Through out the years I've tried many ways to strip the paint from figures and I always end up going back to Dettol. I've yet to see it damage plastic figures and the metal ones come out all shiny.
If you want to know more about what it actually does then head over to the 40k forums and read this thread. Basically the para-chloro-meta-xylenol, pine oil and soap work together and after a few hours of soaking it's ready to be cleaned off.
For this latest round of stripping I'd decided to get some terminators, marines and an eldar cleaned up to give me something else other than the ork to break the monotony of the IG painting.
Both the Terminator Captain and the Ultramarine Captain pretending to be a Dark Angel were never finished so barely have more than a couple of layers of paint on them. The marine at the back not only had the current layer of paint but he also had a layer of matt varnish and the original black Dark Angels paint under it. The Dark Reaper in the middle just had the normal paint layers with a thin layer of matt varnish. The mystery though was with the Grey Knight terminator. I was given it many years ago by a friend and despite there being only a couple of thin layers of paint he reckons he went a little over board with the varnish.
Using an old cleaned out sauce jar I poured enough Dettol in to just cover the models. If your careful and use a coffee filter to get rid of paint flecks you can usually reuse the Dettol a few times so don't worry if you think you are using too much. Using neat Dettol can be a little dodgy so use rubber gloves and some form of eye protection. Far better to be safe than sorry.
After four hours I lifted the models out to give them an initial scrub with an old toothbrush to get the largest bits of paint off. Usually when you do things like this your told to wash them in hot soapy water but as Dettol is a detergent you can just use that instead!
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| Before Scrubbing |
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| After Scrubbing |
Use the toothbrush and give it a good scrub. In most cases you'll get almost all the paint off and any wee bits left can be taken off using a cocktail stick. I used a pin as all the figures I stripped were metal and I wouldn't scratch them and also because I was completely out of cocktail sticks. If your lucky then you'll have managed to get all the paint off and all you have to do is rinse them off and leave them out to dry. Those with varnish on them though had to go back in for a few more hours. It actually took eight hours to get the Grey Knight stripped!
With all the scrubbing going on the arms and backpacks fell off but it wasn't the Dettol that caused it. In fact I'm surprised the glue had kept them on this long as it was at least 15 years since they were last glued together!
Now all I need to do is reassemble them and get them primed ready for painting. I think I'll try something a little different from Dark Angels this time though. I also need to work out how to stop my hands from smelling of pine resin...
