How to Strip old miniatures.

why strip?

Sometimes you are not quite happy with a paintjob, as we improve over time and this can make you want to update an army. If we had infinite cash we would start all over again but for most of us this isn’t the reality. Maybe you have gone and got yourself some miniatures of eBay or a friend and you want them to match your force…Enter stripping, taking a miniature back to plastic or in this case metal.

Stripping Ghazgkull.

I found an old miniature when I was rummaging through some old boxes and one stood out to me. It jumped out at me mainly because it wasn’t my model. I found a pewter Ghazghkull Thraka, not my second edition Ghaz but my friends third edition Ghaz… the first one with a mega-armour. Now i remember playing against this miniature some 15 ish years ago and it brought back good memories. I wanted to update it a little and send it back to my friend as a gift and an apology for unknowingly stealing it. (I know it has the horns missing… but looking back I cant remember it ever having them).

I used BioStrip 20 for this… I had seen people online have success with this for both metal and plastic so I thought it was worth a shot. this stuff is simple to use. just cover your miniature in it and leave it for 20-30 mins.

so I didn’t want to waste a load of this scooping it out into another container deep enough to submerge Ghaz so I just plopped him in. I used this as a test to see how it would interact with the plastic of the base hoping this would give me some idea of how it would work on a plastic mini. As i said above 20-30 mins is the recommended dunk time but i forgot about him and it was closer to an hour…ooops.

After he came out, leaving a trail of red and yellow paint behind him, it was time for a brushing. As recommended with all chemicals I did wear gloves throughout this process, I suggest anyone using this does the same. It is odourless but I made sure I had plenty of ventilation by working near an open window. Using a medium toothbrush I scrubbed at the mini and the paint did just come right off. To remove any residue I ran Ghaz under water to dissolve the rest of the product. this also helped to remove any paint flecks that may have settled in any areas during brushing.

He came out pretty clean, only a little bit of colour really clinging into the deepest recesses. The bit that I am most impressed with is that although I left it in for longer than intended the plastic base was un damaged. As you can see from the above picture the rim is smooth and the base top has that classic GW texture, its given me confidence that it won’t damage my plastic miniatures.

Now he is all primed black with a grey zenithal highlight… ready for contrast and the road back his original owner. Ill make sure to update this with the finished results.