Thanks Scott! I love the experiments that you do too :-)

Would you consider doing some testing similar to this?. Maybe use some of the other cleaners mention in here.

@@FknWands I wish more people would do this test! I'll probably revisit it myself in a few years when my video skills are better :-)

I LOVE YOU AND YOUR CHANNEL (AND THIS ONE)

Nice research!

I somehow doubt that it's meant to be taken in that context (LA is... ), but that is FUNNY AS HELL!! I, being "Totally" BORED and curious, decided to look at their website to see if I could find out what the LA actually stood for (is it somebody's initials, referencing Los Angeles, or what?)....and after reading their "About Us Page", I discovered that the CEO's name is -LD Hardas. LoL, too bad it doesn't have one more "s"... It's still close enough to make me chuckle a bit, though! :D

@@billymanilli Mr. Hardass' totally awesome

I'm a penny thrift; I always try to make a dollar go as far as possible when cleaning up the scene of my crimes

🤣😂

Probably marketed primarily towards period blood stains 😆

You are a true hero

Hope you find an army you enjoy! I've been a commission painter for going on 10 years and only just started playing 3 months ago. :D

True, I've tested these for games workshop polystyrene only. I make no comments as to their compatibility with anything else! :-)

Rubbing alcohol will cause resin (forge world that I used it on) to get spongy. But after a month or so, it hardened back up.

@@deadlotus4445 Hey that's good to know! Someday I'll get around to running some tests on resin, this tidbit is useful :-)

kalhas80 I use super clean for plastics, metal and resin

Dead Lotus happened with some resin Anvil Industry bits for me too

Right on! I think that part of the reason the army painter paints came off so easily is that they were airbrushed on (so a much thinner layer). Still, we have some good options for taking acrylic mini paints off of minis, so you never need to be afraid to try different paints! Also, remember you can re-paint several times before the paint thickness starts to affect the texture of the model. Have fun!!

I’m with you on this one! I’ve been using rubbing alcohol on my metal minis, less for its effectiveness (repeated soakings and brushings necessary) and more because I know it’s safe. I’m certainly not comfortable (or affluent enough) with the idea of experimenting with the cleaners on the various alloys used over the years.

@@SythyrDraconic i'm quite new in the hobby... any suggestions on how to clean pewter figurines?

@@jamis00 I’m still kinda novice myself! Since my original comment I’ve branched out a bit, and tried a few more solvents than just rubbing alcohol. I’ve taken a liking to the Super Clean product Brent featured in this video. It’s not the cheapest, but it’s cheaper than isopropyl alcohol and readily available at most local hardware stores (I live in Canada; your mileage might vary). Like many chemicals, it’s important to wear heavy-duty gloves and eye protection when scrubbing with this stuff. It _is_ caustic, and you don’t want it going in your eye. But essentially the process is pretty simple - for my plastic and metal figurines, I just pop’em in an appropriately sized metal or glass jar and cover them with the Super Clean (or other appropriate chemical of your choice), screw the lid on, and then try to forget about them and let them soak for at least a day. Then one by one pull them out, and scrub them while still wet with an old toothbrush. You’ve got to be a bit careful with delicate bits like spear shafts or rat tails, but a toothbrush scrub will get the majority off. Then, back into the vat for second go! I’ve noticed that Super Clean isn’t always the best on some Vallejo brand spray primers, but it seems to deal with the rest just fine. One of the guys at my friendly local gaming store suggested getting one of those spray guns you can attach to some older utility taps with a hose, that those are great for blasting the stuck bits out of the deepest, hardest to reach crevices. It’s how he cleans up older metal models for resale for the shop, and he says it’s a heck of a time saver. I mean to pick one up, but haven’t actually tried it yet. For metal models, I’ve been picking away at the most stubborn stuck bits carefully with a straight pin, and plastic ones doing the same with a toothpick because they’re softer and won’t scratch the plastic as bad. I do wish I had a better solution to that though. Just keep in mind that if you’re scrubbing your minis over a sink, or anything else with a drain, that you’ve got the drain safely covered. A plug, a mesh basket strainer, anything to keep your precious bits from accidentally being lost down the drain! I haven’t tried cleaning anything resin yet, so I have no idea how much any of these chemicals may or may not damage the various resins. But I’ve had zero problem with damage to plastic models (even forgetting them in the vat for a couple of weeks), or any of the old "Tichi-Huichi/Regiments of Renown" era pewter. I want to say I’ve used them on the newer "white metal" range too, but can’t spot an example kicking around here at the moment to be sure. Hope this helps, and also that the folks who know more than me will chime in with what I’m missing. ;)

