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As the title says really, is it possible to paint strip only part of a model? Long story short, bought an army of Stormcast Eternals on Ebay and was wanting to change them form the gold and blue traditional look, to the Knight Excelsior ivory with gold and blue trim. Most of the models are pretty well painted, with the shoulders, shields, weapons and mounts all done to a perfectly good standard that would match fine with KE, the only thing that really needs changing is the basic armour. I guess I could paint over it, but it would mean brush on undercoating in white over the already 2 or 3 layers of gold and I'm worried I might lose a bit of detail. (also they've been nicely based, so I'd have to pull them all off their bases before stripping them, which would be another layer of hassle if I went down the stripping route)

So is there a way to sort of brush on a paint stripper? In my head, rubbing the armour with something like cotton ear buds with isopropyl alcohol or Methalyted spirits might soften the paint a bit so I could scrub it off a bit with a small brush? Or am I just kidding myself and realistically need to either strip the whole thing or try and paint over the armour?

You can certainly try doing what you suggest. My experience with paint stripping though (bearing in mind that Dettol is the only paint stripper I've ever used) is that it needs to soak on the model for at least a few hours to be effective. So I'm not sure how you would do that when targeting only certain parts of the model.

El Torro wrote:
You can certainly try doing what you suggest. My experience with paint stripping though (bearing in mind that Dettol is the only paint stripper I've ever used) is that it needs to soak on the model for at least a few hours to be effective. So I'm not sure how you would do that when targeting only certain parts of the model.

Yeah I usually soak things in Meths for a few hours then scrub them and paint comes off very easily, but I have seen people say that just getting the alcohol or meths on it for a short time (10 or 20 minutes) can shift it with a bit of elbow grease. But as you say, not really sure rubbing it on would even be anywhere near as effective as 10 minutes of soaking.

I figured I'd try with some of the less important figures, but was wondering if anyone else had done it before or had some success another way. Realistically even taking a layer or two of paint off would be a plus, as I assume it's two layers and a wash over a spray prime, so adding probably two thin layers of white undercoat on top of that, then two layers and a wash on top, it starts to sound like a lot of paint!

I've done some spot removal with Isopropyl alcohol and cotton buds when I had some bad pooling with contrast. It generally leaves a rough, uneven surface, and tends to bleed onto nearby paints if you have too much on there. When you have too little, you'll remove barely anything.

You can see if it works for you, but I think the effort would be more than repainting details.

Yeah after a bit of trial and error, it's not exactly a success. Maybe if I was super bothered I could rub it with a tiny brush covered with stripper, but yeah I don't think it's worth it.

My laziness levels are considering just selling the well painted models and buying alternate ones as it does seem a shame to strip well painted minis.