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Alright, so I just received some Necron Destroyers from a shipper on Ebay. It looks like they were pretty much dipped into about 4 layers of Testers paint and brushed on using a goat tail by someone on LSD. Now these unfortunately are not my first restoration projects I've had to do and it got me thinking, what are some of your horror stories from buying used pieces? Were you able to save them from the OMGWTF bin of history? If you have any before and after photos feel free, I would like to see your efforts.

i am definetly going to follow this one

I did a project like this last year. I got an AOBR sergeant that was horribly converted and covered in thick, sloppy paint. I unfortunately didn't get any pics of him with paint on but I snapped a couple after a bath of simple green. Even with that not all the paint came off:





You can see the head was never fully cut right so the new helmet is kind of floating on top of a big nug of plastic. The left arm was cut off completely and while the shield fell off during the paint stripping bath it was stuck straight on to the front of him when I got it. The axe arm was fine but in an awkward position and was missing a shoulder pad. His backpack, not included in the pic, was fine so I kept it the same. What a mess though! I actually thought the idea behind the conversion wasn't bad so I finished what someone had started:



And painted:

Awsome turn around

My biggest problem is when I get mini's with Krylon on them... the crud BONDS to plastic and doesn't come off... and if you use too much, you lose detail... and I've seen a TON of krylon on minis... pretty much tossed... not even power clean could get rid of it... *sigh*

Here's an eBay Vindicator I bought quite some time back. Here it is fresh out of the box from the seller:



The good news is that everything was there except for the dozer blade, but I knew this before I bought it and I am ok w/ that. Then I started really looking at it... what a mess! Check this stuff out:



See how it is listing to one side? Here's why:



The track on the (photo) left is lower than the brace for the dozer blade!



If this were a race, the tracks on the (photo) right side would be winning.





That's not GS, it's GLUE.

Wow. I thought I really screwed up this time. Finally got caught on a "good deal". I started getting out my jackhammer and blowtorch, but then *snap* one of the panels came right off. It was superglue!

Yay!

I finished the disassembly in about a minute. The little pile of stuff in the foreground is chunks of superglue. No I am not kidding.



Months later I took it back out of the box and visited horrific corruption upon it in the name of Father Nurgle. Here's the end result:





Another successful save!

this is amazing. i have yet to get anykind of fixer upper but consider this subbed.

Revarien wrote:My biggest problem is when I get mini's with Krylon on them... the crud BONDS to plastic and doesn't come off... and if you use too much, you lose detail... and I've seen a TON of krylon on minis... pretty much tossed... not even power clean could get rid of it... *sigh*

Try soaking the mini in 91% rubbing alcohol. I have successfully stripped minis painted with krylon fusion using this. It takes little longer but it dissolves the fusion right off. That bonds to plastic claim is bunk.

I bought a giant lot from eBay of bitz about 5 years ago for $600 .What shows up at my home was a giant box that weighed 80lbs. and was literally a mountain of loose bitz, not boxed , not in ziplock bags just all loose. Took me a week to sort all of them out. I ended up with enough bitz for a full 2000 point tau army, a chaos army and enough space marines to choke a horse. At least over 100 marines. But what was also in the box was a large amount of badly assembled marines coated in thick rustoleum black paint. Well I had surrendered them to be converted into plague marines but once I learned the alcohol stripping trick, I prompty started soaking them all. Well I was able to recover enough for 3 full tac squads. I wish I took pics of them before I soaked them to show how bad they were.

My buddy was so amazed at how well they came out he suggested I open a mini restoration garage.

okay for the OP, for the easiest way to strip off testor's enmael paint soak it in easy off oven cleaner, the yellow can i soaked my first set of bezerkers in that stuff, and after a vigorous scrubbing it was good as new...albiet the platics was stained the color of the primed coat

Warlborg wrote:I did a project like this last year. I got an AOBR sergeant that was horribly converted and covered in thick, sloppy paint. I unfortunately didn't get any pics of him with paint on but I snapped a couple after a bath of simple green. Even with that not all the paint came off:





You can see the head was never fully cut right so the new helmet is kind of floating on top of a big nug of plastic. The left arm was cut off completely and while the shield fell off during the paint stripping bath it was stuck straight on to the front of him when I got it. The axe arm was fine but in an awkward position and was missing a shoulder pad. His backpack, not included in the pic, was fine so I kept it the same. What a mess though! I actually thought the idea behind the conversion wasn't bad so I finished what someone had started:



And painted:

Nice to see you kept the chunks of sprue on the eagle on the backpack. Nice touch.

Here are some before during and after photos, and yes I know I'm not the worlds greatest painter, but I still think there's some improvement from the prior.

