Thursday, May 21, 2009

PAINTING AND MODELLING: Dip and strip

I feel like I'm making progress.

I finished work early today and started on my Dreadnought as soon as I got home. I had already done some work on the base so I moved onto my standard second phase for my Blood Angels; the metallics.

It's the usual recipe of Boltgun Metal and a heavy wash of Badab Black. When that dries I'll start on the copper/brass/gold metallics.

Over the past few weeks I've also been experimenting with stripping plastic metals with Dettol. I'm pleased to say it seems to be working and for a modest outlay of £1.50 per bottle I can strip over fifty models. The first in the pot were my Catachans. I had so many of them I had to strip them in four batches.

Here is the result:

The paint has come off really well. Some of the plastic became very soft and snapped on some of the models I had in the Dettol for more than a week so I'd recommend between two and four days as ideal. I'll still need to wash them in warm soapy water to ensure the rest of the Dettol is gone before I paint them.

Emboldened by my success I decided to strip some more important models.

I've had these Storm Troopers for a long time but they were very badly painted. The problem was that up until now I had never found a reliable way to strip plastic models. The Dettol worked a treat and this photo was taken soon after they were taken out of the pot.

Now I just need to work out what to do with the heavy weapon teams which can't be purchased for Storm Troopers any more. eBay perhaps?

3 comments:

  1. Following your previous post on stripping models I tried the TESCO own dettol equivalent. I think it was 0.80p a bottle. It stripped in 3-4 hours a range of metal figures and a plastic cadian (down to the undercoat) without destroying any plastic parts. To think its for applying to injured/infected skin!
    Yikes! Anyway it works & seems to be better than nail varnish remover, and is more manly at the checkout and may be slightly cheaper than dettol.

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  2. I'll have to check that Tesco one out. I got my Dettol at Wilkinson's and all of their own brand stuff didn't contain pine oil which I think is the active ingredient so I had to buy the expensive stuff.

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  3. great post... all this stripping news is driving me a little mad when i think about all the catachans I had from my first ever army... I could have done them such justice now but nooooo i went and sold them for about a tenner for the lot.

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