"Stripping" Topic

No I don't need a shiny pole, dim lights, and loud music, get your mind outa the gutter. I am referring to stripping "PAINT". I need to repaint some 15mm artillery and carriages. They have been painted, and repainted and the details are getting lost, would it help to strip them before repainting, if so, with what and how?

Ive used simple green with good success.

Simple Green did nothing for me. LAs Totally Awesome from the dollar store did wondes, though.

Try Pine-Sol.

Try isopropyl alcohol.

No matter what you use, be sure to wear gloves when you scrub the paint off the figures. If you don't, you'll be paying for it for days.

Jim

I use Pine-Sol and let them sit in a closed container for a week or two. Probably overkill, but the paint falls right off, leaving only the occasional crevice that needs to be scrubbed.

And I'll second the use of gloves, having made that mistake once.

A mayonnaise jar and brake fluid. Most of the other solvents are not as expensive. So try them first.

Citristrip – works great.

I've gotten better results with Pinesol than Simple Green.

Definitely wear gloves.

Switched from Simple Green to Pinesol when Green was hard to find. Glad I did.

My guide for stripping miniatures with Dettol hope it helps.

As always, comments are appreciated.

Take care

Andy

I'm trying a mix of simple green and lemon juice, somewhere on the web someone had it. About 3/4 green, 1/4 juice. So far things look to be coming off.

Pine-Sol it is then!

BTW, I've had my own lovely experience with solvents and bare skin, touluene. Not only painful, but I really should have known better, I did after all have two semesters of Industrial Hygiene. After that I just left my fingertips blue until it wore off.

Everything depends on what the figure was primed with, and what it was painted with.

With some figures I painted back in the 70s and 80s, no matter what I used, all it did was leach the pigment out of the paint.
Those were probably enamels.

And I second wearing gloves.
The mentioned solvents "de-fat skin cells". It's very itchy. Trust me.

Citristrip and/or Simple Green

In my experience Simple Green does absolutely nothing except make the minis. smell nicer. I soaked both plastic and metal primed minis. in it and after a couple days the primer hadn't even started to budge. It's not strong enough.

Same thing with Pine-Sol. I think you'll be wasting your time with Pine-sol. Well, a better way to put it is that Pine-Sol may EVENTUALLY dissolve paint and primer but it's going to take far, far longer than if you used a proper degreaser.

If you've got a solid primer or coat of paint on the model that's been on them for some time you need a real degreaser.

In the U.S. there's a product called "Super Clean". You can find it in Walmart and other places, it's usually in the automotive dept. and comes in a purple container. It's normally used as a degreaser for auto parts.

I think Super Clean is essentially the same product as that LA stuff people are talking about.

Just to give you an example, I used Super Clean on some plastics that got a bad spray primer job, in particular one very large plastic monster model. Stuff was encrusted on the models rock solid. I put them in Super Clean and literally within a few hours the spray primer was coming off the mini. by itself and I had large areas already back to gray plastic. The bad primer had been totally neutralized. I was able to take the minis. and basically just wash them off under warm water, they required only very minor scrubbing.

In my experience trying to use the milder, more environment-friendly stuff is an exercise in futility. You need something with more bite. Now with Super Clean and LA you will need to wear gloves because the stuff is a horrible skin irritant. It will dry your hands out to the bone.

But it works!

But do they smell "lemony fresh" when I'm done? (smile)

I've recently had success with Mr Muscle oven cleaner. I put the figures in a ziploc bag, doused them with oven cleaner foam and let them sit for a day or two. I then rinsed them thoroughly and scrubbed them with a toothbrush.