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Hi There,

So I just started painting my descent minis - First batch went well and then I seriously overprimed batch 2 leaving me with a half dozen featureless blobs. Checked the internet, bought some Dettol, soaked for 48 hours, got a bowl of soapy water, and started scrubbing.

Well - firstly jesus does it make a mess! The primer I used was black and though a reasonable portion of it came up, it turned into a Venom-like black grease which coated EVERYTHING. I couldn't even get it off the toothbrush so that I was cleaning the black DettolPrimerGrease mixture back onto the mini. Only wiping it with my hands was making any progress. I asked my wife to check another help forum (I couldn't touch anything with my paint contagious hands) and the suggested putting a blob of fairy liquid on when cleaning. Did that and it made some pretty swirls, and some of the Primer in larger areas sloughed off a bit initially - but that was about 1% coverage and it didn't help with the scrubbing or wiping.

Anyway, after making most of my house resemble a coal-miners locker-room, I got the models clean enough I'm happy to reprime more carefully and get painting. But now I can't get the new DettolPrimerGrease coating off the damn thing!!!! By now it was 10pm and I needed to eat dinner (had to use a scourer to get my hands clean) - so frustrated I dumped them in a jar of water, closed it, and sulked off to bed.

1) What did I do wrong? The internet said nothing about an ever expand black liquid that, left unchecked, will engulf everything I know and love......So I expect I've screwed up somewhere down the line.
2) How do I now get the thing clean and wiped down so i can respray? I just want to prime it again and forget the whole sorry affair (from now on I'll be throwing models in the bin and buying replacements.

Please Help me DakkaDakka, you're my only hope......

What I found was that water made the process much messier.
Rinsing the brush in Dettol and only Dettol seemed to work best. Keep water out of the way altogether.

Or, I was doing it all wrong, too.

i added water once and never again. wash in neat dettol only. clean the brush in it and continue to lightly scrub.


personally i moved to isopropyl alcohol - same method but quicker, better and easier results.


tip with either - wear rubber gloves and use the dettol/iso to clean up the mess

Yep - avoid getting water on the dettol-loosened paint. Turns it into rubbery gak.

Let it dry out, then dump em back in the neat dettol.

Like Possum said, wear gloves! Seriously, I used to use MEK for stripping and that's actually easier on your skin than dettol for some reason. A pair of bright yellow marigolds is my best friend right now. I guess what you save in solvent toxicity you make up with skin drying evilness.

A-ha!

H2O, titled the great dissolver, turns out to be an undissolving villain in this situation!

So leave models to dry, back in the Dettol, soak, wear gloves, scrub with brush, wash with Dettol....

Rinse, repeat (I'm here all week, try the fish!)

.....gotcha!

Thanks Internetterz!!!!

Yup.

Add water to dettol if you are cleaning and disinfecting a cut, scratch or graze on flesh. Because neat (undiluted, fresh from the bottle) dettol can take skin off or give you a nice chemical "burn" (it will strip oils off your skin really really well, dry it out and cause it to crack).

Use it neat when using it to strip paint.
USE GLOVES FOR THIS.
Soak, Dip the brush in the liquid when scrubbing, then put it back in the liquid until done.

Learn to like the smell - because it will linger for months and smell like a koala's crap-hole (the pine oil in dettol).

If it's only acrylic paint, just use isopropyl alcohol or methylated spirits (ethanol mixed with methanol) as they will do a better job.