@@jamis00 Followup to the last bit, many cleaners are good for more than one soak. When you’re done with the liquid, it should keep in a tightly-lidded jar until your next batch. It will usually have some sediment at the bottom, but can usually be used for 2-5 sessions depending on how many models go in and how badly they’re caked on. Throwing the stuff out after every use can get a bit expensive if you’re hobbying on a budget.

@Sythyr Draconic I'm in Ontario! Visited my local CanTire and found both Super Clean and Simple Green. Giving the green stuff a try due to budget constraints. My Legion stormtrooper army went through a 2-hr pre-soak, a scrubbing, then 24-hr soak before the final polishing. Since that went well, I'm a little more comfortable with the process. I'll move on to my pewter figurines soon. If the green stuff doesn't work, I'll pick up the purple stuff. Or even isopropyl alc.

ammonia, worst cleaning solvent :-)

Well... urine contains ammonia. Direct connection between the two.

@@NefariousKoel Not a whole lot, though, unless you let it go stale for a week or two.

The dye industry once used to collect ammonia in the form of “old drinking men’s urine” from the toilets attached to pubs. Just thought that little snippet that might warm your evening.

Glad it was useful! It was useful for me as well to learn this stuff. Gotta spend big to live big :-)

That's true! Actually a lot of these cleaners do. for some people that's a good thing, for some it's a bad thing.

So does super clean

And my 40k shadowsword is going back to the forge world. I didn't know that but as long as it cleans up the glue too then let's go back to step one.

It kills superglue, which means it can attack polymers, so does that mean it can damage fine details on models? I have some GKs I need to repaint and repose, but I don't want to loose what little detail they have.

@@KCDarkRanger I've never seen it damage plastic. Not sure if it's good for resin though.

Comissar Duncan want to know your localisation

I'm glad it's useful!

Thanks Joe, welcome aboard!!! More coming soon :-)

Glad this was little experiment was helpful! Good luck with the LA's totally awesome and have fun restoring some models :-)

Welcome aboard!

Hey thanks, I'm glad it was useful! This was an itch that I needed to scratch :-)

I'm glad that you find it so useful :-) Thanks for spreading the word and for being one of my very first viewers!!

Generally the problem with importing chemicals is tax

In the UK I've had great success stripping with Dettol and a reasonable result using concentrated flash cleaner, the green one.

Seems like I can get it from Amazon, but 15€ the bottle? Yeech

Found it at one of the dollar stores

Sweet! I'll make a sequel to this video someday and take your advice. This was my first video n this channel and there are definitely improvements I'd like to make :-)

Hehehe, I still want to try break cleaner someday though :-)

@@GoobertownHobbies It will take off almost any paint known but you can't leave it in long because it will attack some glues too.

@@seamus6387 As long as it doesn't eat the mini's, they can always be glued backed together.

Underrated joke

Thanks for the tip! Yeah I've been looking into dettol- if I do a followup to this video I'll probably check it out. I think that some of the remaining 95% of dettol is isopropyl alcohol, so that probably helps too :-)

Cool! Yeah it takes way more work to strip a model and rebuild it than to just build a new model, but the savings are good and it can be a great feeling to salvage a trash model. Have fun!

My preferred chemical is Acetone Free nail polish remover. Emphasis on the "Free" part. Regular acetone will turn your plastic models into goop quickly.

@@GeneJordan Cool, that's on my list of things to check out if I do a followup video to this someday. I think one of the main ingredients is often isopropanol, so it makes sense that it would work pretty well.

@@GoobertownHobbies it's a quick soak and a hearty application of a toothbrush and the models are ready for paint in less than one afternoon. Sometimes it also removed the glue holding the model together, depending upon what type of glue they used for assembly.

@John Finucane Are you sure what you hade was "acetone free"? I've never had it damage a model before and the fumes weren't bad at all due to the lack of acetone. Perhaps different brands use different ingredients though.

