In this tutorial, we’ll go over how to strip paint from plastic Warhammer Miniatures safely (and affordably!)
After painting my Necron Warriors a base ’slightly rusted metal’ look, I realized that while they looked good, all that plain metal was very… monotonous. At this point, I set aside a small group of Warriors, and decided to start experimenting with colour schemes.
Apparently Baby Blue doesn’t strike fear into the hearts of mortal men. At this point I had a few options: 1. Paint over it, and chance obscuring some details with the paint buildup, or 2. Try and strip the paint, and start from scratch. For the sake of research, I chose the latter.
I didn’t want to use regular paint strippers or thinners for fear of turning my Necron Warriors into Necron Puddles. After some googling, it seemed that the general consensus was to soak the Minis in Brake Fluid. So, here goes!
Materials List:
- 3 Badly Painted Necrons (substitute your own Minis here)
- 1 Bottle of Brake Fluid - purchased at Wal-Mart for less than $5 a litre.
- 1 Mason Jar or similar container
Step 1:
Pour Brake Fluid into Jar. I only used maybe 200ml here.
Step 2:
Add Doomed Warriors to Fluid. Cap the Jar. You may notice that your Minis float to the top - swirl the jar around a little to make sure they get nice and covered.
Step 3:
About 30 Minutes later, you should notice the Paint starting to cloud the Brake Fluid, discolouring it. Swirl the jar around for about a minute, this will start loosening the paint up.
Step 4:
Another 30 minutes or so, the Brake Fluid should be looking rather murky. Again, swirl the jar for about a minute to loosen more paint. The Brake Fluid should look positively gross now.
Step 5:
Another 30 minutes (1:30 total now), and I could barely even see the Minis through the fluid. When one did get close enough to the glass to see though, it looked mostly like plain, unpainted plastic. Score! Fish the Minis out of the Fluid (I just used the handle of an old Paint Brush). Place them on a rag or paper towel. I should note here that Brake Fluid can be a Skin Irritant - it’s not going to melt your flesh off, but it won’t be comfortable either if you handle it too long. Rinse your Minis under hot tap water, and wash your hands thoroughly. Cap the Brake Fluid and save it for next time.
Step 6:
Scrub off any remaining Paint with an old Toothbrush, rinsing both the brush and the Mini under tap water occasionally. It took me about 5-10 minutes to scrub clean all 3 of my Warriors. The odd speck of paint didn’t want to scrub away, but they were easy enough to pick off with a fingernail. Paint that remained stuck in the finer details was easy to pick out with a safety pin.
Rinse the models off one more time - I assume leftover Brake Fluid would make the painting process rather difficult next time around.
And there you have it! Three Necron Warriors freed from the burden of Paint, with pretty minimal effort and cost.
One final note: On each of the 3 models, a different ‘lightly glued’ spot came loose; a foot from the base, a wrist from the gun, and one end of a green rod. I assume that if left in the Brake Fluid for too long, stronger joints might start to let go as well, though I’m not willing to prove this theory right or wrong at this point. If you decide to soak a Mini overnight and end up with a jar of loose parts, don’t say I didn’t warn you!
Cheers,
Mike the Necron Guy
Buy your Necron Warriors here!
23 users commented in " Unpainting Miniatures "
Follow-up comment rss or Leave a TrackbackI have left plastic miniatures in brake fluid for 2+ weeks. it will eventually soak into the glue joints on models that are super glued, and will break the bond. For models glued with modeling cement, that glue tends to melt and weld the plastic together and is a lot more difficult for the brake fluid to break those bonds.
That’s a good tutorial, I really like that ;).
But if this is going to participate in the compo it kinda has the opposite meaning. Very good nontheless, I’m not sure if I’ll use it though.
It looks like the green rods stood up really well to the brake fluid. Any changes to that since the pics where taken?
Great tutorial. A note on disposal though: Used brake fluid is classed as Household Hazardous Waste, and should not be poured down the drain nor thrown in the garbage. Refer to local regulations for proper disposal (the Niagara region has HHW collection depots, and schedules are available on their website).
I agree with Kingwad. Not to be a killjoy, but I have heard tales of the sewer department in Welland tracing Hazmats back to their source. Big fines $$$!!!
Thanks for the tip I’m gonna try it out on some Tau (they were my first models so they weren’t exactly my best painted minis) and I’ll tell you how it goes.
A less dangerous way to do this is to use methylated spirits instead of brake fluid.
Using metho the process is basically the same. Stick the models in a jar of metho deep enough to cover them. Leave for a while (I find a couple of days is always enough). Pull them out and give them a scrub with a toothbrush. This last bit works best if you dip the toothbrush back into the jar of metho between scrubs.
Metho doesn’t attack either plastic or metal, is pretty gentle on your skin (not like brake fluid), is very cheap, and can be disposed of any way you like because it’s not an environmental hazard.
If my liquid laytex dosn’t work out, i’m stripping the hiddious grey coat i painted on my mini’s and undercoating white and trying different battle damage effects. thanks for the post i’d have never known.
This may have been answered, but how does it effect the “warhammer Plastic glue”???
I’m going to try and reply to as much as I can here:
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“It looks like the green rods stood up really well to the brake fluid. Any changes to that since the pics where taken?”
