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So I recently have gotten back into playing but have an army that was painted frankly quite poorly. The models are a few years old.

I read the posts here about stripping paint and have had great results from simple green. My question is how much of the old paint should be removed? I can't seem to remove all the primer from the model in some of the nooks. Is it bad for some primer to be left in the crevices?

Thanks for the help!

The reason to strip paint is to avoid obscuring details as much as possible. That being said, it is hard to get a complete strip no matter how much work you put in. If there is a big glob, you could pick at it with the tip of an exacto knife or something similar, but it may not be worth it. As long as it's not a super huge glob obscuring detail you'll be fine, and even if it is the worst that happens is some model detail is lost.

Hope that helps!

 troa wrote:
The reason to strip paint is to avoid obscuring details as much as possible. That being said, it is hard to get a complete strip no matter how much work you put in. If there is a big glob, you could pick at it with the tip of an exacto knife or something similar, but it may not be worth it. As long as it's not a super huge glob obscuring detail you'll be fine, and even if it is the worst that happens is some model detail is lost.

Hope that helps!

I just wasn't too sure how clean to expect to get the minis (is a little paint ok or should it look brand new?) I have a lot of guys to clean up!

Thanks for the insight!

In my opinion, it's all or nothing, at least for a contiguous area.

If you strip "a little" and paint over it (or reprime), you'll get uneven paint, which looks horrible. Worse, you can get little balls of old paint trapped under your paint. The only way you can avoid this is if you go in and sand -- but then, that's a lot of work, and you might as well just finish stripping.

If it's metal, you can get the model looking sparkling new with acetone, gloves, a toothbrush, and a mask.

If it's plastic, unless you LOVE the model and really want to repaint it, I wouldn't bother. It's just too hard to get all the old paint cleanly off, with very few exceptions (like GW plastic "blister" packs that are excruciatingly expensive), small plastic miniatures are usually cheap to replace.

Plus, with MPP, there's a good chance you'll break the model in the process anyhow, or scrape a little too hard in a moment of aggravation and scratch the material.

I'm in Bugle's position as well -- stripping and repainting my Zombicide mini's. I usually prime with at least three layers for a Zenithal priming effect. This time it's two layers, grey and an Army Painter color, followed by pre-inking. Uh... PM me in a few weeks to see if my *mostly* stripped miniatures painted well!

Talys wrote:
In my opinion, it's all or nothing, at least for a contiguous area.

If you strip "a little" and paint over it (or reprime), you'll get uneven paint, which looks horrible. Worse, you can get little balls of old paint trapped under your paint. The only way you can avoid this is if you go in and sand -- but then, that's a lot of work, and you might as well just finish stripping.

The surfaces come out beautiful (a little stained perhaps but no paint on them to speak of) Its little crevices that were concerning me. They aren't even crammed full of paint its just that they have primer in them. If i reprime over that is it going to kill the detail? I guess I'll just have to test it and see how it comes out.

My real question I guess was how hard do other people try to clean them up? I tried picking at it with needles and toothpicks to no avail. At this point its whatever I suppose. Paint these up and just slowly get better models

 troa wrote:
The reason to strip paint is to avoid obscuring details as much as possible. That being said, it is hard to get a complete strip no matter how much work you put in. If there is a big glob, you could pick at it with the tip of an exacto knife or something similar, but it may not be worth it. As long as it's not a super huge glob obscuring detail you'll be fine, and even if it is the worst that happens is some model detail is lost.

Hope that helps!

Agree, I use dental tools instead of an exacto knife though.

It's not really an answer to your question, but if your goal is to get all the paint off then maybe my experience will be of some help. I've been using Super Clean (formerly Castrol Super Clean), and although the tutorial on Dakka says to let them soak for 24 hours, I've found that waiting 4+ days before trying to brush the paint off works wonders. First batch I tried to strip, 24 hours was only barely enough time for some of the minis (metal), barely cut through the paint at all on the plastic minis/vehicle, and took over an hour of hard scrubbing to clean even the metal miniatures. This time, well, it still took an hour, but I stripped many more minis and the time/effort spent on each one individually was drastically reduced. Moral of the story: if using Super Clean, be PATIENT. Wait at least 4 days, preferably up to a week. I'm not sure how much Simple Green differs from Super Clean in terms of safety and leaving the minis to soak, but maybe you can try soaking them longer to get similar results to mine?

(Oh, and by the way, with Super Clean, waiting longer helps to break the glue bonds much better as well, so if you'd rather avoid breaking the (superglue) bonds, you're going to have to take them out much sooner than 4 days and be prepared for a LOT of scrubbing to get the paint off.)

I stripped my entire Ork army, and I know exactly what you are talking about. For the most part a bit of excess primer here and there wont affect things much.

I've stripped my Dark Angels 3 times, and my orks twice now... thats a good chunk of paint removal!

Know your pain on this, I went through a lot fo products trialing them.

What works best, I find is pure alcohol.
99.9% Isopropyl alcohol succeded in removing every last trace of spray primers used where fairy power spray, dettol, various brushes, a cheap ultrasonic cleaner etc etc had all failed.

Pure alcohol, a cheap toothbrush and compressed air to blast it dry with - I use my airbrush with no paint in.
Thats the best method hands down. - gw plastics are totaly safe for weeks on end in it, finecast goes all soft and is ruined... if your quick you can soak for 5 min and get paint off that way but no prolongued soaking.
Metal is invincible so its fine with this also.

All advice here good. I've paints stripped well in excess of 500 models now, which is slightly insane...

Soaking them longer helps a lot.

If there's a little paint in the crevices, meh, if it's a blob, scrape it with a needle or knife to get it off, but frankly, otherwise, it won't matter that much.

You'll NEVER get a model looking like it's fresh out the blister pack or sprue, but you don't need too.

Good luck!

 Salamandrake wrote:
I've been using Super Clean (formerly Castrol Super Clean), and although the tutorial on Dakka says to let them soak for 24 hours, I've found that waiting 4+ days

I heard super clean works really well but I couldn't find any near me. After a little experimentation 2 days seems to be the best they ever get; if anything stays on after two days it wont come off really with anymore time.

I've been priming them up - it doesn't seem to be terrible looking. My poor painting skills will probably do them more harm than the quality of the stripping TBH.

Thanks all for the advice/tips!