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I am currently on Day 3 of soaking a handful of Meganobz I bought off a bloke for dirt cheap, in simple green. These are the newer ones mind you. Because of the amount of paint already on them the details of the model were completely lost, so I decided rather than just painting over them I would bring them back down to grey and start from scratch. After 24 hours I broke out the brush and got to work...and removed not 1 but 2 THICK layers of paint, a very heavily applied Flashgit Yellow followed by a very heavy Mephiston Red. At this point I was so confused that I broke out a file and scratched until I hit grey....there are at least 4 more layers of different colored paints ranging from black and green to the red and yellow id already encountered, there also appears to be a blue in there possibly. Day 2 I got at least 1 more layer off and decided to let it soak another full 24 hours before trying again.

What is the most paint you guys have had to strip off a badly painted model?

the new 'simple green' changed their formula and is really diluted; I recommend something like 'purple power'(safe for all) for the initial strip with electric toothbrush,

then when dry soak in 'isopropyl alcohol 90+'(resin must be quick 30 minutes or it will get brittle) for another scrub;

if metal, I soak a 3rd time in 'turpenoid natural' and scrub. not safe for any plastic/resin items, so no ziploc.

protip: put your squads in a ziploc and poke holes or you will lose small pieces. soak in containers with lid, like a used 1/2 gallon ice cream, for isopropyl you need a lid as it dries. wear expendable latex gloves. dump the debris in the yard, not down the drain.

Had a lot of old minis from e-bay. Things were heavily coated in white paint That thick you could hardly make out who or what they once were.

Took about a month of scrubbing to clear some of the paint. Have not got a clue what paint they had used. Seemed almost resistant to anything I could chuck them into.

Even when I did free most of the minis still had to go in with a needle and scalpel to remove a lot of it stuck determinedly in recesses.

Once clean enough to identify(not paint) many were broken anyway. The worse had lead rot. Out of the 10 or so minis I managed to save only a couple.

Have a feeling they may of been somebody's garbage and they had recently been gunked up to try to hide faults.

My first big mistake since entering back into the hobby recently.

I have some 2nd Ed death company, they were purchased of ebay and they looked good in the pictures.
When I received them and opened the ziplock I was blown away with the smell of enamel, what ever the basecoat was (white) had caused the enamel to to not fully set and you could press your nail into the paint to leave a mark.

Left in a bath of Methylated spirit/ Denatured alcohol, the black enamel sort of floated off to the surface like plastidip, leaving a thick white bases that needed scrubbing for ages.

A half dozen mono-pose plastic Dwarfs I cannot even remember how I obtained are the worst stripping I've had to do. They were so caked with paint there must have been at least ten layers of it. You couldn't make out their features or the details on any of the parts. Took multiple months of soaks + scrubs with a brass brush to get them back down to bare plastic, and even more work to fix the horrendous sloppy glue job that was underneath.

I'm guessing their previous owner was <8 years old just based on how much glue they thought was necessary to apply!

Its a bit like some Tyranids I was given a couple of weeks back.

They were heavily painted in some shiny metallic purple gunk by the child of the person who donated them. The paint turned into a rather clingy thick snot like substance. The type of gunk you try to pick off but it springs back onto the model happily. I am pretty sure there was something in the types of chemicals I used to try to clean them brought it to life.

For a while it was sort of amusing playing with this stuff, but after a while this stuff with a life of its own won and in the bin they went.

Perhaps I should of bottled it for a game of Dungeons and Dragons. I am rather short of Oozes at the moment.

Strangely enough, it had nothing to do with layers of paints, but one color of paint. I had my son (8, 9 at the time), interested in painting models. To get him used to painting, I gave him some old metals - one of the old metal character khorne dogs, dark elf blood bowl, some metal romans I had. And he proceeded to paint them all gold. I think it was Vallejo Gold (can't remember the exact version of gold).

Now, this was gold paint on metal. No primer, nothing. He painted them, they went into a drawer for a couple of years, banging around. I pulled them out to strip - first "LA's Totally Awesome", my go to. Nada. Then "Pine Sol" straight. Zip. Then "Simple Green". The paint laughed. Then some type of "environmentally friendly" turpentine. It smirked, but budged a little.

Keep in mind, after each application sitting for over 24 hours, I scrubbed with a toothbrush.

Then I put some old Polly S paint stripper for decals and plastics on a brush and that started to move it. Finally, after too much time, and too much scrubbing, its finally clean. One down, a dozen more to go...

I think they continually are diluting the strength of all of these cleaners and degreasers. They don't work as well as they used to, even the purple power I've picked up recently.