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For those of us that buy used models ( I get 99% of mine off eBay), to strip and repaint. Has anyone else ever stopped to wondered, just how may hours it took that previous owner, to badly paint those models in the first place?
Or, when it comes to assembly, Have you ever wondered, "What the hell were they thinking?" Glue everywhere, miss alined panels, and big hunks of sprue still attached, etc...

Just curious.

I think of it more from an anthromorphic way where the model is relieved that it is getting a new chance to be better.

I am the savior of poorly painted, poorly assembled models. I feel that having to strip the model, unassemble it to get rid of glue, and rebuilding/painting it gives the model a bit more meaning in your army than the 27th guy you assembled and painted.

When I got back into the hobby, I bought some second hand lots to get me started. After several hours of cleaning/repairing/swearing, I'm done with second hand models now! Whilst you can get some real bargains on eBay, when you factor in the hours it's just not worth it to me.


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That said, the Rhino you can see pictured on my avatar is actually a recovered second hand model which was in a real mess when I got it.

Who cares? Some of these were probably done by children. If its too much of a mess, resell it or don't buy it in the first place. No need to chide the original owner.

I haven't bought anything used, but if I did, I'd probably feel like I'm euthanizing the horribly painted models, to help them give live to other models.

I spent three days tearing apart and rebuilding and in some cases remoulding a Land Speeder that was put together so badly that there were gaps large enough to see through under the hood. Now, I won't say that the model looks good, it actually looks more like an Ork built it than a Space Marine, but it doesn't have holes anymore between the panels. It had been my friend's back in 3rd Edition and I just NOW rebuilt it after he quit the game. The plastic itself had warped to the wrong dimensions and I had to rebuild using a box of lead and zipties to push the plastic back together with sheer force. Yes, I've wondered how someone, even a beginner, could screw up a model that badly.

The orks I've gotten always have one or two oddballs that I try to keep as/is, as much as possible.

For the rest, a good dunk in Purple Power refreshes them nicely and gets 'em ready for another go.

Usually I pick up the crappiest painted models I can find to get the best discount, so I don't worry at all about the work involved in painting them.

My brother is quite the wheeler and dealer with models... there are a few that he gets that are just too far gone for his skills. Those come to me. Sometimes I can work with them... some times they become Orkified. (Nothing against the original owner... my first models were pretty bad. I own models that I've stripped on no less than three occasions!)

Well I used to build stuff like that without a modeling knife and cutters when I was a kid. Used my moms kitchen knife or a razor blade. Lots of models looked like crap...and My original paint jobs were awfully bad. My guess is it's mostly children - adults really take care of their models.

Currently I am "fixing" a dreadknight. Of course I am fixing it with some nurgle love!

That is what I like about warhammer 40k. You get a junked up space marine kit and you can always turn it into something nurgle. As for other armies you can always Ork them out.


Here is something you all might like. I looted a valkyrie when I first started playing warhammer 40K. A few years ago I unlooted it. Check it out!




More photos:

http://www.dakkadakka.com/gallery/images-14732-17521_Unlooted%20Valkyrie.html

I think: "kids".

Worse when you open a new batch of space marine stuff in the store and one of the teenage regulars who you think should have developed motor control and hand-eye coordination by now, asks to glue your dreadnought together. It was a while ago now, but IIRC it was just about beyond saving.

When building a Flesh Tearers force I bought a poorly painted blood angels army with 10~ Assault Marines, 20~ Death Company and three rhinos, all for around £25

the men were pretty useful, but the Rhinos were pretty much beyond anything suitable for reclaiming for SM usage. They made a good basis for my nurgle army Rhinos though!

Favourite amongst them was the "predator" which was a Rhino with terminator arms super glued to the sides.

If it's cheap enough it's useful for something, even if its rubble.

Last year, I bought a LOT of old Ral Partha Goblins, Orcs, and Trolls, first released in 1979 (Tom Meier's second line of Fantasy figures).

I noticed that there was one seller on eBay who seemed to have an endless supply of these figures, all painted rather badly.

After having bought about 30 - 50 of the,, it then occurred to me that he could be putting on these sloppy paint jobs to hide the fact that they were re-casts (many of them were not the lead-alloy used by miniature manufacturers in the 1980's).