The figures have held up perfectly - neither rod nor necron are worse for the wear. I did have an arm fall of a Destroyer I stripped the following day, but in all honesty I had a hard time getting that limb to stay attached in the first place. I’ll provide updated Pics in another article
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“A note on disposal though: Used brake fluid is classed as Household Hazardous Waste…”
Thanks for bringing this point up. I should mention that all of the Brake Fluid I’ve used, short of the small amount I washed off the models (and my fingers) is still stored in sealed containers, and will be properly disposed of at a Municipal Facility
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“This may have been answered, but how does it effect the “warhammer Plastic glue”???”
Over short period of time (the 90 minutes or so it took to remove the paint) the glue was fine, except for ‘lightly glued’ joints - places where two limbs were only marginally in contact, for example. However, I left a Destroyer in for a longer period (it was my first paint job, and rather thick) and his arms both ‘unwelded’.
Well, thats interesting. I’de never have thought of brake fluid or metho:
“Ardnutz: A less dangerous way to do this is to use methylated spirits instead of brake fluid.
Using metho the process is basically the same. Stick the models in a jar of metho deep enough to cover them. Leave for a while (I find a couple of days is always enough). Pull them out and give them a scrub with a toothbrush. This last bit works best if you dip the toothbrush back into the jar of metho between scrubs.
Metho doesn’t attack either plastic or metal, is pretty gentle on your skin (not like brake fluid), is very cheap, and can be disposed of any way you like because it’s not an environmental hazard.”
I don’t know the chemical compound of the plastic miniatures but i’de presume in metho they’de degrade quite fast being plastic? or am i mistaken here?
Nice tip (and thanks for the disposal disclaimer. I’m the kinda guy that dumps things down the drain). Something else that’s worked for me is Simple Green. It’s not as potent as brake fluid, but it’s non-toxic and won’t hurt the plastic. You’ll have to scrub away the paint with a toothbrush/pick, but Simple Green will really loosen it up. Available at any BigBoxMart in the automotive section.
I’ve heard Simple Green, as well as Easy Off Oven Cleaner mentioned a few times. I’m certainly not a fan of the horrendous fumes that Easy Off produces, but I’ll definitely give Simple Green a shot if I have to try this again.
Having acquired 72 pretty badly painted GW LOTR figures in an awesome deal on eBay, I tried all the above unpainting solutions plus a few more from my kitchen cupboard.. by the best result was with plain undiluted Meths!.. (also used by mum’s and other superheros for cleaning household surfaces on the cheap.. The meths stripped ALL the paint of both plastic and metal models after 8 hours soaking with no damage, no toothbrush scrubbing, no hazmat, no noxic fumes (used a screw top jar) and pretty cheap too as I already use it in the house.. Best trick was that if I’d've stopped the soak and rinsed them at about 5 - 6 hours soaking I could have retained the basework which was pretty good; the meths seems to attack PVA glue last (I’m assuming the original painter used PVA!) The acrylic paint just rinsed off and left the flock, sand etc. untouched.. didn;t even discolor the flock.. Mum’s Rule!!
(and my Prince Amrik and Dragon are almostttt.. finished).
Greetings from down under.
..and I would have corrected all the typo’s, but I’ve got ironing to do ;-D
I’ll definitely second using the Simple Green. Straight from the bottle, let the minis soak for a couple of hours and then just a light scrub with a brush under running water and the paint falls right off. I’ve left plastics in for up to 2 weeks. After being in the soup that long, the surface of the plastic looked a little more porous than originally, and it was maybe just a little softer. Thing is, they don’t need to be in there that long. I didn’t notice any change in the plastic in ones that were in up to 2 days. Works for plastic or metal, and can be safely flushed.
I have had a bunch of space marines in simple green for more then a month and i took them out today and scrubbed as hard as possible. A bunch of the pain came off, but there where still alot of splotches around it. Im also trying the brake fluid method, but its been over an hour and nothing has happened to the nid that i had in it. Is it because i didnt use game workshop paints? or is it because the brake fluid is really old?
I put some Warmaster metal minis in brake fluid back 3 years ago and moved shortly thereafter… I was cleaning the garage the other day and found them (they are in a metal coffee can). I am kind of afraid to open the lid and see what it there…
plz people help me. i need to know how to unassemble a glued model. i tried leaving my mini’s in brake fluid for a 5 weeks but it didn’t work so if you can help me
nice but i could just paint over it
OK. so Any of you who don’t have access to brake fluid… like me (my mom would never let me touch that stuff) I have found an O.K. alternative.
Windex, or any similar “blue window cleaner” just put it in a jar, put the figures in, and shake a little. a few of my color scheme - failure figures in the stuff over night, and used an old toothbrush to scrap away paint.In the end most of the paint came off, although there was still some primer left inside of some grooves…
I imagine more frequent shaking (I only shook it once the whole time)or another night in the window cleaner would of cleared up all the paint.
some time back Ardnutz thought that metho would do the same thing as brake fluid and Hasnt Picked An Army said windex . maybe if someone could find a matching chemical in the metho ,brake fluid and the windex maybe we might have something + has any one thought of using paint striper
dear peoples
at the moment im testing both metho and window cleaner on my mins. im going to leave two badly painted mins , one in metho and the other in window cleaner for 1 to 2 weeks i will post back will the results a.s.a.p
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