Thanks for stopping by! Yeah LA's totally awesome is great for everything, I'm glad that Ed has been hyping it up. Sonicating is real good, but I already expose my neighbors to a lot of airbrush compressor noises... :-)

Very cool! Enjoy :-)

Right on! I hope you can find something that will work for you.

I'm so glad to hear that!- Enjoy your fresh Chevy! :-)

Storm 1030 agreed, i use it for my hot wheels cars, 10min. With some scrubbing.

Thanks! Glad it was useful :-)

Oooh, yes I was planning on adding a citrus cleaner to the roster the next time I try this experiment. Citristrip eh? I'll check it out, thanks for the tip!

Thanks for the info! Someday I'll revisit this topic and try to collate all these tips into something useful for the community. I'll add these to the list :-)

Makes sense that easy off would work as well as Super Clean and LA's Totally Awesome as they all contain Sodium Hydroxide aka Lye. Thanks for the additions I will probably go the LA's Totally Awesome route as they have smaller spray bottles at the 99 cent store all the time.

Toxic stuff to be using though :S

If it's not too late, you might want to save a few of your very first minis for nostalgia purposes- you may want to look at them 20 years from now. Glad this is useful though, have fun restoring models! :-)

Definitely agree. As a painter, you're always learning. The minis you paint first won't look great, and as you get better they will look worse and worse, but that also shows your level of progression from your first painted to your last painted. Think about it like aging. You don't notice it happening because you see yourself every day, but like say seeing a relative who's 6 then seeing them again at 7 or 8 it's a drastic difference then when you last remembered them.

dollar tree!

I would love to know what exactly that stuff is, cause im in germany and i am pretty sure that i wont get it here...

I thought it was supposed to be the LA totally awesome Orange.

Whoa! that's awesome :-) Thanks for watching, I'm really glad it was useful!

Cool! Hopefully you'll get some nice fresh marines :-)

Another good option is Mean Green from Dollar General. That's what I use and it's somewhere between super clean and LA's. I'm usually good to start brushing clean after an hour, sometimes two for the more heavily coated miniatures.

Yeah, my fiance does quite a bit of stripping (of paint 😁) and there's always a worry about damaging some of the resin ones.

Thanks John, glad it was useful! I've heard about brake fluid, I'll have to try it someday :-)

Hehehe, yeah... I was tired of all the different videos out there swearing allegiance to different cleaning products. Someone needed to do some apples-to-apples tests. :-)

I have to agree, tried simple green and after a month it still wasn't working well

Simple Green is available in different parts of the world whereas the other two aren't, which might explain why it's still recommended to those of us who are not fortunate enough to have access to better options.

Yeah it's really interesting how some paints/ varnishes are really stubborn. Still haven't quite figured that one out :-)

Interesting! I'll put purple power on the list for when I revisit this topic. My understanding is that sodium hydroxide is the ingredient most immediately harmful to human health, and also the one that breaks the ester bonds in grease (the same reaction for making soap from fat and lye as shown in Fight Club). These cleaners also have a lot of detergents which may or may-not be listed on SDS sheets, and I think these have a lot to do with getting the acrylic paint medium to partially dissolve & loosen up. I guess we'll just have to test purple power and see what happens :-)

Oh, also, I've found that most paints that these degreaser cleaners don't work on, DO get taken off pretty well with ethanol. It's worth a try if you still have some of those stubborn ebay models around.

@@GoobertownHobbies I tried both ethonal and isopropanol on the guy that I suspect was coated in grill paint. No effect. That stuff is just bullet proof. It's possible that something would take it off if I did some more experimenting but since it was pretty thin, I decided to just go ahead and put down primer over it and paint from there so I can't experiment further on that one. I still have the miniature that's coated in the thick rubbery satin black paint. I can try both ethonal and isopropanol and let you know on that if you like. Since you seem to be down with science, here's something you might try - Sodium hydroxide + detergents seems to be the goto mixture from both of our experiments. Well, lye powder just happens to be common and very cheap. You can get both sodium hydroxide and potassium hydroxide and perhaps others as well. What would happen if you just made a very strong concentration of lye water? Perhaps with a bit of palmolive to break the surface tension of the water? Is there a concentration of lye that would be dangerous to plastic minis or are they just completely immune to it? Is there a difference in performance between sodium hydroxide and other forms of lye? By chance, I spotted another sodium hydroxide mixture just last night. I was using some liquid plumber and saw that it's bleach + lye + detergents. I probably wouldn't use it for miniatures simply because it's way more expensive than purple power and apparently weaker, but if availability is an issue, it just might work.

