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I recently bought some space marine models they are in need of repair/TLC they are painted in ultra marine colors (not very good painting but they tried) so I was planning on stripping the models of paint in order to repair them and repaint them in my own colors. Some of the models are plastic and some are metal, one is a dreadnought and one is a storm talon. I was wondering some techniques to strip them so I could do this.


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If possible the simpler the better

See here: http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/609639.page#7125782

Simple Green

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I have some extra purple power? Would that work if I did half and half with water

 JBSchroeds wrote:

 urbanevil wrote:
Simple Green

I second this. Let them soak for 24 hours and take a toothbrush to them. Most of the paint should come off with minimal brushing, but you might need to give them another soak and brushing for the deeper corners. But even if it does need two rounds you don't have to worry about it eating through the plastic.

I third this. Simple Green = Mean Green too.
This stuff works like a charm after a 24h bath

To the "pile" of suggestions about simple green, dettol and so on , I'd like to add:
Pink alcohol (denaturated)
Glassex (windex?) with ammonia and "speed alcohol"

Both should do the trick in a few hours, if not in a matter of minutes.

Isopropanol (for disinfection) at your chemist does the trick wonderfully.

Staying in line with the original question of stripping models...

Does Simple Green affect the glue of the model? I have a lot of converted models with plasticard, rivets, etc... and I've been hesitant to strip them for fear of all that stuff simply falling off.

 Alienoid wrote:
I have some extra purple power? Would that work if I did half and half with water

use purple power straight, it is a vastly superior product to simple green.

I had a jug of purple power I thought was new but had already been used and I tossed some ebay minis in it and I had bare plastic models in less than 30 min.


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 Tonzateef wrote:
Staying in line with the original question of stripping models...

Does Simple Green affect the glue of the model? I have a lot of converted models with plasticard, rivets, etc... and I've been hesitant to strip them for fear of all that stuff simply falling off.

plastic glue should be fine but CA glue and super glue will become weak and fall apart. this is great for metal models or poorly assembled models but it really clogs up my ultrasonic cleaner when custom bases get cleaned.

I'm going to piggy-back on this thread instead of making a new one.

Here is the products I've tested for stripping paint:

Simple Green: Works fine for some paints but takes a long soak and a bit of elbow grease. Won't make a dent in polyurethane and take a week+ worth of soaking to make a dent in Testors/Kryon/Army Painter primers (to the point I gave up and tried something else).

LA Totally Awesome: This stuff rocks. Takes off any paint and Army Painter brand Primer with ease in minutes. Will NOT work on "Armory" Painter White Primer (different than Army Painter). Not tested against polyurethane. And it's CHEAP. $2.00 for a 24oz spray bottle.

SuperClean: Same performance as the LA Totally Awesome, same limitation on Armory Painter Primer, and have not tested against polyurethane.

Dot 3 Break Fluid: Only tried it in a vain attempt to remove Armory Painter White Primer. Didn't do squad. It's toxic and you have to dispose of it correctly. I'd steer clear.

Dawn Power Dissolver: Far and away the best product I've every found. Period. It will take off EVERYTHING. Paint: Check. Primer: All of them. Poly and Quickshades: Yep.

Here is the rub. It looks like the Power Dissolver has been discontinued sometime within the last 6 months. The only supply I can find is on ebay for $20 for an 8oz bottle. I can also find janitorial supply quantities for $55-$70 for a case of six, 32 oz jugs. But these wont last. I was at the end of my rope, trying to find a bottle of this stuff to get off that Armory White Primer....also known as spawn of chaos. A friend in my playgroup bought 3 bottles back when I discovered the stuff and he still had some left. He graciously allowed me to use some...it's a godsend!

If anyone has an alternative to the Power Dissolver, please IM me!

Isopropyl alcohol.

Cheap, strips paint easily, doesn't smell (for long) and will be produced FOREVER in one form or another (as it isn't a brand name thing, like future/dawn/simplegreen (recipes))

E: also, I would disagree with dot3 not working, it works amazingly - but yeah, dying isn't great.

I use Super Clean and Purple Power in my ultrasonic cleaner and have yet to find anything they wont strip. some primers are a bit tougher to remove but changing the liquid and letting it soak a bit longer still produces good results.

the worst I get is stained plastic from the primers, which really is not bad at all.

Super Clean / Purple Power will also strip car primer and is safe to use on plastic, metal, resin and finecast.

I did find that finecast gets to be a bit rubbery when stripped but that was more to due with the fact that the ultrasonic cleaning process heats the liquid.

this actually made it easier to clean as there wasn't really a chance of things breaking and it made it very easy to straighten bent parts.

