Experiences stripping paint from minis

Blue in VT

Moderator
Con-fusion":144bzlen said:
The best product I have found for stripping minis is Dawn Power Dissolver.

http://www.dawn-dish.com/us/dawn/product/037000006329

A 24-48 hour soak, and the paint just slides off of metal, plastic, and resin with no damage.

My only issue is that my wife keeps stealing it to use on the dishes. :grin:

Interesting...this is one I'll have to keep an eye out for....

...I'm still in the Simple Green HD camp...but I have been finding that I still need to do a quick dip in Acetone to get the really stubborn bits of paint from crevices and folds...so more options to employ are always good.

It certainly does appear that different paints react to different "solvent" in rather dramatic ways sometimes...Too bad Chemistry was never my strong point... :?

Cheers,

Blue
 

Con-fusion

Member
I stopped using Simple Green when (1) my hands started peeling from over-Greening and (2) I bought a batch of RT Chaos Renegades for 50 cents each that had previously been painted on four different occasions with unbelievably thick pink and red high gloss enamels. Simple Green didn't make much of a dent, while Dawn Power Dissolver took that crap off in 4 days with 2 soaks to get down through the sedimentary accretion of awfulness.

Since then, I done a ton of paint stripping, and have had nothing but great experiences. My highlight was a bucket of more than 150 Nightmare Legion minis that I had previously painted as part of my first WFB army back in the 80's. 24 hours in the drink and and an hour or so in front of the sink, and those babies were sparkling like the day they were cast.

I'll have to take pictures next time I strip stuff and post them up.
 

Con-fusion

Member
I pour an entire bottle of the gel into a plastic container, and the put the minis in. I have a bunch of quart sized plastic containers with lids that I use for this purpose.

The only thing I had trouble with was a RT Landraider, which I decided to spray. Soaking works much better.
 

Con-fusion

Member
Yesterday, I dumped some Dwarfs and the last of my old paint undead into two buckets of Dawn, and this time I took pictures.

Here are some of the minis:

photo1-2.jpg


Lots of stuff from my youth. Not pictures are a unit of Ulthers, another gyrocopter, and an organ gun.

Here's the product:

photo2-2.jpg


Here's what everything looks like after 24 hours:

photo3-1.jpg


And, a close-up:

photo4.jpg
 

Con-fusion

Member
Three days later, I grabbed one of the two plastic containers I'd filled with minis, and opened it up. From above, it looked like this:

photo5.jpg


I hit this stuff with running water and a toothbrush for about 45 minutes and here's how it turned out:

photo6.jpg


And a close up:

photo7.jpg


Of the minis put in the container, only two had to be put back for additional time in solution.
 

Con-fusion

Member
@ Giant collector

Dawn is actually pretty easy on the hands, but the running water for that long (and resulting soft wrinkles) can cause problems when handling metal minis with lots of spikes. I do tend to wear a glove on the hand I hold the minis with. Regardless, I lotion my hands with coconut oil after stripping minis to keep them baby soft. :)

It cleans well enough that I don't use anything else anymore. Just remember to put a lid on your container. If you forget the container for a month or so, the lid will keep the cleaner from drying out. Dried on Dawn is like concrete. It will come off, but the process isn't fun.

@ Blue

Happy to help add to the pool of paint stripping knowledge.

I've had some of those minis for more than 25 years, and just got rid of the original paintjob. I look forward to getting my dwarfs painted again.
 

Vyper

Member
That Dawn stuff sounds great, any chance somebody fancies shipping some over to the UK?

After years of struggling with acetone I've moved on to Fairy Power Spray and it is pretty great, it sometimes takes a couple of overnight soaks to get some stubborn models and it sometimes struggles with fur cloaks and the like (lots of very small, deep recesses) but I certainly won't complain!
 

illuminatus

Member
Vyper":2cil3ubk said:
That Dawn stuff sounds great, any chance somebody fancies shipping some over to the UK?

If you're in UK, have you tried Dettol? The original brown one, not one of the modern newfangled marketed derivatives...
 
illuminatus":zlqufxy8 said:
Vyper":zlqufxy8 said:
That Dawn stuff sounds great, any chance somebody fancies shipping some over to the UK?

If you're in UK, have you tried Dettol? The original brown one, not one of the modern newfangled marketed derivatives...


Can't stand the smell personally. Wickes had a brilliant water based paint stripper that was non corrosive, kind to hands and gave a bloody clean stripped mini after a bit of a rinse and toothbrush going over.

But.... Wickes have cancelled it and now all they stock is nasty toxic pipework melting nitromores. :(

Real shame as it was wicked stuff, especially in respect to zero damage to skin or plumbing! :)
 

Con-fusion

Member
The active ingredients in Fairy Power Spray are

Alkyldimethyamine oxides 1-5 %
Ethanolamine 1-5 %
Phenoxyethanol 5-10 %
Potassium carbonate 1-5 %
Sodium hydroxide <1%

The active ingredients in Dawn Power Dissolver are:

Monoethanolamine 3-7%
Sodium Hydroxide <1%

Similar, but not exactly the same.
 

Vyper

Member
Does anybody know what the actual chemical that strips the paint is?

Judging by the 'ingredients' list, I assume it's the Sodium Hydroxide?
 

Con-fusion

Member
All ingredients in the lists above are active in some way. They all are solvents, though some of the chemicals in Fairy Power Spray are likely being used largely for their scent and color fixing properties. Monoethanolamine has some unique properties that make it particularly useful for this application, and 2-5% monoethanolamine is commonly found in heavy-duty commercial chemical paint strippers.

FYI: monoethanolamine and ethanolamine are the same thing.
 
Well colour me impressed! After morning the loss of the wickes product and other water based strippers too (methinks that the environment agency might have had a hand in this one) with some scepticism I got some fairy power spray from Wilkos.

very very good product. Easy strip for a couple of IG/army guys.

Will see how I get on with old plastic at some point.
 

Vyper

Member
It's really fantastic stuff and doesn't react with plastic at all.

I discovered this purely by accident as I was stripping down some particularly thickly painted Chaos Warriors only to discover that some of them had been converted with plastic weapons and one had a plastic pair of legs!
 
I've found that Dettol usually does the job on metal pretty well, the longer you leave it in, the easier it is. But I found out the hard way that it will, over time, bugger the plastic a little bit. A bunch of shields for my nightmare legion suffered deterioration when I left the models in Dettol for too long (months).

Now, Asslessman mentioned that acetone will get rid of glue, are there any alternatives that will also get rid of significant glue-glooping? I have some acetone but probably not enough for the model I intend on stripping (Thaindon's Dragon)...

Also: is there an alternative solution that will do the same thing but leave plastics unscathed? (ie. removal of glue buildup on plastic models)

:mrgreen:
 
witchfinderingeneral":8z9xukkv said:
I've found that Dettol usually does the job on metal pretty well, the longer you leave it in, the easier it is. But I found out the hard way that it will, over time, bugger the plastic a little bit. A bunch of shields for my nightmare legion suffered deterioration when I left the models in Dettol for too long (months).

Now, Asslessman mentioned that acetone will get rid of glue, are there any alternatives that will also get rid of significant glue-glooping? I have some acetone but probably not enough for the model I intend on stripping (Thaindon's Dragon)...

Also: is there an alternative solution that will do the same thing but leave plastics unscathed? (ie. removal of glue buildup on plastic models)

:mrgreen:

Ethyl acetate....aka "acetone free nail polish remover". It will remove paint/glue from plastic without damaging it.
 
Back
Top