@@ColonelSandersLite Oh yeah, I've definitely been thinking about making a plain old base solution of either KOH or NaOH. I just checked... and yes, you can buy pure lye on amazon. In theory polystyrene should be immune to any concentration of lye. The pKa of all the protons are too high to be affected by hydroxide, and the solubility parameters of the liquid probably don't change much as you increase above pH 10-11. Of course we should test out an old sprue first!!! That being said, higher concentrations of lye do become more and more dangerous for our skin! Bleach is interesting too. My gut feeling is that it won't be that useful, but it'd be worth trying someday. Liquid plumber might work, but I agree that there are probably cheaper & better options. We'll keep looking to figure out how to deal with these mystery Ebay paints :-)

@@GoobertownHobbies Higher concentrations of lye might be more hazardous., but I'll tell you what - Imagine you just got like 200 goblins off of ebay to build out an army. If you knew you could throw together a bag of garden lye, a bit of water, and like half a bottle of Palmolive in a 1 gallon bucket and let it sit for a few days and be fairly sure that it will just eat nearly everything off of them and break down the superglue and all that without having to scrub or run small batches at a time through the ultrasonic cleaner, would you do it? Personally, I would be very tempted in that situation. I don't really have a need to do that right now myself but I can imagine that there are people out there that could make good use of that information. If not now, then sometime in the future.

Cool, I'm glad it was useful! Check your bottle of simple green, the concentrated version definitely works better than the regular stuff. Have fun!

oh hey thanks for watchin! :-)

I didn't notice any damage. LA's totally awesome is becoming pretty popular for this, and I haven't seen anyone else mention problems with it either. It's not a bad idea to dunk a model you don't care about first just to get some experience before your knight, but you should be good to go! Have fun with your fresh knight! :-)

Alcohol seems to work on a couple of weird stuck-on spraypaints that nothing else will touch. For my own use I tend to start with superclean. For the few models that superclean doesn't work on I switch to ethanol.

Been trying Awesome for a couple of days...it seems to do a "pretty good" job, but I'm thinking Superclean is still going to work best for me. Which is a shame because Awesome is like 1/10 the price of SC! Also, neither one seems to be able to shift Retributor Armor spray. It's proving impervious!

@@TheMiniJunkie Hahaha, let me know if you figure out that retributor armor spray! I too have a preference for SC.

Yeah it's interesting to see how emphatic people get for a certain product- and there are at least 10 different products that all have die-hard fans! I actually use the degreaser --> ethanol combo for my own models too! :-)

@@GoobertownHobbies I love how you drew upon your scientific experience to make a rock solid experimental design

I was about to leave this same comment. I have found that LA's does an excellent job of removing the paint, however it will not remove all the primer. (Rubbing) Alcohol does an excellent job of removing all the primer. I primary use Vallejo paints and primer.

@Robert Singers How long do you clean the minis in the ultrasound cleaner? And what cleaning solution are you using? Tap water?

I still need to try that! Probably in a year or two I'll make a sequel video with all the stuff I forgot to test :-)

@@GoobertownHobbies It works great for grey plastic (like GW plastic), but black plastics used for bases usually (but not always) melt in it. So be sure to remove base. People swear for DOT-4 variety, and this is one I used. I also use concentrated NaOH, basically drain cleaner pellets (be sure to get one without alluminium added to it). 10% by dry weight to 90% of water to have 10% (or 2,5 mol) concentration, it cleans majority of spray, oil and acrylic paints paints and CA glue (yes, it takes miniatures apart). It's HIGHLY caustic and WILL boil itself, so be really careful. Here is post I've made about it: www.the-waaagh.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=4358&p=723445 Or, You know, don't, it's more dangerous than ammonia. [edit] Oh, You tried cleaners with lye. Nevermind then.