So just fill up a jar with rubbing alcohol and let it soak for 24 hours?

Brake fluid (for cars) also works,just let it soak for a couple of hours and use a toothbrush to take the paint off

I envy you american people for your simple green. It seems to be a cheap, clean and stink-free option for stripping.

I have done a lot of stripping recently. The best solution I found was Brennspiritus (denatured alcohol). Its 2 Euros for 1,5l. The problem is the terrible smell that is also problay toxic. You can not do this inside! On the plus side, it's really cheap and highly effective. Miniatures don't even need to soak for hours, the paint comes off pretty much right away. Just submerge them and start scrubbing.

A couple of things I learned:

Depending on your army, your gloves (you absolutely need plastic gloves) will get punctured a lot. I was stripping DE and Nids, so lots of spiky things! If you use alcohol based stuff, get a box of surgical gloves too.

Citadel black vs white primer. Black primer is your friend while stripping, while white is a nightmare. You need much much more scrubbing before it comes off cleanly but I never got the same result as with black primer.

Old plastic vs new plastic. There are two types of plastic around. The older kind is a little bit brighter. My army box of nids was entirely composed of the later. Extensive soaking over many hours will superficially attack the material, despite what you read at most places. It could also be the combination of white primer and long soaking, but I saw a slight degeneration of the surface details while soaking old plastic / white primed minis. I let new plastic (DE e.g.) with black primer soak for days and they were still like new (I didn't know back then that soaking isn't really necessary).

"So just fill up a jar with rubbing alcohol and let it soak for 24 hours?"


Basically yeah but about 3 or 4 hours is good most of the time. Also the higher the percentage alcohol the better, 91% is easy to find at a pharmacy. If you can find 99% or 100% even better.

I've also tried alot of the recommended and i agree with them all. LAs Totally awesome is an excellent product and easy to aqquire and cheap. its in most dollar stores.Great Stuff.

LA's wont strip the primer off though.

Superclean definitely will take off the primer though.

 Deathklaat wrote:
I use Super Clean and Purple Power in my ultrasonic cleaner and have yet to find anything they wont strip. some primers are a bit tougher to remove but changing the liquid and letting it soak a bit longer still produces good results.

the worst I get is stained plastic from the primers, which really is not bad at all.

Super Clean / Purple Power will also strip car primer and is safe to use on plastic, metal, resin and finecast.

Superclean and Purple power are great products, and as far as I can tell work nearly identically with the same active ingredient. I use Purple Power now because for some reason it's cheaper than Superclean. You can get Purple at Walmart and any car parts store. Purple power is a degreaser so strong that auto shops use it to clean out engine blocks.

Purple power is notably cheaper than Simple Green and works much faster. It has the 2-butoxethanol ingredient that Green dropped from the formula last year because it wasn't as easy on bare hands. I have stripped literally hundreds of minis with Purple power and it works amazing. Use at full strength and use rubber gloves and you'll be fine.

bearseamen wrote:
I envy you american people for your simple green. It seems to be a cheap, clean and stink-free option for stripping.

I have done a lot of stripping recently. The best solution I found was Brennspiritus (denatured alcohol). Its 2 Euros for 1,5l. The problem is the terrible smell that is also problay toxic. You can not do this inside! On the plus side, it's really cheap and highly effective. Miniatures don't even need to soak for hours, the paint comes off pretty much right away. Just submerge them and start scrubbing.

Me too. But Spiritus sucks compared to other stripping agents. I bit the bullet and got me a bottle of Simple Green... it takes longer, but removes it way faster. Spiritus desolves the paint somewhat, but turns it into a gummy consistency. Removing the paint from recesses is a giant pain... And if you want to ultrasonic it, it only works half as well as SG, plus I do NOT advice to take Spiritus to Finecast. Destroyed my Belial after some scrubbing.
My next attempt is Isopropanol if I can find it somewhere cheaply (otherwise I might just place another bulk order of Simple Green)

Guys, forgive my ignorance, but is "resin" the same material as "finecast", in realtion to stripping paint? I'm considering buying a 2nd hand "resin" model (Wolf Lord on Thunderwolf). GW denote "resin kit" some of their kits as opposed to "finecast" on others. This insinuates that there is some difference, but I suspect they're the same thing, as finecast is indeed a brand of resin, correct?

The reason I ask is becasue I've been warned that traditional paint stripping solutions that work on plastic are disastrous when applied to finecast.

