your hand off...it's strong stuff so be careful using it. I feel that it does diminish some of the smaller details on the model.
k:
2) Nail varnish remover (about £1 from boots/superdrug/supermarket).
I soaked my model for about 24 hours, I found that it did not work very well at all. When I attempted to scrub the paint off it was very stubborn. No effect on superglue either. I wouldn't really recommend this, but other people might have used it differently with better results. This also smells, use in a well-ventilated area.
:no:
3) Brown Dettol (£1.99 for 500ml in superdrug)
I really liked this stuff, doesn't smell too bad, and won't really damage you in any way haha. It's a thick brown liquid that I left my model in for around 12 hours. By this time I could see that some of the paint had already come off in in big pieces. I took the parts out and ran them under warm water at which point the rest of the paint just sort of slided off. There were a few layers of paint on this model so I used an old toothbrush to remove the more stubborn paint. Superglue remained hard, but could be levered off easily with something sharp.
:good:
In conclusion...dettol is definitely my winner, cheap and easy to use with good results. If you need to strip paint fast I would recommend No.1, but use with care. Honestly I will not be trying nail varnish remover again!
1) B&Q's own paint and varnish remover (around £5?).
Works well and quickly, only need to soak models for about an hour tops. Paint comes off well and superglue turns gooey and comes off easily. May need to use something sharp to get paint off some of the small details. Also need to wash parts after.
Downside...stinks! and may burn your hand off...it's strong stuff so be careful using it. I feel that it does diminish some of the smaller details on the model.
k:2) Nail varnish remover (about £1 from boots/superdrug/supermarket).
I soaked my model for about 24 hours, I found that it did not work very well at all. When I attempted to scrub the paint off it was very stubborn. No effect on superglue either. I wouldn't really recommend this, but other people might have used it differently with better results. This also smells, use in a well-ventilated area.
:no:
3) Brown Dettol (£1.99 for 500ml in superdrug)
I really liked this stuff, doesn't smell too bad, and won't really damage you in any way haha. It's a thick brown liquid that I left my model in for around 12 hours. By this time I could see that some of the paint had already come off in in big pieces. I took the parts out and ran them under warm water at which point the rest of the paint just sort of slided off. There were a few layers of paint on this model so I used an old toothbrush to remove the more stubborn paint. Superglue remained hard, but could be levered off easily with something sharp.
:good:
In conclusion...dettol is definitely my winner, cheap and easy to use with good results. If you need to strip paint fast I would recommend No.1, but use with care. Honestly I will not be trying nail varnish remover again!
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309 Posts
Simple green bought it at Home depot or lowe's for like 6 bucks a bottle put in 5 minis pulled them out 24 hrs later and tooth bushed them off and if they weren't perfect "most of them were" I put them in for another cycle and a tooth brush no amount of coats has lasted through 2 cycles
Just got to the 4th page in this thread and no one has mentioned Pine-sol?
Hard to believe but then again so many people think it "melts plastic" that I guess a lot of people have been scared away from it.
Pine-sol is great stuff. it removes every kind of paint I can think of including enamel (yeah those nasty Testors paints that some people use on minis)
First get yourself a plastic bowl a butter bowl works just fine(or a plastic ice cream pail if you have larger figures or a shit ton of smaller ones, caution about this later) Then with your Pine-sol, make a mixture that is no more than 50/50 pine-sol and water.
Whatever miniatures you want to strip, put them in. Make sure that they are covered by the solution. If you have plastic miniatures do NOT leave them in for more than an hour. Take them out after that hour and rinse them off, scrubbing the paint off (lightly, its all you should need) with an old tooth brush. If the paint is all gone, good deal (it should be unless the paint is really thick) If the paint is very thick, wait an hour and then soak them for a half an hour. repeat with the brush while rinsing. (If the paint that is left is only in the crevices and in details you can carefully remove the softened paint with a knife point or straight pin.)
HERE is that warning. Don't do more minis than you can reasonably process fairly quickly after that hour. Take all of them out after the hour, and clean the paint off. If you have to rinse them off with water to get most of the Pine-sol off them. That will give you time to be thorough in getting that paint off.
