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I managed to get my hands on some older metal minis recently and I soaked them in some of LA's Totally Awesome for about 2 days. When I got home earlier, the liquid the models were soaking in looked murky and the models seemed to be much duller than before. There doesn't seem to be any damage or loss of detail, they just look like they lost their luster?

I scrubbed them with warm water and soap, no change. I let them soak in some acetone and scrubbed them after, but still no change (just glued parts are no longer glued).

Here's a comparison between a newer one and one of the models I soaked.


Does anyone know why this happened exactly? Is there anyway to fix this? Will it effect priming and painting later on and should I be concerned? I've asked around and looked up a couple of things, the most I was able to glean is that some kind of chemical reaction happened?

I have seen that happen before. I think its just a reaction to something in the water and some oxidization. I dont thnk that it will effect being able to prime/paint it.

I dont think it will help with the color - but a quick rinse in some rubbing alcohol will get the surface ready for priming.

I also guess that you either oxidized the surface somewhat or have had a slight chemical reaction like it can happen with citric or acetic acid, which are often found in household cleaning products. It should not affect the properties of the metal in any way that is relevant for painting.

If you absolutely wanted to remove the dullness, you could try a bath of diluted hydrochloric acid which can be found in e.g. Home Depot as a cleaning agent, but i'd advise against it because it can literally eat away the metal if you get the concentration wrong and is also dangerous to handle. It's just a lot of effort for something that does not really matter.

The other option would be to polish the model - usually these oxizidized/reacted layers are not very thick, so polishing with a fine grain, or even sandblasting it if you have the equipment, would restore the surface.

This happens to me all the time, especially with older models that have a tinge of lead in the alloy. When I prime them & repaint, you can't even tell.

I used to use a cleaner called Simple Green to strip minis ( I used to, but I still do too ), and if I left the minis in a jar of it for too long they'd end up looking like that. I could never find a way to get them back to bright shiny metal, but they painted up fine.