How to get paint off plastic minis?

[Steel_Wind]

Pine-Sol and Simple Green will both work admirably. I let them soak a good 24 to 48 hours in a jar of it. Then its under the tap with warm to hottish water and a toothbrush.

The paint just sloughs off nicely and the mini is in pristine shape for repriming and repainting.

 

[frankthedm]

Pine-Sol

IME undiluted Pine sol wil damage plastics given enough time.

 

[Steel_Wind]

IME undiluted Pine sol wil damage plastics given enough time.

I'm not saying your experience is wrong; I'm saying it's never happened to me -- and I've applied them undiluted in the jar and for a long time, too.

I suppose if there are some plastics which might be susceptible, it's an easy thing to play it safe and just go with Simple Green.

 

[Olaf the Stout]

Simple Green worked for me in most cases. In thoses cases where it didn't work (Simple Green doesn't seem to work on some undercoat sprays) I found Methylated Spirits (that's what we call it in Australia, not sure if it is the same in the US) to do the job.

And for those people trying to get the paint off the D&D pre-painted minis, good luck. I don't think anything short of acetone will work for them and you are probably just as likely to really damage the mini in the process. Simply painting over the top of the existing paint job is about your only option for them.

Olaf the Stout

 

[fanboy2000]

An interesting side note: despite it's being so environmentally friendly, the Air Force (and probably the FAA - but I don't know this for sure), forbid the use of Simple Green on aircraft surfaces. They found that it causes delamination of metals - actually breaking them down at the granular level. Pretty harsh stuff. I won't use it on my car or anything metal because of this. I don't need my car failing from metal fatigue.

According to Mythbusters, you can always put the car back together with duct tape.

 

[TheAuldGrump]

classic plastic: simple green or brake fluid.

I was going to mention brake fluid - but some warnings:
Do not do this if you have cats. They will drink the stuff.
Do not let the plastic sit in the brake fluid for three weeks. A friend of mine did this, and, when he finally remembered, the power fist that he was stripping had swollen to almost two inches long. (He thought that it was funny as all heck.)

The Auld Grump

 

[Dausuul]

I've never tried to strip paint from a plastic mini, mostly because I don't consider plastic minis worth the trouble - if I don't like the paint job on a plastic mini, I'll just paint right over it.

That said, I have had to strip paint from a metal mini that was heavily modded with green stuff (in fact I posted a thread a couple of months ago asking for advice on the subject). I used Simple Green and it worked quite nicely. No damage to the metal or to the green stuff.

It did require a lot of soaking, scrubbing, and scraping, but that was probably because the mini had many layers of paint and a heavy coat of lacquer on top of them. I also encountered a few issues at the spots where green stuff met metal; the Simple Green did seem to weaken that bond a bit, and they could separate if I got too aggressive with the scrubbing and scraping. Once I learned to work carefully around those areas, however, it all went fine.

 

[Bullgrit]

Thanks everyone, for the advice. Of the 10 Space Marines in the game, two are painted (badly). I'd like to at least remove the paint. After that, I might repaint all of them to look alike.

Bullgrit

 

[El Mahdi]

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