Stripping Paint Off Miniatures

Many times, you'll buy 'pre-owned' miniatures whether it's from the flea market, a convention, or on E-Bay. Chances are someone has taken a first stab at painting them and the paint job just won't fit in with your army's color scheme. So how do you get rid of all the old paint so that you can get a fresh start?

Get yourself a bottle of Pine-Sol, a pine based floor cleaner available at any grocery store, and a plastic tub you don't mind throwing away. The tub should be big enough to hold a generour number of miniatures and should have a lid so that you don't have to live with the fresh scent of Pine-Sol all day. Place your minis in the tub and pour the Pine-Sol over them until covered. Soak your minis in it for a day or so. Take an old toothbrush and give each mini a thorough scrubbing every 4 hours of so to strip off successive layers of paint and give the Pine-Sol a chance to work on new paint.

Just about all the paint, except that which is in the deepest crevices, should come out pretty easily. Once the paint has been stripped off to your satisfaction, rinse each miniature thoroughly in hot water water several times. Wait for them to dry, prime, and paint.

If your old minis are plastic, don't worry about it, Pine-Sol works on them too. Just make sure that you cut the Pine-Sol solution by 1 part water for every 2 parts Pine-Sol so that the mixture isn't too strong. With plastic figures, you probably won't want to leave it in the pine-Sol solution overnight. If you have any concerns, try it out of one or two figures first.

Thanks to Rgamroth@cs.com for some additional tips