Chest of Colors forum

Corvus wrote:What is dettol? some kind of cleaning product? What is its original use?

Its a anthiseptic used in hospitals but the brown stuff cleans the paint in the wonderfull way withou damaging the resin and its biodegradable

I've been diligently removing old pain from minis over the last few weeks while I prep them for sale and I noticed that some of them go dull in the Simple Gree solution where the metal as oxidized a little. Older ones seem to be the problem, especially if you leave some in longer than 24 hours. I also use cocktail sticks as a non abrasive way of getting into all the corners and details.

While dull minis aren't the end of the world, I wanted to create a better basecoat for the new primer and found a little tip that I wanted to share.

I used some Blu-Tac or Poster Putty and made a small ball and wiped the miniature with it fairly robustly, but carefully in areas of detail. You will notice the oxide come off into the Putty and the miniature will get much brighter, in fact some of them look too good to paint now!

No need to go overboard, but enough so you have a metallic base is more than enough. I think the putty also acts as a degreaser, but I wash them anyway with detergent prior to priming for great even results.

Hope this is helpful

Thank so much all for your advices!

So, I tried leaving a mini submerged in simplegreen for two days and the paint came out wonderfully, but the layer with the primer was left intact, and that was exactly the one I wanted to get rid of

So, whenever I have the chance I will try that Dettol product and let you know how it goes.

From my experience, if the layer of the primer has been set really long ago, it's possible that the metal/plastic has been tainted with it and you won't be able to remove it. BUT! and there's a but, it's not always the case, it really depends on a lot of things, so you might of course want to try the Dettol

Yeah I primed the minis about two weeks ago, so I'll keep on tryin!

dettol is the same as simple green, might want to try a drop of nail varnish remover but be careful as it also melts plastic

I had the same problem with some old metal minis and acetone wouldn't move the paint so I ended up going to the extreme and getting some paint stripper and soaking them for a couple of days then with some THICK rubber gloves and tooth brush scubbed them and they came up like brand new (they were old lead minis) then just washed them in warm water
but doint use on plastic minis or you'll end up with goo.

To shine a unpainted metal mini I use a steel polishing brush on a dremel tool at low speed, it makes the mins look GREAT.