So... I began to wonder how many other recasters put a sloppy paint job on a miniature to hide/disguise a recast.

Something to think about.

But many paint jobs are just cases of "WTF!?!?"

Some of them might be children, I'll admit.

But I have seen plenty of adults who seem to be unable to color within the lines, so to speak, on miniatures, and have produced some god-awful messes.

MB

I don't mind the awful painted ones for cheap. I mind the so-so painted ones that people charge like $300 for & call professionally or nicely painted.

I seriously don't get this thread. I feel like in other threads people are bashed for not painting, but here's its bashing people for poor paintjobs.

If I buy second hand models I normally look for once that have only been undercoated at most!

That being said sometimes you fall into the trap where they have painted it then just sprayed it black again over the top before selling!

I think about it all the time..

I once bought a second hand metal Canis Wolfborn mounted on a hefty piece of scenery, fully intending to strip him down and wolf it up.. That was five years ago and he's still displayed above my TV menacing some unicorns. I've never had the heart to do it, someone clearly loved this figure.

Recently I picked up a small pack of IG sellotaped to a card to practise some paint schemes. I flipped one over and there was a very obscure, specific cult sign from the Call of Cthulhu RPG Scenario: Masks of Nylarthotep. It gave me pause to wonder quite what went on there.

There's this where I'm on roughly the third week of undoing the amount of epoxy glue someone poured over a fairly expensive vehicle.

i have bought some real bargins off ebay and as some of you have said some one clearly loved those models and you have to think 'why are you selling them?' 'what has happened to make you want to lose money selling these things?' addmittedly i have sold models on ebay too just to fund another project or when the wife has had a rant about too many toy soldiers in the house!

I have had models that have had 4 different colour schemes on them before me! i have also seen good paint jobs underneath really bad ones!

but i think fo rthe right price and a little hard work 2nd hand models are well worth the price and effort.

Oh totally.

I've received models that resembled a pile of bits with glue poured over it and dipped in house paint more than actual miniatures....

I tend to buy pre-stripped metals more than anything but I did buy the old GW orc shaman on wyvern (I always wanted one, orcs were my first army).

I bought one from Ebay about 2 years ago and when It arrived I couldn't bring myself to strip it, someone had put more effort into it than I was intending to, I still have it in a box waiting.

I only buy 2nd hand when I can SEE what I'm getting before I hand over the readies.

So the paintjob isn't a big deal (I'll grab stuff that fits with what I have already, if it's painted in puce and lilac, it stays on the table).

The last time I did a WTF at a 2nd hand model was a drop pod that had been assembled with a couple of tubes of cheap superglue and painted with craft paints (which washed off with warm soapy water). It fell out of the box when I was getting it out of the car and upon hitting concrete, fell to pieces. Sometimes I'm thankful for the know-nothings who use superglue. Disassembling that kit if they used plastic glue would have been a nightmare.

My nightmare is that someone stripped my missing miniatures.

They were obviously not your average paint-jobs though, and the recent recovery of one of my miniatures, un-stripped, with my original paint-job on it, has given me a bit of a sigh of relief.

After all, if someone bought some of my miniatures from whoever was selling them - miniatures that were among the first I ever painted - yet did not strip them, and even went to the trouble to re-base them, yet did not strip the paint in the process (obviously preserving the paint job), then I am certain that the more skilled paint-jobs (especially those for which I won awards, or were used for miniature company displays) have survived, and that - due to the recovery of two of the miniatures - that the rest of the minis are in someone's collection.

I should post a picture of the most recent miniature I bought off eBay though.

It is the old Ral Partha Throne of Bone, and it looks like a four year-old painted it (or parts of it).

The paint used is a gloss enamel over unprimed metal.

The skeletons are sloppily painted in gloss white (a VERY WHITE, white.

Their "armor" is painted in bright greens, blues, reds, and yellows (bright, primary and secondary colors).

It looks literally like a badly painted children's toy.

I know that I will have to strip it, and I am relieved that it is painted in enamels, which are easier to strip than acrylics when painted on this thickly.

I had hoped to just re-prime it, and paint over the bad paint.