@@janiksla334 I haven't tried straight sodium hydroxide yet, It's on my list of future experiments. Those lye-based cleaners have a bunch of detergents in them, so it's hard to say what the key ingredient is for stripping paint. I hadn't seen that reaction of aluminum with base solution before! Thanks for teaching me something new :-) The black bases from GW are also polystyrene, just like their gray plastic models- have you actually noticed that they are more susceptible to dissolving? I suppose it's possible that they have a different average chain length or something, or maybe you're thinking of black bases from a different company? Thanks for suggesting DOT-4, I had no idea what brand to use!

Be careful when using brake fluid. It is highly flameable, both as a liquid and the fumes that come off of it. Keep clear of any open flames and work in a well ventilated area.

@@GeneJordan Thanks for posting this. I need to include more safety warnings in my videos now that people are actually watching them :-) We don't need anyone burning down their house immediately after watching me talk about how useful pure ethanol is as a cleaning solvent!

Great question! You're a thoughtful person for asking it :-) The most correct answer is to call up your local dump and ask them. The next best answer (and what I suggest) is to put it into a container and throw it into the trash. There's no real danger to this since LA's totally awesome isn't flamable. Use an old salsa jar/ milk jug etc. There's plenty of weird juices and old spraypaint in landfills already. Getting this waste to a landfill is better than putting it into the water supply. Your solution of LA's totally awesome can also be reused many many times, even after it starts looking awful. I keep mine in a special tupperware bin under my sink and almost never replace the liquid. All that being said, millions of people are pouring stuff like this down the drain every hour. It's not the worst thing in the world. It is assumed that consumers will put LA's totally awesome down the drain, there is nothing too bad in there. The really bad stuff in spray cans are the solvents that evaporate when you're doing the spraying. The actual solids aren't much worse than your craft paints. Also, a lot of the stripped paint will exist as solid chunks which people will throw in the trash instead of put down their drain anyway out of respect for their pipes... So in short... Trash. :-)

@@GoobertownHobbies thanks for the reply!

@@GoobertownHobbies better solution is to let it evaporate in a container and throw the solid remains into the trash once everything has dried up

@@mardenhill Yeah that's definitely a better method. Sometimes I'm not patient enough for that though :-)

I'm using the L A product to strip some Space Marines right now. And the solution is already black from whatever junk primer the Ebay seller covered up a junk paint job with. I had considered running this through a couple stacked up coffee filters after I was done and seeing how much of the crud I could clean out.

None of these six will mess with the detail at all. The solvent in spraypaint is (much) more likely to damage the models than any of these are. As long as they didn't get a bit melty from the primer, they should come out as good as new! Have fun and good luck :-)

@@GoobertownHobbies Awesome! Thank you so much for the response! i used Army Painter Matte White Primer

@@SuperDrakonight NP! Hopefully you'll get some fresh new minis out soon :-)

I'm glad it was useful! I made it because I was having trouble finding a video like this. I might make a sequel someday with a few more options I've heard about in the meantime.

@@GoobertownHobbies The one recommendation I might suggest for a follow up is that I saw a lot of advice involving differing soak times. A month in the cleaning fluid with your video is by far the longest. Maybe try comparing with differing amounts of time

@@AlexisofTocqueville For sure! The long soak time was more to demonstrate safety, but overnight is probably the most common time people use to actually try to strip a model. I'll have to do that next time :-)

... I have not considered draino... this idea interests me! :-) Most of the products in this video were chosen because you can find people online who say that they are THE product for stripping minis, so I wanted to put them all to the test. Draino is an interesting idea, I will look into it. In a year or two I'll make a sequel to this with a bunch of the chemical suggestions that have popped up in this chat.

Would Draino harm the plastic or metal?

@@vandamwtc it's stored in a plastic bottle, so as long as the plastic is PVC or pva, then I highly doubt it. It can etch metal that had oxidation damage, but if your mini has rust..... Then you have other problems 😂

@@vandamwtc that being said, Las awesome and super clean have the same active chemical as Drano, just in different concentrations. Always worth testing in some throw away minis at different concentrations. It would be nice to see a stripper that could get the paint off in 10-15 min and doesn't damage the mini

Good to know.

Glad you enjoyed it! Hopefully it was useful too :-)

Thanks, I'm glad it was useful!