Also in realtion to that, can anyone confirm or deny that any of the solutions listed here (Dettol and fair power sray are the ones I'm considering) damage finecast and/or resin?

I've used Purple power and simple green on finecast and other resin and they work great.

Can confirm that Fairy Power Spray works well stripping finecast (see results below). Minor amounts of paint remaining in recesses, but its very thin. No damage to material even after 3 day immersion in the fluid. Results on plastic minis were not qite as good as with Finecast. I'd say it's about as effective as Dettol on plastics. (Though unlike Dettol it doesn't smell nauseating, and there's much less "splatter" when cleaning it off too.

bearseamen wrote:


Old plastic vs new plastic. There are two types of plastic around. The older kind is a little bit brighter. My army box of nids was entirely composed of the later. Extensive soaking over many hours will superficially attack the material, despite what you read at most places. It could also be the combination of white primer and long soaking, but I saw a slight degeneration of the surface details while soaking old plastic / white primed minis. I let new plastic (DE e.g.) with black primer soak for days and they were still like new (I didn't know back then that soaking isn't really necessary).

What were you soaking plastic in? I've left plastic soaking in isopropyl alcohol (99%) for weeks, having forgotten them, without damaging the model. I agree with your assessment of white primer. I had some old white-primed, unpainted skaven that I wanted to reprime before painting, and some of the primer won't come off neatly (keeping in mind, they've been primed for 20+ years...)

 Sal4m4nd3r wrote:
LA's wont strip the primer off though.

Yes it will. My tutorial in the tuts section did just that.

Keep in mind folks that there are different kinds of primer. LA and Purple power will get off most primers, especially the gamer-brand sprays that tend to be acrylic.

Most oil based sprays will come mostly or entirely off with LA and Purple Power but there are some oil based primers that absolutely bond to the plastic and you will not get them entirely off unless you use chemicals so harsh they will melt plastic. Luckily most times you can get enough off that all your left with is a tint to the miniature, but with enough paint off that the details won't be obscured when you apply the new primer and paint.

Note that this is not unique to plastic figures and LA or Purple. Heck, I've had some metal minis with sections of old enamel so hard that MEK won't shift it! In that case you just get out the picks and scrape away what you can and then paint it.

Guys, what's your overall opinion on buying and paint stripping old models? I've refurbished 3 second had tanks and 9 or 10 marines. I did it to save money, but the time I spent...just wasn't worth the €60-70 I saved. I spent maybe 25 hours fixing that lot up, paint stripping, prising apart badly joined pieces,scraping off poly cement and superglue, and rebuilding).That was all my free time for weeks. The results on the vehicles was satisfactory, the marines less so. The Dettol and Fairy Power Spray I used worked very well on metals, Power Spray good enough vs resin, but stripping plastics was painfully slow, took endless scrubbing to get a decent result and even then some paint remained in the recesses.

Just curious as to other people's experiences refurbishing. I'd only buy painted models again if they were OOP or if I was getting them for say 25% of their value new. Just not worth it for any higher, imo.

I actually enjoy stripping and cleaning up old models. I've stripped hundreds (maybe over a thousand at this point?) of models over the last few years. I've even got pretty good at stripping plastic. I don't mind the repair work and I've even saved some seriously messed up vehicle models. It's almost like restoring furniture.

You really have to have some good chemicals and a good system though. I've kind of got it down to a science. A 2.5 quart tub of dirty Purple Power on hand for the initial soak or two. Then a scrub, followed by a soak in a smaller container with cleaner Purple Power. The trick is to let things soak for a long time, then quickly scrub off what comes off easily, then back in for another soak.

I also mostly strip metal figs, so if anything resists purple power a bath in MEK will make short work of it. I'm pretty patient, waiting for the best deal, so being willing to strip models has saved me some serious cash over the years.

 Eilif wrote:
Keep in mind folks that there are different kinds of primer. LA and Purple power will get off most primers, especially the gamer-brand sprays that tend to be acrylic.

Most oil based sprays will come mostly or entirely off with LA and Purple Power but there are some oil based primers that absolutely bond to the plastic and you will not get them entirely off unless you use chemicals so harsh they will melt plastic. Luckily most times you can get enough off that all your left with is a tint to the miniature, but with enough paint off that the details won't be obscured when you apply the new primer and paint.

Note that this is not unique to plastic figures and LA or Purple. Heck, I've had some metal minis with sections of old enamel so hard that MEK won't shift it! In that case you just get out the picks and scrape away what you can and then paint it.

I'd like to think that people know that the krylon paints that literally bond to plastic can't be stripped and not blame a stripping agent as shoddy for not working....... but you never know