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So.

I'm trying to get back into the hobby. I have a fiar few # of... not BADLY, but very mediocre models painted.

I'm low on $ at the moment, and want to get back into before I make my first large $$ purchase, which will be DH.

I'm thinking about stripping and converting a bunch of existing minis.
But I dont want to kill the plastic.

Products available in Canada that would do the job for fairly cheap?

Do you guys have a cleaning product known as Detol over there? If so, it strips 2-3 layers of paint in about a week without damage to plastic.

Detol, the antiseptic cleaner?

Brake fluid (as used in the brakes in your car) Called DOT 4 over here in the UK. Dump the models in for 12-24 hours and the paint just falls off. Just remember to give your mini's a good clean in warm, soapy water before you re-paint or the residue can cause the paint to fail to adhere correctly.

^What he said.

I've used it to strip RT era plastics and have had no issues with it softening the plastic at all (or 2nd ed, 3rd ed, etc).

It is very effective - and unlike dettol, won't make your minis smell of the stuff FOR MONTHS.

simple green takes off GW paint in about a hour. 7 hours and it falls off by itself

Superclean or Purplepower. Usually found in the automotive section of stores like Walmart(do you guys have walmart in Canada?) and may autoparts stores.

Anyhow- its not TOXIC like brake fluid is- its biodegradable and alot less messy(brake fluid is an oil, and it stinks, if you spill it in your carpet your mom/gf/room mate will kill you). Wear gloves & glasses though, the stuff is a concentrated cleaner for degreasing engines & stuff like that. Bonus points is that you can use it as a brush cleaner too if you have some gunked up brushes.

I've had good results with Pinesol in the past.

BloodQuest wrote:I've had good results with Pinesol in the past.

I've had good results with pinesol too (though it's hard to come by here). It depends a lot on what you are stripping, how thick the paint is, the type of paint, how long it's been there. Sometimes paint just falls off after soaking for an hour, leaving the mini looking like new. Other times I've had to soak stuff for days and really scrub to get certain paint off.

The first thing you should do is go to out and buy yourself an extra firm toothbrush for scrubbing... the stiffer your scrubbing brush the easier your life will be. You could use an 'old toothbrush' but they tend to already be soft and worn out.

Next get some chemicals... Simple Green (and equivalents) seem to be the most widely recommended. I don't rate break fluid much, it is much more hassle than other methods (what with being toxic and corrosive and difficult to dispose of), and it's slower and less effective at removing paint. So generally not worth it, unless you can't find anything else.

My method

Get four lockable, sealing plastic food containers. I use 750ml cylinder jars. A cheap plastic washing up bowl, a cheap sieve, washing up gloves and disposable chopsticks are also useful.

1. Put Dettol into container no.1

2. Put models into container no.1. Leave them a day up to a week. You can leave them longer without bad effects though it does not get them any cleaner.

3. Pick the models out and chuck them into a bowl of warm, soapy water. At this stage they will have some rags of dead paint on them and are covered with nasty, sticky partially degraded undercoat.

4. Pick the models out of the water, arrange them on a couple of sheets of kitchen paper, and leave them to dry.

5. Pour the used Dettol out of container no.1 through the sieve into container no.2. The dirty container and sieve can be cleaned with more neat Dettol.

6. Put acetone free bail polish remover into container no.3.

7. Put your air dried models into container no.3. DON’T LEAVE THEM THERE MORE THAN 30 MINUTES!! Give the container a good shake every few minutes.

8. Pick the models out and chuck them in a bowl of warm, soapy water and give them a swirl around.

9. Pick the models out, rinse them, and arrange on sheets of kitchen paper to dry.

10. Pour the used nail polish remover out of container no.3. through the sieve into container no.4.

11. Next batch of models, put them into the used liquid. It will last for several batches before it loses its effectiveness.

True, Brake fluid can be interesting to work with. but I have a bottle I've been using for a few years now. I strain the particulates out using an old sieve and put the rest back in the bottle to use again.

Safety wise, like any product, use gloves when handling it, wash your hands with warm soapy water if you get any in contact with it and keep away from animals and kids. This applies to all the common household cleaners as well as while they may not be marked as toxic they're still not pleasant.