But when I got it, and discovered all of the drips, and globs of paint obscuring whole limbs.... I knew I would have to strip it.

MB


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OH!

And some Mounted Rohan Royal Guard I bought about Six years ago.

The riders had been glued onto the horses with a layer of glue that was about ¼" thick. The horses had been "painted" with what looked like a Sharpy.

The riders had not been painted, or primed.

But I had to totally destroy the horses to get the riders off.

I am lucky to have a big pile of extra mounts for the Rohirrim. But DAAAAMN! What was this guy thinking when gluing the riders onto the horses?

Was he that worried about them coming off???

MB

I used to work in a FLGS, and on sunday afternoons, I was in charge of the kids' painting table. I was a decent painter back then, but nothing more, and I tried to impart some notions of caring about your paint work to the kids that came, but quite a few of them were actually just dumped there by their parents to get a few hours of calm, and others just wanted 3 different colours splashed on asap so they could get to playing in the in-house tournaments.
A lot of these ended up in the 2nd hand section after a few months because the kids had moved on to something else. At least a third of my eldar army was salvaged from these, but a lot of stripping work went into them.
On another hand, I've seen a few friends who can manage a fair tabletop quality do horrible, horrible things to models when they were "self-medicating"... o.O
You can't really know the story behind terrible minis, so I always assume if they were for sale, it was because the seller wasn't into them anymore, so there's no insult in stripping them.

 evilsunzacademy wrote:
When I got back into the hobby, I bought some second hand lots to get me started. After several hours of cleaning/repairing/swearing, I'm done with second hand models now! Whilst you can get some real bargains on eBay, when you factor in the hours it's just not worth it to me.


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That said, the Rhino you can see pictured on my avatar is actually a recovered second hand model which was in a real mess when I got it.

That's how I feel now.

I did buy a lot of second hand models but I'm growing really tired of all the cleaning, damaging while cleaning, imperfect cleaning, then repairing and missing bits and all that gak.

It's a great deal if you can't spend anymore money but have lots of time to waste, but that's about it.

 jreilly89 wrote:
I seriously don't get this thread. I feel like in other threads people are bashed for not painting, but here's its bashing people for poor paintjobs.

Nah man - I don't see it like that. I'd never bash anyone for a poor paint-job. In fact I see so many finely painted models I'm almost embarrassed to show mine some times. Then you'll see some models that look like they were painted with melted crayons. Those are the ones you can buy cheap because they are basically destroyed.

Yeah, I don't think stripping is really worth my time so I tend to buy models that are either unpainted or basecoated. I also check pictures to make sure it's not something rediculous. So far I haven't run into any amorphous blob of paint!


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 Xenomancers wrote:
Nah man - I don't see it like that. I'd never bash anyone for a poor paint-job. In fact I see so many finely painted models I'm almost embarrassed to show mine some times. Then you'll see some models that look like they were painted with melted crayons. Those are the ones you can buy cheap because they are basically destroyed.

Haha I am imagining someone painting with a melted crayon! In all seriousness though, I get so proud of my models, painted with paint no less, and I just haven't posted anything up on here because I skim through that front page or the finished models showcase and am just so far from what I see on there, it's daunting. I think Ill try to post some things soon though, people seem mostly positive and constructive with the less-than-masterclass stuff...

I got 90% of my stuff off ebay, but never assembled. On the spru carnifex is like... 22 bucks. Alternatively the box for 2 of them in the store is 90.

Some a' yez who can't be bothered 'wasting time' must be using the wrong stripper.

I enjoy the process of stripping, reassembling, fixing models. It's almost akin to furniture restoration. I have not qualms at all about stripping models, though sometimes if the paintjob is better than I expect I'll touch it up and use it as-is. I find stripping itself to be a fairly easy process if you're not rushed. A few soaks in purple power takes care of most everything, and I've got harsher chemicals for stubborn paint on metals.

I do occasionally wonder "what were they thinking" related to assembly, but usually even the worst plastic modeles that are melted together with solvent can be saved with a file and a razor saw. All that said, I do much prefer to strip metal models.

I've probably stripped well over 500 models now. Many for my collection, many more just to see the models, own them for a bit, admire the sculptors work and then sell them on to fund my hobby.