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A common way to strip paint is to soak the model in Simple Green or some other similar product. It can be a wait and a pain but how about just sandblasting the paint off instead? Check it out!

Thanks for showing us that dude! even watching I could feel the old creative juices bubbling away :-) I probably would use it for stripping as intended but the prospect of weathering and distressing models is what interested me mostly!

Nice demo, thank you!

I';ve read about these things in an airbrush for dummies kinda book, but hadn't seen one. I was worried that it might be too agressive for our flimsy plastic minis, but your demo dispells that fear.
What I like about this isn't that it's fast, but that it should get the tight bits cleared much easier than you can brush paint gunk out of them. ;-]

OK, Sandblasting for dummies...having sandblasted my old stock car a time or 2 to inspect welds on the cage and to update the paint scheme.
PPE!!!!!!
That stands for Personal Protection Equipment!!!!!
The "aluminium oxide' used is a lot finer than normal sand or nut-shells used in typical sand blasting. It has to be since your working with much finer detail on a smaller area. As your blasting you WILL create a pocket of dust, so best to do this outdoors or your blast media will get everywhere. In the carpet. On the dishes. In your food. In your pets fir. on your bedding.
It also means your going to be breathing the stuff in, so some type of really good dust-mask/filter should be used. Not the simple painters mask you buy at Home Despot, but a decent cartridge based system. Some of the blast media can be so fine (like baking soda) that when you inhale it it mixes with the moisture in your lungs and turns into a mud with the consistency of wet concrete. Most of the time you just cough this up as a wet lung nugget...but if your media contains silicates (glass) you can damage your lungs from micro-cuts.
The fine particles are perfect for taking paint right off...as well as getting in your eyes and scratching your corneas. We are NOT talking protective glasses, but full on goggles.
And finally, a jig to hold the figure...even if its just a pair of pliers. Something so your hand (bare skin) is not in the line of the blasted particles. Remember, your stripping varnish, paint, primer, and even damaging the plastic (and white metal). Your skin will not pose much of an obstacle for the particles to blast off either.

It is possible to reuse blast media, but it should be sifted to get foriegn material (previously blasted paint) out of the mix. But if your using something like talcum powder or baking soda it's cheap enough to just go buy a fresh clean box.

dkellyj wrote:
OK, Sandblasting for dummies...having sandblasted my old stock car a time or 2 to inspect welds on the cage and to update the paint scheme.

Excellent! Thanks for the info!