Friday, February 12, 2010

An easy way to strip paint/primer

I learned this trick from GMobile17 and it has made my life a lot easier!
An easy way to strip off acrylic paint from your resin kits is to use Oxy Clean/Vanish.
Here I'm actually using a cheap brand  from a local discount supermarket and it works just as well, so I guess this stuff is all the same.

To show you how to do it I'll use a 1/8 Cutey Honey based on a design by Sorayama-san. It's a beautiful sculpt, but it's a Thai recast from Hobbywarrior: quite poor and brittle resin. I messed up with it years ago and it's time to give it a good scrub and start over.
So, I add a little less than a scoop of this stuff




in the container where Cutey Honey waits



and I add boiling water from the kettle. If there's the risk of bending resin parts then use hot and not boiling water. However, I find that boiling water works better. Be also careful to use a suitable container for this.





Leave overnight or even 24 hours. If you can, it would also help to freshen the Oxy soup at one point.
This is what your resin should look like with the aid of a toothbrush and some scrubbing.






Ok, I realize now  that this photo is way creepy as it looks like someone chopped up Cutey Honey pretty good!
Anyway, in my case it took some more scrubbing and a little scraping with a knife to get to this point because the chrome paint I used was particularly tough. Results are variable according to the kind of paint you used: I found that the brands I usually use, Americana and Createx, come off the resin completely after this treatment as does my Vallejo primer. This is also an excellent way to clean airbrushes from old paint (it does happen to leave the paint in there, doesn't it? I sometimes forget to clean them! ^_^") and to take off dry color from my mixing jars.

7 comments:

  1. I usually throw my stuff into a Puple Power degreaser, but I should try this stuff too. Thanks for the tip Ila :D

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  2. I wish I could try some Purple Power too (such a pretty color too! LOL) but I can't find it here, so I use what I can ^_________^

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  3. On fresh paint, less 24 hours cured, I've seen this stuff work in less then 10 seconds. It's the closest thing to an instant restart button when painting with acrylics =)Oh don't forget it's also great for doing laundry, ROFL!

    One warning though, the liquid/gel version of Oxi Clean sold in the US didn't work for me. There is also a "Oxi Clean Free" version sold in the US which is fragrance free, not sure if the cleaning strength is effected or not. Best bet is just get the original tub of dry powder.

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  4. Laundry... What's that? LOLOL! The paint I showed here was years old and the chrome was a spray can... really tough stuff! However, the clear red that was Tamiya came out almost immediately, just as you said. I guess the best thing is to test it and adjust the times according to the paint one wishes to remove.
    We don't have Oxy here in Italy, here it's called Vanish. I'm not sure if it does have all the variations Oxi has but you are right, better stick to the powder type we know to be working ^_^

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  5. waaah... this picture is indeed creepy.. but i like it!

    hey honeyyyy how are you? you're not writing back to my mails, are you even recieving them? i had problems with msn and my pc but now everything is again ok.. i need your adress u__u and i need to talk to you cause i miss you so much! even with caro i have almost none contact except for some mp on the forum, cause she has problems with her msn connection, too...
    Quindiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii.... fatti viva che mi manchi un casino... :((((( ti voglio beneee e ti penso assai!! :***
    chu belliccimaaa!!! :***

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  6. Thanks for this tip!
    I will try it for my Witch - Hunter- Robin - Kit :)

    Have a nice day!

    Lumien

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  7. Thank you for sharing this interesting and informative article, painting with airless spray gun will be faster and more interesting!

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