Before




During



After (sorry bout the picture, I tend to get the shakes when taking pictures of small things)

Ive only purchased one painted model and it was in rough shape. Its still on the backburner as far as projects go but here is how it came in complete with several layers of thick, gummy paint including blue sparkle as one of the deepest layers. For $6, how could I go wrong ?



Ive stripped it and sawed off the old saracophagus face and installed a new one to refresh it. Ive also repaired the gaps with green stuff.

I bought 10 CSM Bikers one time and got a great deal on them.. so I thought. The seller said "well painted" but it looked like a 2 yr old had painted them with basing material caked all over the bottoms. He also shipped them in a board game box (with all the sturdiness of a cereal box) that was the same width as the bikes/bases. Every single bike had its spikes broken off and parts were all over the place.

After contacting the seller he said "the guys at my GW said they were well painted". Like Redshirts are going to say "that looks like dogsh:t, kid!"

After them sitting in a box for a year or so (I just got mad every time I laid eyes on them) I decided release them back into the vast ocean of ebay for someone else to deal with. I disclosed the condition of course so as not to pass along the misery as well.

This is way I don't buy all ready built and painted models from Ebay.

I have an ice cream tub full of Orks that seem to have been assembled by putting all the bitz in a plastic bag along with a few oz. of superglue and given a good shake. I use them for testing paint schemes.

Might try that aseembling trick! lol

I didnt buy my miniature from ebay but i was given a model that well.... was a bit of a nightmare... A dreadnought that had two guard heavy bolters and a guard lascannon stuck in the very middle ontop... almost half of the model was covered in a black varnish that smelt foul and was probably toxic. I lost chunks of the dread takeing the guns off but managed to patch it up well and then scrapped off the black varnish. now i have a converted dreadnought with an assault cannon that im quite proud of and wanting to convert more if I can so it was a saving story but not from eBay, sorry

Marine_With_Heart wrote:I didnt buy my miniature from ebay but i was given a model that well.... was a bit of a nightmare... A dreadnought that had two guard heavy bolters and a guard lascannon stuck in the very middle ontop... almost half of the model was covered in a black varnish that smelt foul and was probably toxic. I lost chunks of the dread takeing the guns off but managed to patch it up well and then scrapped off the black varnish. now i have a converted dreadnought with an assault cannon that im quite proud of and wanting to convert more if I can so it was a saving story but not from eBay, sorry

Pics or it didnt happen ;0)

My worst model was a sold as seen unpainted Epic Great Gargant.

What I couldn't see from the pic was that although most of the model was glued together, the ingenius seller decided that to improve stability it was essential to STAPLE parts of the back together!! I still don't know how or why he did that, nor do I know how to remove them as they then seem to be glued to something I cant see inside the mini.

http://bit.ly/zRSB2L

Anyone want to salvage my frosted and accidentally sprayed gloss white thinking it was gloss varnish battle suit?

Not from ebay but from a friend.:

to:

I know its dusty and I know I'm a crap painter but I was pleased with the conversion.

The OC-D

Hehe it looks like something from Doctor Who now

I've never tried a reclamation project, but it's comforting to see that none of my projects are anywhere near as bad as these are.

Ricedaddy wrote:I've never tried a reclamation project, but it's comforting to see that none of my projects are anywhere near as bad as these are.

This. I'm aware my painting standards are low, but so far none of the "OMGFAIL LOOK AT THIS" pics are better than my average. And I'm happy about that.

edit: even my failed monolith isn't as horribly covered in superglue as that Vindicator. And it's assembled at least close to correctly.
(it was de-sprued 10 years ago, and the sides have warped pretty badly over the years)

I like the look of this thread, subbed!

Subbed this should be awesome.

Im going to share my positive experience haha! I went the usual local 40k place. I found a complete Ironclad dread sprue in a bitz box. They had no idea what is was, so they gave me sprues, I think it was 2 total. They just thought it was junk I guess. So I got it for about 5 bucks.

Worst experience was ordering some genestealers, only to realize they were from the board game. My fault for not doing the research but whatever.

ahem....
I started out with this guy... Won him in ebay...

Then to this...

not happy with him I took everything off him kept the head and backpack... And got this guy who isn't as good.

Yes I know he is slipping I plan on redoing his legs. They look bad....

This poor guy...

He started out as an imperial fist with a horrible marking on his beak. To ensure no one ever saw it. I shaved it off. Now he is wearing mk3. And all of that equipment is to hide the horrible markings...

This guy started out with a broken banner a broken hand. His legs were ripped off. And his entire head was shaved off the bottom...


This guy had the worst of it!

This guy started out... With NO HEAD, His shoulder was broken! someone had snapped his arms off on purpose! They shaved this guys poor minion. And Body was screwed up and bent at the base.
I started over and rebuilt everything on him....

Found this little gem on ebay. The arms alone are a work of genius.