Best Strippah!

chrisgoodone

chrisgoodone

Member
Hi all. During my rekindled love of collecting and painting Oldhammer, I've made some cute purchases and stripped a few more than a few old lead minis.
I tried a heap of dangerous, smelly or highly flammable stuff... and now (on my mate Dan's tip-off) I've found 'the stuff' that works for me - BioStrip20 (and no I'm not on commission!).
Took a hella lot of trial n error tho.
Apols if this thread has happened previously, but what are peeps best tricks?
 
Eric

Eric

Administrator
I do all my stuff in Fuze BioStrip20 as well now (although thinking about it I'm not sure I've tried it with anything resin), seems to do a decent job. Metal might get a dunk in Acetone after that if there is "over enthusiastic" glue on it or I want to break the model down for better prep and it didn't fall apart in the BioStrip.

I just have a couple of tubs - dunk in the clean BioStrip and pop in the messy tub that periodically gets cleaned out.

There are a few threads about different strippers (ooo'er), but the search isn't always the most stunning of tools. I should stop being a stingy old git and cough up for the extended search licence and tie it all into an Elastic Search database which will probably do a much better job. Anyhoo I've tagged the ones I've found and you can find those here: https://forum.oldhammer.org/tags/paint-stripping/
 
Last edited:
ManicMan

ManicMan

Member
for metal, I have some big paint stripper from a hardware shop (which has now closed after some time, partly due to internal politics) which I have in an old and clean glass picklelily jar. Put it in there for a day or so then take it out and wash it with some water and a old toothbrush and that does pretty well. might be other methods which are a bit quicker and stuff but it works, it's cheap, and you can just pop some figures in, forget about them for a bit, then come back.

For plastic.. ohh.. keep trying.. but at the local gaming shop (I say local, it's 10 miles and not even in the same town) but got hold of some AK 'paint stripper'. you kinda paint it on to a plastic, resin/whatever figure, give it 3 mins or so, then wash of. a quick test job showed pretty impressive results on a.. weirdly christmas themed Chaos Android from SC. not the cheapest stuff as it cost me £7.25 for 100ml but... doesn't require much and pretty nice job without damaging the plastic.
 
chrisgoodone

chrisgoodone

Member
Eric said:
I do all my stuff in Fuze BioStrip20 as well now (although thinking about it I'm not sure I've tried it with anything resin), seems to do a decent job. Metal might get a dunk in Acetone after that if there is "over enthusiastic" glue on it or I want to break the model down for better prep and it didn't fall apart in the BioStrip.

I just have a couple of tubs - dunk in the clean BioStrip and pop in the messy tub that periodically gets cleaned out.

There are a few threads about different strippers (ooo'er), but the search isn't always the most stunning of tools. I should stop being a stingy old git and cough up for the extended search licence and tie it all into an Elastic Search database which will probably do a much better job. Anyhoo I've tagged the ones I've found and you can find those here: https://forum.oldhammer.org/tags/paint-stripping/
Click to expand...
Wish we'd found this place sooner
 
Eric

Eric

Administrator
The Biostrip seems safe enough on plastics from what I've done (those guard I did for the Legacy Crew were the most recent lot) and I do tend to dunk them and come back the next day so you could give that a try after you finish the AK stuff.

I mean you still need to break out the toothbrush to get the paint off - although from time to time it'll all come off in one lovely layer! I just periodically buy some smokers' hard toothbrushes and give things a scrub in a tub of water after they have had a dunk. Then spend an hour fishing around for things like las pistols that came off and now can't be distinguished from blobs of paint in the murky water. Gloves are probably your friends of course ...

The other useful tool I made for paint stripping was a bit of brass tube (probably 1/8", it was just in my modelling pile) with a sewing needle araldited in the end and with a lovely bit of heat shrink on it for grip. Very useful for getting paint out of eye sockets and the like. I should probably patent it ...
 
MichaelStockin

MichaelStockin

Member
100%.
Cheaper and I like the smell.

:grin:

I have only had 1 model where it took a lot of effort compared to normal.

I stick the painted model in an old pot, leave it 24 hours and then have a look. Quite often as noted above, the paint comes off in a sort of skin.
Sometimes it needs a bit of scrubbing.

Like I say I have only used it on metal models painted in what I assume is acrylic (maybe the tricky one was enamel?) and I would not use anything other than this.

Normal original dettol.

dettol.png


BANG AND THE PAINT IS GONE!!!
 
Eric

Eric

Administrator
chrisgoodone said:
I'd much raher deal with an antiseptic than chemicals
Click to expand...
Chemicals in them all! Dettol (well the disinfectant) is just Chloroxylenol, although I might have to defer to my brother to explain exactly how it will be working.

(Just to add if using Dettol - or for that matter anything I guess - best keep it covered as for smaller things like cats Dettol is toxic, assuming you have fluffy things wandering around putting hairs on all your models...)
 
ManicMan

ManicMan

Member
I tried a mixture of a Dettol (non-brand) and a white spirit I think... soften the paint a bit but not really much good for me. fine one some stuff I've done which doesn't have heavy coats or anything, but with random plastics, kinda a no-go
 
MichaelStockin

MichaelStockin

Member
Citizen Sade said:
Yes, Dettol works if you can handle the funk & the gunk.
Click to expand...

That is a good point, don't wash the dettol off until you have stripped it.
I take the model out after 24 hours, brush off what I can, then to remove the paint that is sort of clinging on, dip it back in the dettol and repeat.
Once you apply water to paint that has been in contact with dettol it goes gunky.
So only wash with water once you are pretty much done.
 
chrisgoodone

chrisgoodone

Member
Blimey! So it does work - that's proper Oldhammerin'. I'm gonna give it a go!
(And also ponder what I do with some other highly flammable stuff that's hanging about and didn't work)
 
KingOfTheLeadPile

KingOfTheLeadPile

Member
ManicMan said:
I tried a mixture of a Dettol (non-brand) and a white spirit I think... soften the paint a bit but not really much good for me. fine one some stuff I've done which doesn't have heavy coats or anything, but with random plastics, kinda a no-go
Click to expand...
White spirit will not attack dried paint. I use oil paints/washes thinned with white spirit over acrylic paint without any protective coat - no effect on the acrylic paint whatsoever.
 

Berkut666

Member
I second Dettol. Have also used Clean Spirit (water based white spirit) which is fine if you don’t mind waiting a while. Acetone nail polish remover works great on metal models.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top