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Hey folks!

I'm coalescing the idea of angry marines (red on yellow, lots of graffiti and ridiculous poses and stuff) into an army. I'm looking at some models for sale, where the marines are mostly primed yellow of some sort.

https://imgur.com/a/3Rccrly

The space marine models start 1/3 of the way down the album. My thoughts went in this order.

1. Yellow isn't bad, I can work with that.
2. Wait, some of those are different yellows.
3. The bases are primed, I'd have to break those off to reprime them and base them!
4. That primer looks thick on the scouts.
5. I need dreadnoughts. But I need Mortis dreadnoughts, so I'd have to break those arms off and strip the models.

For those of you with experience in dealing with second-hand models:

1. What is your approach?
2. How do you decide if the time and cost effort of priming over, or stripping is worth the price difference between the cost of the used models and having purchased new?
3. Do you have any general guidelines you use about what you will or won't buy used and why?

If I can buy models for 75% MSRP, and someone is selling already primed and assembled models for 50% MSRP, but for which I will need to do work on... ...stripping, changing wargear and weapons (which I would in turn need to buy separately), I could use some advice on how to logically approach this and figure out if the time and effort investment is worth not buying them new.

If its cheap enough go for it. If it needs stripping immerse in Dettol and scrub with a tooth brush until the paint comes off, profit?

Numbers game is slightly screwy by where I live but at 50% off RRP any moderate clean up, stripping and rearming is worth the price. Time may equal money but no one is paying me for my hobby, so if it takes a few extra hours then its worth the cost (and if its taking longer to swap out weapons then something is seriously wrong).

Il restrip anything that's not resin. It's easy enough and worth it if you want good results.

It's easy to strip acrylic paint - dettol bath and a stiff brush.

All my xenos armies have been built from models I have stripped (and my Sisters of Battle as well for that matter). Check out any of my painting logs and you can see the results.

As to the value, if you want to repose the models and they are plastic and glued with polystyrene then it is a lot of effort. If they are mostly mono-posed and you are happy stripping old models of paint is far more cost effectively and frankly I just look at it as part of the modelling aspect.

Hope that helps,

CB

The difficulty of stripping the models depends on what type of paint was used, and what material the mini is made of.

Metal minis are easy to strip. There's several heavy duty paint strippers that will even take enamel off metal with minimal effort. The problem is, plastic (and to a lesser extent resin) just dissolves in those heavy duty paint strippers...

Plastics require a bit more care. There's no practical way to strip enamel paint off plastic, as anything that can weaken the enamel will destroy the plastic. Stripping acrylic paint... well, that's been covered in dozens of threads already. Dettol, denatured alcohol, brake fluid, Simply Green, and even pine cleaner can all do the job with varying degrees of effectiveness and effort.

One reason I prime with gesso is because it peels right off when you soak it in dettol.

As someone who has quite a bit of experience with both dettol and isopropyl alcohol (also known as IPA, isopronpanol) - I can confirm dettol works MUCH better, however it does require the model to be submurged for some period of time (ideally 24 hours +) so it is slower, it also stinks (but I personally like the smell!).

Iso works faster but requires MUCH more scrubbing, it is however slightly cheaper, particularly if purchased in bulk.

However I am not sure what the availability of dettol is in the US.

Get a cheap ultrasonic cleaner off of amazon. THis works wonders, reduces scrubbing immensly. I use LA totally awesome from dollar tree, its $1, and ultrasonic cleaner. Many times I pull the model out and ALL the paint is off, i basically have no scrubbing to do. Sometimes their may be a stubborn primer, but a toothbrush gentle scrub works.


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Get a cheap ultrasonic cleaner off of amazon. THis works wonders, reduces scrubbing immensly. I use LA totally awesome from dollar tree, its $1, and ultrasonic cleaner. Many times I pull the model out and ALL the paint is off, i basically have no scrubbing to do. Sometimes their may be a stubborn primer, but a toothbrush gentle scrub works.

I buy a ton of stuff used, and while it does take some work, I find that I enjoy it. At the end of the day, anything you can't strip you will probably be able to paint over with minimal loss of detail anyway.

The one thing I note is that a lot of modern plastic models have weak connections, and they can break easily without being able to be repaired easily.

Really depends on what they are painted WITH when it comes to how hard are they to strip.

Dot3 brake fluid (NOT "brake cleaner") will take off enamels and not harm plastic
Acetone will take off pretty much any paint and leave metals clean.

At the other end of the scale, isopropyl alcohol will strip acrylic paints (and leave none of the stink of dettol) from plastics or metals - and dettol is 90% isopropanol anyway.

Dettol is rank, it just makes a sticky goo if left too long.

Just use pure or denatured alcohol

That and you can strip 10 minis in less than 1hr with a toothbrush

I don’t see why you’d want to wait more than 2 hours to strip minis that’s just crazy

Just remember to wear gloves and use in well ventilated areas

91-99% Isopropal alcohol.

works 90% of the time and is pretty quick and cheap. and is apparently the active ingredient in dettrol which i dont think you can get in the usa.

i dont know how well it will deal with primer. but ether the point is to get as much off then to reprime over.

To answer your other questions

My last acquisition was a 2nd edition death company,
The pics I had of them were half primed half painted, but the colour was vivid and thick so I had two guesses as to what to expect.
When they turned up and I opened the zip lock bag, the stink of old enamel paint puffed up.
I had white primed minis, painted with a mixture different paints so pulled of the arms, backpacks and split the bases in two and threw them into denatured alcohol.

Speaking of old. if your model is metal you could break off any plastic on it then throw the metal into acetone and call it easy even for primer.

acetone will melt plastic though.

I second many of the comments above. I got a cheap ultrasonic cleaner from eBay for about £10. I then add Methylated Spirit from Wilco (in the uk, about £3).

The trick with this method is to run the ultrasonic many, many times. On the 8th cycle, almost all the paint has dissolved and I only need to use very minimal brushing. Beware however, in my experience, Corax White undercoat is very resistant, however so long as you get the model to the point where it look "chalky", it's so thin you can spray over and never notice.

Please note that this method also dissolves superglue which is very handy if you get any old metal models.