Hi all . I’m new to this forum . I’ve recently got back into LOTR and have been busy making terrain and buying minis off fleabay. Many are painted but don’t match my painting style ,so what is the best method of stripping them back to bare metal? Most of them seem to painted with acrylics. Any help appreciated . Cheers Martin .

I haven't tried it with metal, but with plastics I use brake fluid (Dot 4). You can reuse it a couple of times. I usually give them about 12-24 hour bath, and then just strip the paint gently with something brushy, like an old toothbrush, or a sponge. It comes off quite easily.

Dot 4 is best, others might not work as well, and I can't whether or not they'd be any different. If you decide to use it be careful though, don't get it in your eyes! It's corrosive.

I haven't ever used this myself, but on some other miniatures forums people often recommend something called "Simple Green" ... apparently a more environmentally friendly option. Google brings up quite a few references to how to use it.

Thanks guys . I shall experiment . Not sure what simple green is ,I’m in the UK, but brake fluid sounds good . I remember my neighbours car getting covered in that after he played away .It worked on that paint job so sounds good . Cheers

Dettol, used it for 20 years. Have tried all the others but always come back to this.

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Hi guys . Thanks for your suggestions ,as an update I tried Dettol as I had some in and it worked a great . Did leave quite a sticky mess behind though. That was on acrylic paint . I’ll try the brake fluid on the next batch . Cheers Martin

With dettol after soaking the miniatures for a while scrub them with and old toothbrush using dettol from the pot you had them soaking in, don't use water.

Once you have scrubbed them, then put washing up liquid on them and scrub them again with a different old toothbrush

Once that is done then rinse them with water

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Yeah, it's really important you don't go back and forth scrubbing the mini w/ dettol and water.

Scrub all the mini's w/ the dettol. Put them aside. Once finished, then go on to rinse w/ water.

Aah right I’ll try that . I was scrubbing them under water . It did all come off in the end though. Thanks

Usually I use nail polish remover to strip my minis. For metal miniatures, I recommend fully submerging them for a few hours then scrubbing them with a toothbrush. For plastic minis, I recommend either leaving them in pure nail polish for an hour or so (keep checking in on your minis to make sure they don't melt) then scrubbing them with a toothbrush again. Generally, some of the recesses of your models will still have some primer left in them but that can be scraped out with a sharp hobby knife. Remember to wash your minis in clean water afterwards to wash away any 'polish leftover.

I don't recommend using this method for Finecast or resin in general. I've not tried it myself but I've heard it can wreck them. There's probably another way of doing them but I sadly don't know of any myself - certainly none I've actually used.

Finally, some people have recommended you use brake-fluid and while that's a great way of getting paint off metal minis, I would be very attentive while using it. In high concentrations, it can quickly melt your plastic miniatures. You might want to dilute it for plastics if you're worried about destroying them.

Remember, always test your strippers on one mini before you strip the whole army. Anyway, hope that helps!

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I've had my plastics take a three-month bath (forgot about them) and absolutely nothing happened. This is my go to solution for stripping paint off models. (I use DOT 4)