Papaskittels wrote:simple green takes off GW paint in about a hour. 7 hours and it falls off by itself

Simple Green works wonders on stripping minis. I like to soak them over night in doller store simple green. Just use a toothbrush to get the paint out of the cracks.

If you have the following it will work(better):

a) wife or SO that uses nail polish remover(acetone free).

b) time, or wife/SO with time

c) something to do while wife/SO is busy stripping your mini's

My wife has managed to strip the paint from alot of my models using nail polish remover, without damaging them, and in a very short period of time. 1 hour to completly strip a Grav Tank and about 5 minutes per normal model.

She just puts the Remover on a paper towel and rubs the paint off. Rinse with warm soapy water afterwards. Works wonders, and I get to watch the football un-interrupted.

Capt_Bowman wrote:Safety wise, like any product, use gloves when handling it.

Hehe yeah that's a good idea... so long as your gloves don't dissolve too lol!

Last month I was stripping some old metal models with nitromors, and my gf gave me her hairdying gloves to use... But it turns out nitomors gets +D6 AP against all kinds of gloves, including latex gloves which it dissolved in seconds. So I basically ended up with a soggy pair of pain gloves full of burning nitomors, which was probably worse than if I'd just put my hands straight in :/

Yeah, nitromors is great stuff but eats though any gloves that are not Nitrile or rubber. A pair of marigolds are fine. Just don't use my friend's theory that if nitromors strips paint off metal it will work on plastic. You end up with a pile of goo where your old Eldar Guardians used to be.

Simple green is what I use here in the states. Can typically find it at hardware stores. I can leave my minis in it for 4-5 days without any damage to the model. I cant tell you definatively if they sell it in Canada or not though.

Acetone free nail varnish remover works fine for acrylics, cheap and does the job, dont let it soak for too long as I'm unsure what it would do to the plastic over long periods of time, I leave mine to soak for 5 minutes and use a toothbrush.

It will melt the base quite badly in 24 hours and make the figure rubbery.

I've only used nail varnish remover on metal before and it was fine, but surely as long as its not exposed for great amounts of time and is washed thoroughly afterwards plastic should be fine shouldn't it?

I've found that pinesol works great on the paint, but does next to nothing to the primer.

i have said this before, but Simple Green...soak it for 2-3 days then take a toothbrush to it, repeat as needed...although i have found it works faster on metal models...because you can scrub harder without breaking the model...


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Actually, i used it to strip my brothers eldar (they had 7 layers of paint on them) and just finished stripping them yesterday (they soaked for a total of 5 days)

bagley wrote:I've only used nail varnish remover on metal before and it was fine, but surely as long as its not exposed for great amounts of time and is washed thoroughly afterwards plastic should be fine shouldn't it?

Try it on a model you don't mind dissolving.

jordanis wrote:Simple green ... I have found it works faster on metal models...because you can scrub harder without breaking the model.

Why bother messing about with simple green for cleaning metal? You can just drop metal models in a real paint stripper like Nitromors, which will melt the paint off completely in seconds, no scrubing required. The only reason people use SG is because most real paint strippers eat plastic too, so a gentler approach is required.

bagley wrote:I've only used nail varnish remover on metal before and it was fine, but surely as long as its not exposed for great amounts of time and is washed thoroughly afterwards plastic should be fine shouldn't it?

Just because something works on metal doesn't mean that it will be okay for plastic at all (usually it won't), as was stated before...

Capt_Bowman wrote:Just don't use my friend's theory that if nitromors strips paint off metal it will work on plastic. You end up with a pile of goo where your old Eldar Guardians used to be.

Kleen strip is the best. avail at home depot. I have striped 3 armies using this product. As an added bonus, it starts to dissolve the glue overnight, which helps if you have poorly assembled models. safe on plastic too.

sorry if this is thread necro-whatever-ing
@ Smackcakes
i used it on metal models cuz i had like 5 out of 50 models and all needed stripping and didnt feel like replacing bases either as I am poor

WHATEVER you do, DON'T use brake CLEANER, use brake fluid. I accidently did that to 3 marines a while back (thank god they were cheapo ones that come in the 3 pack) and they melted.

la's totally awesome, google it, it works wonders