Monday 3 May 2021

Not much going on.

 As the title says, there is not much to report. My painting mojo has moved on, at least for painting my own figures anyway. I have built some extras for my Cold War project, adding 10 T-64s, 4 BRDM2s and a few command vehicles but they are all sat in their unpainted glory looking at me in disgust.

One thing that has happened is the attic space has had a sort out. My darling wife(She Who Must Be Obeyed) decided we needed to sort it out as we are not getting any younger. So, a lot of old wargames stuff game down and is gradually being sold off. So far some old metal GW Goblins have gone with more to follow. I also had a look at the Bretonnian army I had over 20 years ago, back when I started painting. To say my standard has improved would be an understatement.

Here are a couple of pictures of a few painted(sort of) figures. At the time I was chuffed to bits with them but age has not been kind. No shading, no real details, no highlights. I was almost sorry to see them again. 

Metal Bowmen

A Knight and a Wizard
I decided to strip the paint off, either to repaint them or, more likely, to sell them on. So a quick search on the web for the best way to strip them and I came up with a new system. Previously I had tried brake fluid, oven cleaner and various other concoctions, but nothing really worked well. Now however there is a new (at least to me) paint stripper and boy does it do the job.

Here are the same figures after a couple of hours, literally 3 to 4 hours, soaking and then a rinse and quick brush with an old toothbrush. It worked wonders, even on the thick layers of paint these figures had.

A cleaner knight and wizard

Three shiny bowmen

Now it is not perfect, there is some undercoat showing on the horses etc, but the figures are very clean. So far I have stripped over 100 figures ranging from very old, pre-slotta base figures up to the more recent(ish) Necromunda gangers. 

So, what is this remarkable stripper you may ask. You probably didn't but I will tell you anyway. It is called Biostrip 20 Paint Stripper and I bought mine on Amazon for £20 for a litre. This has stripped over 100 figures but has now become more paint that stripper, so I have just ordered some more. I got the idea from this video on YouTube, although I use gloves to avoid direct skin contact with it. 

So, there you go folks, that's my latest bit of advice and I am off now to strip off some more knights that I put in at 7am today. Catch you all later when hopefully my painting will be back on track.

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