"Warcraft Miniatures - Succubus Repainted. Ooo... *thwack*!" Topic

This little lady caught my eye the other day when I was going around the internet as usual. Decided that I would really want to see what I could salvage from the cruddy pre-paint job. I was surprised actually, that if you overlook the gooped-on paint and the bendy plastic, that the sculpting is actually quite good! Anyway, I repainted this lady in my usual mix of Vallejo acrylics and GW Foundation paints.

picture

And a before & after shot:

picture

Comments and criticisms?

Nice work I've picked up some clix and they seem to rapaint into nice figs.

How did you strip the goopy paint off?

Plastic weld aka Dichloromethane aka Methylene Chloride

Paint comes off very well, but the plastic weld is very expensive stuff to use as stripper since it is highly volatile and evaporates rapidly. I used it sparingly to scrub the paint off her face, hands and detail areas only. I undercoated over the rest.

Hope this helps!

Wow, that's a remarkable improvement! Nice work!

I would also like to point out that dichloromethane is on the EPA's top ten list of solvents they'd prefer industry replace with something else. That cool tingly sensation you get when it stays on your skin for a bit is nerve damage (not the same as say acetone evaporating). It will chew threw most kinds of lab gloves in short order except for Silver Shields.

Don't try this at home:

If you happen to have a (best to use a disposable) syringe with a clogged needle, you can partially fill the barrel with DCM, hold it by the plunger over a burner and watch the business end propel itself like a rocket at whatever you have it pointed towards.

It's always the good stuff that they try to replace, usually with cruddy sub-par stuff that costs even more. In any case, it really shouldn't cause a problem with the amounts we work at unless you decide to bathe your miniatures in it.

And for someone advocating safety, I'm surprised you would keep clogged needles around, all needles should go straight into sharps bins, not kept around for use as impromptu bioweapons…

edit. Looks like the EU is trying to ban dichloromethane. Stupid meddling EuroF**ks. I'll have to go stock up on more plastic weld.

uhh… Isn't DCM ( MeCl2) a class two health hazard?

But it does have a 'cool/icy' feel on the skin. Also dries out the skin sumtin' fierce… So wear gloves. Also eye protection! (talkin' from experience here… talk about a burning sensation…)

I used to use DCM for paint stripper on leads. NEVER GW PLASTICS!!!!! So DCM works for the Bendy plastics, huh? I have not tried that yet… So you didn't soak it overnight? Interesting…

It actually looks like a real miniature after your repaint. Outstanding work.

Tim

@richarDMB

Or just be really careful. After I got the hang of using it I can safely say that I have very little skin, eye or even inhaled exposure to it. Don't bend over your newly glued model going "Mmm… that smells gooood!"

DCM can be used to GW plastics together, I would never attempt to strip anything apart from the bendy plastics in it. It's called Plastic-Weld for a reason… :D

@blackscribe

On an unrelated note, I highly doubt that the cool feeling is due to nerve damage. Sure you can get neuropathy from prolonged or extreme exposure to it, but if it destroyed nerves so fast that you could feel it, it would be right up there with molten lava in terms of hazardousness. And top tip, dead nerves = numbness or pins and needles. Being able to feel cold is contingent on having some nerves there to feel it.

Well, yea, yer right. DCM is a better/faster plastic melter than Toluene. I meant to say don't use DCM a paint stripper soak solution.

DCM is also a great de-greaser around the garage too…

Yeah, no, it's not cold. I meant cool as in the Fonzy. It's a tingly sensation. If it's a cooling sensation it's just evaporating. If you actually trap it somewhere (like under a ring), you get a burning sensation followed by tingling. The tingling is bad. Nice attitude though.

I'm not a safety nut (hence the bit about firing syringes), but I know some folks on here are, so I figured I'd warn them.

@blackscribe

Sorry if I've offended you, but I really cannot stand the health and safety people. People were born with common sense for a reason, if you get maimed because you were stupid, then too bad, that's (un)natural selection. I agree that getting it trapped against your skin is a really bad idea, since it has much more time to subliminate into your skin. Occasional contact which quickly evaporates shouldn't be harmful unless you do it persistently. I've felt the "cooling" effects when I've had it hit skin before, but not the tingling (yet). These days I try my damndest not to touch it at all though.

I'm probably only particular about needles for occupational reasons, there's loads of junk that can get injected into you by an aberrant needle.

Anecdotal incident:
I once asked a salesperson if they could change a bulb in a demonstration display because the one on display had blown out, and I wanted to see what the bulb looked like when it was lit. That person had the gall to tell me that "sorry I can't do that, health and safety, I will need to get an engineer to do it". I was so close to asking her what she would do if a bulb in her own house blew up, but sanity prevailed and I just tossed the bulb I wanted to buy back on the shelf and walked out.

Gork!

That being the case, you'll appreciate how I came into my knowledge of that sensation: safety people.

I used to work with DCM in a corporate lab on a daily basis. We were, of course, required to wear gloves -- neoprene ones in this case. If you get DCM onto open skin, it just evaporates. If you get some on your hands with neoprene gloves on (or, even worse: latex) it will bubble the gloves up something awful and be to your skin in a matter of seconds. It will then be trapped against your skin whereupon you have problems. As I recall, the official 'breakthrough time' of DCM vs. neoprene gloves was much longer than the actual time 'til you'd notice problems, but still on the order of seconds.

I spoke to our facility safety guy about this and he's the one that told me about the expensive Silver Shields gloves. Interestingly, he actually had a degree in chemical safety or some such and he's the only person I've ever met doing his job that wasn't a complete idiot. My problems with the stuff were insignificant compared to the union folks out in the plant where they dealt with quantities of the stuff on the order of hundreds of gallons.