Paint stripping and plastics.

[Parus Ater]

Hobbies and forums are strange things. If you need an answer for something there quickly becomes a dogmatic answer, a product that becomes the only accepted one, nothing else will do.
With paint removal from plastics that answer is Simple Green, a product that Americans will robotically type without looking at where the OP is in the world and often even where the forum is based. Simple Green is not in this country so a selection of other get offered. Flash Power Spray. Doesn't work. Dettol Brown stuff works but costs a bomb and you really will only ever buy it for stripping plastics.

I conducted an experiment today, I threw a plastic orc that was a sampler from years ago and had a repaint over the top. One hour in my chosen fluid.....



And what is this fluid?

Lidl Pine disinfectant, available for £1 in everyone's favourite underclass supermarket.....

[Cubster]

Isopropyl mate, it's the active ingredient that does the work in Dettol. If you can find it in anyother form that'll obviously work too. I've yet to find a 'cheap' disinfectant that contains Isopropyl and I am wildly excited about your find. Pray divulge the name of your supermarket or I won't support Scotland against France tomorrow.

[Parus Ater]

This stuff is one of Lidl's own brands. It occured to me to try it, I had the bottle under the sink for a few weeks but I was in today to buy a motorbike cover for my telescope and saw there's a brown one and the dettol thing just pinged in my head. came home and gave it a pop.

I never knew about the Isopropyl thing, I've got a chem supply bottle of the stuff in the shed.

[Parus Ater]

I'll confess it didn't get like that on it's own, I gave it a pop with a toothbrush as well.

[Biggus Dickus]

Well done for passing that on P.A.
I used dettol on my 2nd hand painted plastic romans....it got the paint off after several days...but I think they kind of melted a bit...(dettol works fantastically on metal)

I will certainly get some of this lidl stuff......and £1 is as cheap as chips....I have a LOTR Cave troll that needs stripping so will give this a go.

[Johnnie]

And I've got a load of up to 4 packages of LotR minis to remove paint and repaint.

How do it react to plastic glue?

[Cubster]

How do it react to plastic glue?

Eats it if it stays in too long, but then you don't want to leave plastics soaking in it too long anyway because it softens them. I'd recommend doing an overnight soak at first (as in, no more than 12hrs), give it a rub with the toothbrush (someone else's works best) and swish it about in the mix again. If it needs more stripping, I'd put it in for 4 hour soaks at a time and repeat. Don't get water on it until you're finished because it 'resets' the paint. You may still have to reglue some parts though.

PS. Oh, and wear rubber gloves because it can make your hands a bit sore if it stays on for a while without being rinsed. It's fine to go 'hand commando' if you're just doing one or two but a large-ish batch will require a manual profilactic.

[Humbugged]

Thanks for the tip. *eyes mound of embarassingly painted old models from days of yore that haven't been able to bring myself to throw out!*

[Parus Ater]

It also did the job on metal with Army Painter primer on it. As we all know, GW spray isn't really a primer so it's good to know this can go through that stuff as well.

[Centurio Cunibus]

That's great! Thanks for posting.
If I can get my hands on that stuff, buying too much on eBay is going to happen much more often...