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Hey guys. Anyone else have trouble stripping citadel primer? I put a few models in an ultrasonic filled with Castrol Super Clean (now just Super Clean) and all of the paint came off almost instantly but the primer is still on there. I had them in there a couple days, took them out scrubbed them with a toothbrush, and repeated... So far it's not working. Does simple green do a better job in certain cases? I haven't tried any other cleaning products just yet. I suppose if it doesn't start coming off I'll have to try something else though.

May the WAAC and pretzels be with you!

~Casey

Simple green will peel citadel primer off after it has had a chance to soak the length of time can vary but it will come off.

Something to note is that some primers will actually "stain" the model black.

The paint surface is gone; but it leaves a permanent stain to the model proper.

Super Clean can clean models of primer without the plastic staining. I have had models from the same army primed with the same primer (old GW blood red) and stripped models with Simple Green and Super Clean. Simple Green left me with orange stained models while Super Clean models look right off the sprue.

i have noticed that the newer GW primers stick better than older GW primer. I had some 10+ yr old Khorne Zerkers take a swim in my ultrasonic with some Eldar i had gotten when Apoc came out. Both had been primed with GW white primer, just from diferent time periods.

Both groups of models were in my cleaner for the same time which was a few days of soaking and then a few cycles of cleaning and when i took them all out and scrubbed them the Zerkers were clean like brand new and the Eldar still had primer on them.

i think in my case this was because the Eldar were not on bases and sunk while the Zerkers floated for the most part.

also, a side note for other ultrasonic users.. has anyone else noticed that a metal model stripped 100% clean of paint and primer no longer has the shiney silver color but rather a dull iron color? i was trying to figure out if the metal oxidized or the silver color is release agent.

I have noticed the color differentiation on a few different metal models, yeah.

I think it might simply be oxidation, like you suggested.

On a side note, if you are using Krylon or Testors primer, you may have some additional difficulty getting all the primer off.
Both of those primers are actual primer, as opposed to Citadels "just regular black paint" primer. As such, they stick a lot harder.

My buddies Krylon primer came off pretty darn quick in simple green. I don't think this is stain either. It will come off it's just taking longer than I'd like. I got it down to the plastic in one part but the model has too many little fragile pieces to scrub the crap out of it. No way is the citadel primer simply black paint. I would be in disbelief if it were true. Normal paint just evaporates off of models in the ultrasonic with CSC.

~Casey