Just a quick blurb about one of the more useful hobby tools you can get: Simple Green! On many forums I constantly see people asking the best way to strip the paint from models. I've tried brake fluid, pine sol, SuperClean, etc, and SG is superior to all of them. It works faster, won't harm plastic or resin, and is NON-TOXIC so drink all you want! (I'm kidding.) You will still need a toothbrush or similar device to give your models a scrub after their dip, but most of the paint will slide right off. Also, any loosened paint will just settle to the bottom so in a dedicated container your supply of SG will last a long time.
I've found an additional use as well-- thinned down (3:1 water to SG mix) it works to remove release agents from resin models. I recently got some FW goodies and soap didn't do the trick; brush-on primer was sliding all over the place. SG fixed things right up, and I highly recommend it as a safe, useful hobby tool.
Interesting. My buddy Jim the Stout Smurf botched a squad of assault marines using Army Painter blue spray. The spray, as sometimes happens with AP, came out horribly gritty and the models were ruined. I told him to give them a soak in Simple Green. He soaked them for a week in sealed freezer bag full of SG, and when we went to clean em up... it was as if they had not been soaked at all. I figured SG changed their recipe... Any one else had a similar issue with SG?
ReplyDeleteJawa, do you know if he used AP over primer or straight on the models. I've seen models that have been cleaned with other products still not completely get that base layer off of a plastic model. Sometimes the paint will fall off completely, and other times it gets everything but parts of the primer or base color. I've used simple green many times, and I've had the best luck when I use it in an ultrasonic cleaner. The heat that is generated from the agitation of the fluid, plus the movement itself does a great job of stripping off the paint.
ReplyDeleteWhen I don't have access to the ultrasonic cleaner at work, I've just put the models in an open container and filled it with simple green. I usually let the container sit for a few days, shaking it about once a day. If it's summer time, I'll put it outside where animals cant get to it and let the sun heat it up. I think the heat is really the key. That and time and patience. I've left a Forgeworld Dreadnought in the stuff for a month with no signs of it damaging the resin.