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Anybody any tips on the best way to strip paint off of plastic space marines? I've got as far as soaking them in dettol and taking the bigger lumps off with a toothbrush. But what next? How do I get the dettol/paint mix off. At the moment they are coated in a sticky sludge.
Watched a couple of youtube tutorials but the product used there - evergreen or green soap or something like that - isn't available where I live (scotland).
Any help on this would be greatly appreciated.

Denatured alcohol for plastic. all the way takes about an hour and the paint starts to fall off. Sometimes it also breaks the glue down.

Neat Dettol is great (apart from the bloody smell)

Soak them in dettol for 24 hours, the paint generally forms a skin which you can literally just push off with your bare fingers.

If it was applied with a spray, then generall you'll need a toothbrush to gently scrub it off, but you can usually bring it right down to bare plastic again with minimal effort.

When cleaning them, rinse your toothbrush in dettol, and rinse the model in another seperate tub of dettol.

**NEVER EVER INTRODUCE WATER TO IT UNTIL ALL THE PAINT IS GONE.** Cannot stress the importance of this, water will make it form a sticky gluey substance that's an absolutely bastard to get off of anything, so simply don't do it.

Make sure you wear medical gloves, or you'll lose feeling in your fingers and the skin will start to come off. Once you're done, dump them in a pot of soapy water and jobs done.

Ive tried a few different methods. Dettol: i was left with a undesirable sludge. Maybe I did something wrong, but no water was introduced
Methylated Spirit. Worked okay. Still a reasonable amount of paint left over in the cracks and crevices. Picked them out with a toothbrush and toothpick as best i could (about 95% removal i would say.)
Fairy Power Spray. Similar result to Methylated Spirit.
Acetone free nail varnish remover. The acetone free part is important This worked the best in terms of stripping paint. It just falls of, even those difficult to reach places. But it does have a downside. Only leave the model in solution for 10m or less, after that detail definitely begins to soften imho. Maybe even before that, but the jury is out. If you do intend to give it a go, try it on a junk model first. Ohh and wear gloves For metal models I would choose this first all day, every day.
There are other methods, brake fluid etc. but i cant comment on them as i haven't tried. Good Luck.

For 100% metal models, you cant beat acetone if you dont mind losing the base

Plastics and resins, most cleaner/degrease-er seem to work well.
Purple power in the US is my go to.
+95% isoproponal alcohol works well to.

Also the old 3dot brake fluid but i personally wouldn't want to go through the trouble of disposing it.

Thanks for the tips guys.
I'd tried dettol and rinsed it off with water which led to the horrible sludge. Rinsing in clean dettol makes perfect sense - I'll give that a go first.
I've never seen methylated spirit since I was about 10 and got a chemisrty set. Where do they sell that? And does simple surgical spirit do the same thing?
And will clean neat dettol get rid of the aforementioned sludge?

I find Dettol as you say but then rubbing them in kitchen towel, seems to take the most of it off. I find if I use water the paint turns into a chewy gum mess.

 screaminskull wrote:

I've never seen methylated spirit since I was about 10 and got a chemistry set. Where do they sell that? And does simple surgical spirit do the same thing?

You get it at home depot and the like. Its main intended use is to fuel camping stoves i believe. Ive never used surgical spirit. But it is not the same thing as methylated spirit. its more like the denatured alcohol, that someone above recommended, but not quite the same as I understand it. Again, having not used it, I couldn't comment on its effectiveness.

All you'll ever need is

http://www.diy.com/departments/bq-paint-varnish-remover-1l/262313_BQ.prd

I found Fairy Power Spray to be preferable to Dettol, and worth the extra cost. I'm using a batch of it for the 4th time now and it's still effective. It doesn't liquidify the paint so much as cause it to come off in a solid state, so it's less messy than Dettol. Also have used successfully on Finecast with no adverse effects.

Fairy Powder spray doesn't have the same effect anymore unfortunately, they recently changed the recipe and it simply doesn't strip paint like it used to. leaving it submerged for a few weeks will only remove slight bit of exposed parts. Shame really, because Fairy Power spray was significantly better than Dettol.