Stripping Products Showdown

No, not that kind of stripping.

Stripping paint. If you’ve ever painted a mini or bought/traded for a painted mini you’ve had reason to want to remove the paint from said mini. There’s lots of products out there that can do the job. But will your mini be recognizable after the paint is gone? That’s never a worry with metal minis, but plastic or costs-its-weight-in-gold resin? There’s nothing worse than dropping your expensive mini into something and have it turn into a pile of goo. So, here I am, ready to help.

First off, this article is not going to be comprehensive. There are lots of articles out there that cover a lot of stripping products in pretty good detail. There’s no point in me trying to reinvent the wheel with the limited free time I have these days. Instead, I’m going to focus on products that I know are safe for all types of miniatures. To me, it’s not worth having something around that’s only good for metal. More and more of my collection is plastic, that that makes the usability of those products less and less attractive to me. On top of that, most of those products are not health or environmentally friendly. I’ve lost enough brain cells in my time. I don’t need to kill any more than I absolutely have to with college homework. Dangerous fumes I’ll pass on straight away.

The “Big Guns” – aka only use on METAL, in a well-ventilated area with proper protection, etc.

Acetone – aka nail polish remover. It does what it says – removes nail polish. Nail polish is enamel paint. If it dissolves enamel, think about what it will do to polystyrene. (What your plastic mini is made from.) Slag city. It’s fun if you like to get really stupid really quick. PASS

Lacquer Thinner – again, designed to remove lacquer. Enamel based paints = heavy solvents. Again, PASS.

Brake Fluid – This seems odd, but it does work. Just ask anyone who has accidentally spilled some on their car’s fender and not cleaned it off right away. If it dissolves enamel paint, what does it do to plastics? Good guess. Not quite as bad as the above products, but if you like bendy space marines, this is your agent. Top it off with the problem of properly disposing used brake fluid, and again it’s a big PASS for me. (BTW – it drives me crazy to see someone spell it break fluid. BRAKES are things that stop your car. BREAKS are short time periods of rest. Get it right. )

Oven Cleaner – More fumes, more headaches, lethal to plastic. PASS.

The Contenders

Simple Green – If you’ve read any mini-related forum no doubt you’ve heard of Simple Green. It’s great stuff, non-toxic and mild enough that it won’t hurt your hands. Use it straight out of the bottle for best effect. Many people don’t like the smell. I don’t mind it, and my wife actually likes it. I’m not going to test it here as I’ve moved on to other products that I’ve found to be more effective and work faster. That comes with a trade-off though. The rest are higher alkaline, which means they’re hard on skin and don’t get them in your eyes.

Castrol Super Clean / Purple Power - My current product of choice. I list both products at once as the Purple Power is essentially a “generic” knock off of CSC. I’ve done side by side testing of both and found that the Purple Power was just as good. When it’s $2 a gallon cheaper, why pay more? At any rate, it is harsh on skin due to the alkaline nature of the chemicals. It is bio-degradable, and safe to run down the sink. My wife likes me having it around for her tough cleaning jobs around the house as well, the the cost is easy to justify. It degrades over multiple uses. After a second batch of minis it’s pretty weak and won’t do much more. Whether this is due to oxidation or pollution from the paint I don’t know, but don’t bother saving it after a second run. This runs about $8 per gallon at Wal-Mart. A gallon goes a long way.

Krud Kutter – A product I just recently read about and picked up to try out. It’s designed to remove graffiti from walls, so it claims to remove enamel paint. It also says it’s bio-degradable, so that seemed like a contradiction. After testing. I found that rather than breaking down the paint, it seems to break the adhesion so that the paint lifts away from the surface. It works pretty quickly and doesn’t have a bad smell. It is quite expensive though. 1 16 oz. spray bottle cost me $10 at Wal-Mart.

Dawn Power Dissolver – I read a brief review on this over on Bartertown and just had to try it. Something designed to clean dishes that strips paint? $3 later and I had a 12 oz spray bottle. It has all kinds of warnings to wear gloves and not use it on painted stovetops or lettered dishes. That is a good sign for what I have heard it can do.