Removing Paint

by Specialist Blank Dave

Let's talk stripping. Well first off you'll want a big, old paint brush; a scrub brush (wire tooth is good for metal figures, but a toothbrush or vegetable scrub brush are good for all purposes); a dental pick for those hard to reach and stubborn spots; a container (from a specimen cup, to a
margarine tub, to a peanut butter jar, to a plastic garbage can); rubber gloves; and finally a solvent. I'll get to the solvents last.

Before I forget there's a couple of warnings. Most solvents aren't skin friendly, that's what the gloves are for. A lot of solvents have fumes, stripping in a well ventilated area is a good idea. Stripping can get a lot messier than painting, what with the scrubbing and all that. Most solvents will also soften or outright dissolve your glue.

There's several things that will influence how fast you can strip paint off a figure. Amongst those are such things as type, age and thickness of the paint; type and dilution of your solvent; and the method you use of applying the solvent.

There's three ways to use solvent on a figure: painting, dunking, and soaking. Painting, you use your brush to slop on the solvent (there's no real need to be tidy here), and then let the figure sit. The problem with painting is most solvents are thin, so they'll be inclined to run off, and the solvent will evaporate before it's had enough time to really work. Painting is best for thicker, or very powerful, solvents.

Dunking, you take the figure and...well...dunk it in the solvent. It's faster that painting, and it'll get more on the figure. It has most of the same short comings of painting on solvent, plus a lot of solvent containers tops are either too small or are a tight fit to get a figure into it.


Finally you have my preferred method soaking. You get your container, I like margarine tubs, fill it with some solvent, dilute it if you want, and then simply throw the figures in. Now I feel this is best because it will allow the solvent more time to work, making it the fastest of the three methods. Problems of this are such things as most solvents are meant to be painted or sprayed on, and you can forget about your figures (too long in a solvent may result in damage to the figure). One thing I nearly forgot, was since we are soaking figures, we are using more solvent
than really needed, so we should talk about reusing it. The problem with reusing the solvent, though I do recommend it, is contamination. As is the case with most solvents as they become more and more contaminated, they become less powerful. Since many of the solvents I talk about for soaking are relatively expensive I do reuse them, but I will talk about the effects of contamination on each.


Now that you have the solvent on, how do you tell if it's working? The paint will often appear to streak, blister, crack, bubble up and just plain lift off (but in the case of one of my most successful strippings nothing appeared to happen, until the bath when it just rinsed right off), this may take time depending on what you're using. If you see this happening, put on your gloves, grab your scrub brush and head to a wash tub. You'll want a warm soapy bath (I some times skip the soap), and scrub the figure in the bath. Now if you're lucky the paint will just
wash off, but don't count on it, that's why you have the scrub brush. If you find paint really sticking in a hard to reach spot, like between your marine's legs, use the dental pick to carefully pick it out. You'll probably need to repeat the process several time to totally clean your figures. Sometimes you may find that you can't get all the color off your figure, like it's been absorbed
into the material itself, don't worry about it.

Finally we can worry about what to strip our precious little men and women with. I'll start with what you can use on plastic, since it's more delicate than metal. Now I've heard at one time or another that this solvent will damage plastic, and next time it's that solvent, so be careful with what you choose to use.

Most of these solvents can be diluted, usually with water. I wouldn't suggest any greater dilution than 50%. Plus, the more you dilute the solvent the longer it will take.

The stuff of choice for me is Castrol Super Clean. You will find it around the automotive section in most department stores. There's also stuff called Simple Green (or Simply Green I always forget), that I'm told works just as well. Both are called Professional Cleaner/Degreasers.
It evaporates quickly, and takes a while to work so I recommend using it to soak your figures in. You can dilute it with plain water, and at $7 Can. a bottle you will want to. You'll generally get results between 6 and 24 hours, but in as little as 1 hour up to 1 week. (You can use it for other tasks too, I removed grass stains from my mower with it.) One other "interesting" note, that I have observed, is that for some reason CSC turns black when used on Games Workshop paints (and I was stripping red miniatures!). This seems to be the easiest of all the strippers to
contaminate, it loses it's potency fast, and you will see a nearly exponential increase in stripping time. (I cleaned one squad in about 6 hour, the next squad to use the same bath took closer to 12)

Now something that gets touted regularly, but I've never had luck with, is Pinesol. Found in nearly any store's cleaning section, this detergent comes in both pine and lemon scent. Now I've seen debate rage over if other pine based disinfectants work too. So all I can say is if you use Pinesol, use the pine scent, I think the key ingredient is the pine oil here. Like the CSC, Pinesol takes a while to work, so it's best used by soaking the figure. From what I've been told it also
takes between 6 and 24 hours to work. (As for myself, I used it for a week solid, with no dilution and got no results...but that was just me) In a recent experiment, I've found that it's "not bad." Judging by the looks of it, it takes a bit to contaminate Pinesol, and the removed fragments of paint weren't suspended in the Pinesol. It also doesn't appear to change color with use.

Easy Off oven clean works fairly well. I've only used it a little myself. You can find it in the cleaning section of nearly any store, in either an aerosol or pump bottle. I've tried the aerosol, and got fairly quick results, in about 30 to 60 minutes. I think if you bought the pump bottle you could then use it to soak the figures in. I was rather impressed with it when I used it. Now the down side is it's fumes, they can be very strong and it's recommended that you don't breath them.
There is a certain concerns about it generating heat while it works, which is something I don't know about. Since I haven't used this with the soaking method, I can't comment on how easily it handles contamination, or what effects use has on it.

Finally we come to a solvent that was actually meant for paint removal, Polly S Easy Lift Off (ELO) Paint and Decal Remover. It can only be found in hobby stores, and comes in a little bottle similar to water bottles. They recommend painting it on, but I found better results through soaking. It will yield result between 1 to 24 hours, I suggest frequent check ups when using this product as it will damage plastics. It's "immediate" damage results in a softening of the plastic, so careful when scrubbing, it can also cause the plastic to become brittle. After the figure's been washed and allowed to dry these problems seem to clear up. My biggest problem with this stuff is it's dangerous. It comes with a warning label as long as your arm, including such doozies as "may cause nervous damage." Use it out of doors. It handles contamination very well, in that it doesn't seem to lose very much potency through use. As you use it, it will go from clear to a transparent yellow.

One other that I've used was rubbing alcohol. I painted that on, and got alright results.

Other possible solutions, that I haven't tried, but have seen on the Gremlins in the Garage mailing list include: brake fluid, acetone, lighter fluid, and nail polish remover. I, personally, don't recommend these, as I've been told by many sources (during my search for paint removers), because they will probably cause damage to the plastic. If you feel the need to experiment with these try them on metal figures first.

(Editor's Note: I have personally tried brake fluid on both metal and plastic and it will not damage either if left soaking for less than a week. - Doc Faust)

Now that we've seen what works on plastic, we can look at what to use on lead or pewter. Well right off, all of the above works on metal figures just as well as on plastic. The following strippers will damage plastic, so unless you want a mess don't use them on plastic figures.

LePage's Poly Super Strippa would be the best for this. You can find it around the paint department of most stores. Because of it's thickness, and relative speed you can paint it on. You can see results almost immediately, usually in the form of the paint streaking, bit for it to work properly you'll need about 5 to 60 minutes. Don't try dunking the figures in it's can, because of the small hole if you drop it in you probably won't be getting them back. This will cause plastic to melt. It can be expensive, but it lasts a long time.

Good ol' Varsol also can fill the ticket. I haven't used it much, so I can't really comment on how well it works.