Another warning about using this method on plastic minis. If you leave plastic minis in for longer than an hour the plastic will start to get soft to the point that your tooth brush will leave little grooves in the plastic. Definitely not something you want on your plastic figs. If you notice that your figs are soft wash them off and let them dry a couple hours and the plastic will harden back up.
For metal minis stick em in and either follow the directions for the plastic minis or just stick em in and leave them to soak for as long as you want. If the paint is very thick you may want to soak them a couple of times brushing them each time.
When you have cleared the paint off to the point where you can't get any more off with the brush just sit down with the point of an x-acto knife or a straight pin to dig the paint out of the crevices that were missed by the brush.
On the bases I haven't had any problems with any of them getting soft or "melting" like some people swear up and down that pine-sol will do.
Someone on 4-chan's /tg board tried to tell everyone that Pine-sol melts plastic and I said that was crap. I said that it would get soft and that was it and it's true. I also told people to not leave plastic minis in for more than an hour. Someone complained that their minis were ruined by Pine-sol. I asked them how long they left them in the mixture. They said about three weeks.
As an experiment I took a glass jar and poured about a half inch of straight Pine-sol in the bottom and dropped a piece of sprue in. After a year it still has not melted. It is very soft and malleable and it sort of bloated but it is not melted.
Follow my instructions and Pine-sol is your very good friend for removing paint. Do it wrong and you could have an army of chaos mutations.
Oh, one last safety warning. When I first tried Pine-sol and water for stripping minis I had bought a load of old lead harlequins. They had some of the nastiest thickest paint stuck on them and a friend of mine said try Pine-sol and water so I did.
That paint just fell right off after soaking a couple of hours. I figured great then it came to clean up time and I had to clean those minis off so like a dumb ass I held those minis in one hand and scrubbed them with the other while holding the fig under the surface of the Pine-sol.
DONT'T DO THAT! keeping your skin in that stuff for extended periods of time will make the outer layers of skin on your fingers die and it will look almost like you have leprosy. Thick patches of skin started coming off after my fingers turned colors and I was like WTF is going on? Fingers were fine in a week but I don't do that any more, that is why I recommend doing your scrubbing under running water. Short exposure is no problem but don't soak in it like I did.
I also just a few minutes ago while writing part of this remembered that DUH! Those Harlequins are made of lead and soaking my hand in water that has had a solvent and lead in it for a couple hours is not the best thing to do for my health so don't so that either.
Hard to believe but then again so many people think it "melts plastic" that I guess a lot of people have been scared away from it.
Pine-sol is great stuff. it removes every kind of paint I can think of including enamel (yeah those nasty Testors paints that some people use on minis)
First get yourself a plastic bowl a butter bowl works just fine(or a plastic ice cream pail if you have larger figures or a shit ton of smaller ones, caution about this later) Then with your Pine-sol, make a mixture that is no more than 50/50 pine-sol and water.
Whatever miniatures you want to strip, put them in. Make sure that they are covered by the solution. If you have plastic miniatures do NOT leave them in for more than an hour. Take them out after that hour and rinse them off, scrubbing the paint off (lightly, its all you should need) with an old tooth brush. If the paint is all gone, good deal (it should be unless the paint is really thick) If the paint is very thick, wait an hour and then soak them for a half an hour. repeat with the brush while rinsing. (If the paint that is left is only in the crevices and in details you can carefully remove the softened paint with a knife point or straight pin.)
HERE is that warning. Don't do more minis than you can reasonably process fairly quickly after that hour. Take all of them out after the hour, and clean the paint off. If you have to rinse them off with water to get most of the Pine-sol off them. That will give you time to be thorough in getting that paint off.
Another warning about using this method on plastic minis. If you leave plastic minis in for longer than an hour the plastic will start to get soft to the point that your tooth brush will leave little grooves in the plastic. Definitely not something you want on your plastic figs. If you notice that your figs are soft wash them off and let them dry a couple hours and the plastic will harden back up.
For metal minis stick em in and either follow the directions for the plastic minis or just stick em in and leave them to soak for as long as you want. If the paint is very thick you may want to soak them a couple of times brushing them each time.
