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Hello all!

I'm going to be dusting off an old army pretty soon, one with a lot of plastic figures that will most likely need repainting. Is there a good way to strip paint off of plastic models, or does the stripper damage the plastic?

Cheers!

normal paint strippers will eat polystyrene plastic ( model pastic) or rather melt it  into a huge unusable mess.

the best stuff to use to strip plastics is a hard toothbrush and some dot3 brake fluid ( prestone i have found works better than most). basicly let them soak for 24 hours then take the  brush to them.  The brake fluid will also eat super glue so if you use that to glue plastics ( why i don;t know) expect them to come apart.

There are a few things, i suggest useing latex gloves ( like the docs use) since brake fluid is kinda nasty, and DO NOT get it in to an open cut, it can screw up tindons for life ( it prevents them from contracting, hence prevents you from moveing things like fingers, hands ect.)

but  yeah dot3 brake fluid is the best stuff to use.

uh, don't use brake fluid. use simple green.

Brake fluid works, but simple green works too and is a heckuva lot safer to have around the house.

Thanks everyone for your replies so far.

Yes, the brake fluid idea sounds effective, but I'm far too clumsy to make it work without poisoning myself!

I'm not sure we have Simple Green over here (Britain), but I'm sure there's an equivalent. Which particular Simple Green product is best to use?

You can get it in the uk (google search it).

I'm gonna get me some too.

There are a lot of different varieties though so is it the all purpose cleaner that our American cousins use?

Yeah, skip the brake fluid, it's an enormous hassle to use and highly toxic. Simple Green all the way, stuff works like a charm. The variety to use is the original concentrated Simple Green all purpose cleaner.

Soak the figures in a small tub overnight and the next day, with warm soapy water, use a tooth brush to scrub off the paint (a dental pick or push pin is also useful for clearing out the bits that get stuck in the cracks). Rinse with warm water and let dry! Sometimes it's necessary on figures that have been hosed down with tough spray/primer and still have paint to soak them again in Simple Green. I also haven't had any problems leaving them in solution for extended periods of time. Not at least with older plastic.

Simple green isnt as good as has been advertised in modelling forums. it works well for metal, but i find that it will really mess with detail on plastics. Perhaps it is just certain plastics, but it literally melted my old blue plastic genestealers when trying to strip them. I havent tried it since on any other plastics.

It may be good for the environement in any manner it is disposed because of biodegradability, but it isnt good for human respiratory systems. There isnt any warnings even in MSDS for ventilation of this, but I find it to make me not feel so hot after using it to clean my sink, let alone hovering over a pot of this stuff while scrubbing minis. So dont take "good for the environment" to mean its good for you.

Perhaps I am more sensitive to chemicals than most, but gloves and well ventilated area (i.e. outside) are a must when using this stuff.

Even if youre not overly senistive, the OSHA stnadards for Simple Green state that it is a class 1 chemical health hazard in the MSDS:
www.biggestbook.com/MSDSFiles/bbmsds01041.pdf

For my metal minis I've used just good ol' fashioned paint stripper from Home Depot. Soak em overnight and the paint would literally just peel right off the miniature. Do NOT use it for Plastic.

For plastic minis, all the GW store employees near me, and a LOT LOT LOT of the customers at the LA Battle Bunker swear by a product called LA Awesome. I haven't used it personally, only cuz I haven't needed to strip a plastic, but I'll be picking some up really soon.

Simple greeen is the best, for removing water based paint If you use Oil based paint then pine solve just soak them in it for a few hours too soften the paint and use a stiff tooth brush, to remove super glue , use a cue tip soaked in nail polish remover( it will soften up the glue were you can pull it off) If its on metal soak it for a few hours and you can strip the paint and glue off at the same time with laundry scrub brush


From my own experinece

I live in the uk and use Dettol, it works great for removing acrilic paints from metal. On plastics it leaves a gooy residue which i think is from the pva glue I use to base the minis, Try dettol on an experimental model, leave overnights then scrub.

Dettol? Okay, I might give that a go.

I'm very wary of damaging the figures, more so than usual, because they're Genestealer Hyrbid minis. But they were painted years and years ago when I had less-than-stellar painting abilities, and look quite awful nowadays!

Thanks again everyone.

just do as prctice strip on a less valuable mini first to see what i meen

Yeah, I'm sure I've got something lying around unused to act as the sacrificial lamb.

Again, dont use simple green on older plastics. My blue genestealers from space hulk turned to an odd lump of plastic after scrubbing the paint off. it softens them up too much.

Posted By Hellfury on 05/09/2007 1:46 PM
Again, dont use simple green on older plastics. My blue genestealers from space hulk turned to an odd lump of plastic after scrubbing the paint off. it softens them up too much.

I *personally* haven't had a problem with Simple Green on older plastics, including RT-era beakies in the similar (same?) blue plastic (and yellow plastic), as well as 2nd Ed. era marines/bits, even after leaving them submerged for weeks on end. However, I'm not denying Hellfury's experience, so it might be wise to do a test miniature first lest you goopify a whole slew of figures by mistake.

Perhaps dilute the simple-green to slow the breakdown of the plastic?

I've stripped metal and plastic with watered-down pine-sol. Works well, but you have to watch the plastic and not leave it for too long, else you'll have the melty mess.

I find that non-acetone nail polish remover works great. You can use a toothbrush and the bottle or you can use the nail polish remover pads. You don't even need to soak. Just scrub and rinse.

A friend of mine stripped all the paint off his Tyranids with brake fluid. They had about 4 layers of paint since he couldn't decide on a paint scheme. He put them all in a coffee can, then dumped brake fluid on them. Well, to make a long story short, he forgot about them for four weeks, but all he had to do was rinse them off.

But the problem with brake fluid is: getting them out, rinsing them off (DOT3 is highly toxic and illegal to dispose of by pouring it down one's drain/cistern), as well as disposing of the used brake fluid (as it has now rendered useless for anything else but stripping figs). While it gets the job done, Simple Green is a helluva lot safer and easier to use, even if that means for some using it outside (ie: Hellfury).

If you have some time on your hands (about 1-2 weeks) you can try using methylated spirits, or anything else thats ~95% ethanol, and a toothbrush. This process may take a while but with all the times I have used it there have always been good results and no damage at all, and the longer you leave it, the easyer it is to get the paint off

the very best thing i have found to strip paint off of minis (and this includes a ton of Rogue Trader Plastics) is a product called Castrol Super Clean, not sure if you can get it in britan, but in the US you can usually find it in the automotive section of pretty much any store. I've found even at 50% dillution the paint almost falls off the miniatures after 24 hours (and you can usually get away with less than 6 hours). Just on a lark i tried dropping some minis I'd stripped in Simple Green in the stuff and they came even cleaner, so it's good stuff.

Oh, and no loss in detail that I've seen, even for some plastics that I got busy and forgot about for almost a month...

I just got a mini off of ebay, it looks like the guy shlacked(sp) it.

A few months ago I picked up some dettol, you sure its safe on resin?

The model is the spined chaos beast from forgeworld.