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after reading the other 2 tutorials here about stripping minis , i thought i would add a method i learned about 20 years ago from the former game store owner that got me into 40k .

i dont have any pics , cause i thought other people would alrready have posted this , and i dont have any figs that need stripping right now so ............

i have used this for 20 years , this works just as well for plastic and metal minis without melting or removing details .

take a airtight PLASTIC container or heavy duty zip lock plastic bag . if using the bag , make sure its the thick freezer kind (so its not likly to get a hole poked in it or anything by the minis or bits within ) and do a leak test by blowing some air into to it and sealling it . then GENTLY sqeeze it and see if it deflates any .


place your minis in the container/bag and spray heavily with heavy duty oven cleaner rolling around so that all sides get coated , and seal the container .

let it sit for about 24 hours . it works best at temps between 80 to 90 degrees . when you go by it every once in a while , turn or slosh it around a little to agitate the figs and make sure they all get coated with the solvent .



after about 24 hours .........

the foam will have turned into a soup .

place the drain stopper in your kitchen sink so that it will allow water to drain , but stops any bits from going down the drain .

place a plastic bowl big enough to hold all the figures in the sink filled with water , wearing rubber or latex gloves of some sort , takes a miniature out of the container and scrub it over the sink with a tooth brush (i bought a cheap battery powered brush which works even better ) set off to the side in the bowl of water and repeat for all the minis in the container .

once you have scrubbed them all and they are in the bowl of water , turn on the faucet . take the minis one at a time and hold them under the running water and give them another scrubbing with the tooth brush and rinse the figures the rest of the way off , and set to the side .

repeat with all the figs until you are done






if you forget or get busy and the figs sit for a while longer its fine as long as the oven cleaner doesnt dry out . thats also why you place the bowl of water in the sink , so that the figs and any bits of paint stay wet while you are cleaning them . if your conatiner is really airtight , they can sit for days weeks or even months . i had a fig i got busy and forgot about and rmemebered about 5 months later , the container was really air tight , so it was still in the "soup" . took it out and stripped it just fine .




the con ........ some times when we build a fig , we get all upity and treat it like its our child and the most beloved thing in the world . if you use SUPER GLUE to assemble the fig , this method eliminated the bonds , so the fig will fall apart into its component pieces , and the chunks of super glue that used to bind them .

Not bad, ill keep this in mind.. I use simply green but found sometimes i need to let it sit, scrub it, put it back in, scrub it, so ill give this a go one day

How much scrubbing Required roughly? Plus any brand names of cleaner etc?

not much , the lpaint tends to come off in a skin . using a regular tooth brush its maaaaaaybe a min or 2 a fig . i like using the battery powered tooth brush because it tends to get the detail better since the brush is spinning into the nooks and crannies , so with a battery powered tooth brush its about 20-30 seconds a mini .

i used to have a favorite brand , but i cant remember what it was because they quit selling it here . i have since begun using the cheap generic walmart HEAVY duty variety , and it works just fine .

i said above that it only takes about 24 hours , but if its something you got on ebay from a glop and goer and has no deatil left because its all a big ball of paint , just let it sit a bit longer .

Do you just spray enough to coat them or should they be swimming in the cleaner?

it foams up as you spray them , so i spray them till they are coated , then jumble them around so they get their other side up , spay them again till its about 1/2 to 3/4 inch thick coating on them , and let them sit . as they sit it turns back into a soupy liquid .

jumble the countainer every once in a while , maybey 2-3 times durring that first day so the liquid sloshed back over them and they get moved around a bit .

i will paint a fig so i can show the process and post picks next week .

i need to try this out, I have had trouble paint stripping lately, and have a ton of models i need to paint strip!

Where are you suppose to put the container if needs to be 90 degrees? In the oven o_O or does it just need to sit for 24 hours?

I have a thread for options for US based solututions.
http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/393930.page

Oven cleaner works well but is rather nasty with the fumes.

Wow sounds pretty easy and straight forward. i have been told when you strip minis not all the old paint comes off. i am about to do up some white scar bikers would you think this method is good enough to paint white on the stripped mini? if so you just doubled my starting army size!

Depends how you strip them, I usually get around %95 of the paint of with just warm superclean. Using the ultrasonic they come out nearly %100 paint free.

they really just need to sit in the cleaner for the 24 hours . it works better if the temp is warmer , so put them some place where they can be warm . doesnt have to be hot , it just works better if its WARM as opposed to cold .

what i love about using the oven cleaner is that it works on plastic and metal minis , and doesnt eat either one . i found a bucket i had used to stip minis a couple months back . it had a couple plastic "gernestealer" terminator librarians that i had sprayed and forgot about for what was probably 5 or 6 YEARS . i sprayed some fresh cleaner into the bucket , sealed it , and let it sit a few hours . i took them into the sink , hit them with the battery operated toothbrush , and they looked brand new ! it took a little longer to scrub the old crud off , but its not bad for sitting in it for so long .