When you have cleared the paint off to the point where you can't get any more off with the brush just sit down with the point of an x-acto knife or a straight pin to dig the paint out of the crevices that were missed by the brush.
On the bases I haven't had any problems with any of them getting soft or "melting" like some people swear up and down that pine-sol will do.
Someone on 4-chan's /tg board tried to tell everyone that Pine-sol melts plastic and I said that was crap. I said that it would get soft and that was it and it's true. I also told people to not leave plastic minis in for more than an hour. Someone complained that their minis were ruined by Pine-sol. I asked them how long they left them in the mixture. They said about three weeks.
As an experiment I took a glass jar and poured about a half inch of straight Pine-sol in the bottom and dropped a piece of sprue in. After a year it still has not melted. It is very soft and malleable and it sort of bloated but it is not melted.
Follow my instructions and Pine-sol is your very good friend for removing paint. Do it wrong and you could have an army of chaos mutations.
Oh, one last safety warning. When I first tried Pine-sol and water for stripping minis I had bought a load of old lead harlequins. They had some of the nastiest thickest paint stuck on them and a friend of mine said try Pine-sol and water so I did.
That paint just fell right off after soaking a couple of hours. I figured great then it came to clean up time and I had to clean those minis off so like a dumb ass I held those minis in one hand and scrubbed them with the other while holding the fig under the surface of the Pine-sol.
DONT'T DO THAT! keeping your skin in that stuff for extended periods of time will make the outer layers of skin on your fingers die and it will look almost like you have leprosy. Thick patches of skin started coming off after my fingers turned colors and I was like WTF is going on? Fingers were fine in a week but I don't do that any more, that is why I recommend doing your scrubbing under running water. Short exposure is no problem but don't soak in it like I did.
I also just a few minutes ago while writing part of this remembered that DUH! Those Harlequins are made of lead and soaking my hand in water that has had a solvent and lead in it for a couple hours is not the best thing to do for my health so don't so that either.
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182 Posts
I've heard of pine-sol and wish to try it out! I have a load of 1989-1992 metal terminators thickly coated with large amounts of paint.
What proportion do you use? and how long would you soak the aforementioned for?
Cheers
What proportion do you use? and how long would you soak the aforementioned for?
Cheers
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361 Posts
In the UK, i'll reiterate Fairy Powerspray, squirt over minis in a tupperware tub and an hour later you can remove the paint with a cheap/old toothbrush. No damage at all to metal minis though I haven't tried it on plastics
Will try Brown Dettol at some point
Will try Brown Dettol at some point
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182 Posts
Many thanks, i'll give it a go!
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4 Posts
Does anyone know a company / someone who would strip my plastic! models of paint for a couple of bucks?
I used mellerud pvc cleaner but from my experience it sucks...
I'm talking about ~ 100 Marines I've got on ebay....
I used mellerud pvc cleaner but from my experience it sucks...
I'm talking about ~ 100 Marines I've got on ebay....
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8,496 Posts
I tried Dettol, and it made a shit of the models. It left a very sticky residue, almost like they had been dipped in PVA glue, but harder to get off. I will try the fairy power spray though.
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120 Posts
I am currently using Detto and am not having any problems at all with the residue (it's just the normal one from tesco that is not coloured as if you look at the section it's in it will be in the bleach section, as opposed to the household cleaning section where the spray botle is from the adverts.)
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8,496 Posts
I recently came came across this by accident, after air freshener was spilled on a coffee table and lifted the varnish beautifully. After seeing such a clean job I decided to try it on some old 2nd Ed SWs. They came out great, all it took was a rub of a stiff brush and some soapy water , and they gleamed. And smelled of lavender.
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The result of about 5 days soakage. It may have taken less time, but I didn't get back to them for that long.
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So, there you have it. Give it a go.
The result of about 5 days soakage. It may have taken less time, but I didn't get back to them for that long.
So, there you have it. Give it a go.
If you live in the Los Angeles area, go into any Dollar Tree store and get a bottle of "LA's Totally Awesome Cleaner" (i kid you not. thats actually what its called) and soak your models in it overnight followed by a gentle toothbrushing the next day under running water.
The coolest thing is its safe on plastic.
The coolest thing is its safe on plastic.
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