I suppose I am not good at trying to search existing posts so will try this for a new thread.
I managed to find an older discontinued Walthers kit from E bay and of course it was already painted for something I did not want. The factory paint appears to be fairly thick, obscuring some of the detail and i do not want to add still more layers.
I had heard or remember reading of good ways to remove the existing paint and lettering. One friend said to use rubbing alcohol but that did nothing. Then on to brake fluid. After soaking an hour and rubbing or wiping with a paper towel, it showed some staining with the color but really no progress on getting down to the molded parts. To do that I would expect days of soaking would be needed and then maybe not so effective on creases and seams.
So I am looking for suggestions on how to lift that paint, scrubbing with a toothbrush, some way to clean it off and not damage what I assume to be styrene injection molded parts. I am practicing or testing on a piece of the sprue so have not done any damage - YET.
The kind of chemicals that are the most aggressive are also good welding agents and so require a great deal of care. MEK wold do the trick with solvent based paints, but melt your model. And that leads to the first question to ask yourself, is it a solvent paint or waterbase(acrylic) paint since the base of the paint is what determines the best chemicals for removing. Alcohol can be helpful with waterbased paints, maybe a little weak. You can try a little paint thinner with a Q-tip to see if it breaks the paint down. There is also paint remover, lacquer thinner, etc–but be careful.
90% rubbing alcohol seems to the the favorite paint stripper for most members in the forum including myself. If you tried 70%, it will not touch the paint. It is best to soak the model in the alcohol for a while, and scrub it with an old toothbrush to remove more stuborn places.
Chameleon paint stripper should do the job as it was made for plastics, but I hear the company is out of business. MB Klein did have some in stock, so you might try them to see if they have any left.
Given the type of paint used, the particular plastic, and the time on the model, its possible there is just no good way to get the paint completely off without doing harm to the plastic.
At this point in your project, I would wash the model with warm water and a bit of dish detergent, thoroughly rinse, and then let dry. At this point I would either spray an appropriate primer, and then paint - or perhaps more likely do two coats of the new color. Obviously you want to apply thin coats of paint to preserve the details.
Again, I’m not saying its impossible to safely remove the paint, but it looks like in your situation you have done all you can safely do.
Brake fluid will destroy some plastics. I tried it on an Athearn F7 shell. The nose of the shell literally fell apart after I removed it from the brake fluid.
I use 99% isopropyl alcohol with good success.
Some manufacturer’s paint is extremely difficult to remove. Riverossi is one example.
Since I paint exclusively with acrylics, I’m not sure about stripping solvent paints. ELO, mentioned above, works well on acrylics, and is supposed to work on solvent-based paints as well.
Another chemical that works on acrylic paint is Windex – the old fashioned kind with the ammonia in it. I keep a jug of the generic stuff around for cleaning out my airbrush nozzles.
I would like to thank you all for the tips and suggestions. Hopefully I know enough to stay away from very aggressive solvents like lacquer thinner. Ask me how I know that. Above replies saying 70% alcohol does nothing is confirmed by me yesterday. Now I am trying 90% isopropyl alcohol and that does seem to work at some level. After an hour soaking, thin areas of the paint on the Walthers model started to come off, not lifting in sheets, but melting away slowly. On the back of the molded parts most is gone. But the ‘finished’ side of parts, such as the underframe, seem to have substantially more paint applied. Perhaps to make sure the color coverage is opaque and saturated to the eye.
It is noticeably thicker, so I guess I will have to soak longer and scrub harder. There are a LOT of parts on the sprues, and I guess this will work best if I remove them all first. Small parts like a brake wheel will pose a challenge.
For the back story, this is a model of a Walthers Russell Snow Plow. I volunteer at the Illinois Railway Museum which recently acquired one of these, Chicago Great Western X-38. The details on the model are generally good in representing the real thing, but some simple mods may result in a still better model. After paint removal, maybe chisel off the grabs and replace with wire. At first I thought this unnecessary, but see our REAL THING has some which are not on the model, and I think it will look cheesy to have some one way and some the other, molded in.
Great project! I have a thing for the Russell snow plows. I have shortened one to match the Canadian Pacific single track prototype and I have another kit that I want to turn into a double track plow with the blade oriented to push the snow to the right only.
I’m not sure I got the wing length right but it looks ok to me anyhow. I did replace the molded on grabs with wire and I added the front coupler detail which the Athearn model lacks.
Fortunately I didn’t have to strip the shell because it was getting painted black. (Edit - when I look at the blown up picture I can see some spots where the original red is not completely covered. My bad!)
Show us some pictures as you go.
By the way, the isopropyl alcohol does take some time to clean all the paint off. I have done several cabooses made by Athearn and they soaked for a day or two before all of the paint would come off. There was no apparent harm to the shells. Even then there were still remnants of the paint in the details which required some scrubbing with a tooth brush.
I use 91% rubbing alchohol. May take a few hours or even days for the paint to soften depending on how thick it is. I have also heard of a product called “Easy Lift Off” by Scalecoat that will work. But, I have not tried it.
Easy Lift Off aka ELO has always been a Polyscale product and was originally produced by Floquil until Testors bought out Floquil and moved the whole kit & kabudal from Schenectady, NY to Canada. Floquil and Polyscale Products are now produced and marketed by Testors.
As a custom painter, ELO has been my choice for stripping paint for many years. It even works on Kato shells.
That is a great looking model, Dave. The plow at our museum which is the inspiration for my modelwork here is certainly well ‘used’, but we have quite a crew to work on it. Many of them are also modelers. But there is nothing like LARGE SCALE - - 12 inches to the foot.
I will try to see if this inserts a pic of it. No luck adding a pic so far so here is the link.
Bob, the 90% Isopropyl alcohol will do the job, but it’ll need a day or more to do it. I’ve had good results with older models using DOT 3 brake fluid (NOT the newer DOT 4!) and soaking it for an hour or two. It works well with solvent paint (spill some on your auto’s finish and see how well it works!). The best idea is always to test with a cotton swab in an inconspicuous location first.
And here is a look at an early color photo of “our” plow, the CGW X-38. This is the scheme my model will carry, and is the planned livery for restoration of the LARGE SCALE version. This photo from the Don Vaughan Collection circa 1950.
Seriously, ther are two basic types of plastic used; I am no expert by any means, but with the older kits, the plastic is pretty thick as kits go. I have used brake fluid-and a lot of scrubing-with pretty good results. Now, the newer kits are of thinner construction, and, I assume, a different compound. Using brfake fluid on these is a great big no-no, because it will make the plastic very brittle, and tend to crumble-at least that is what it did for me. I suggest that before you go dumping a body into anything for a sustained length of time, try the proceedure in question with a piece, or a kit that you really don’t care about-that is of the same compound.
I don’t know if it’s the age of the paint or just the formualtion of the paints that were used back in the 70’s and 80’s that make them so hard to remove but I used both 70 and 92% isopropyl alcohol on two older model shells for about two weeks soaking. Both of these concentrations were ineffective at removing the paint in both cases. Honestly, I was afraid to use brake fluid or any other strong solvents, like Easy-Off oven cleaner, which I’ve also heard is effective - - didn’t want to take the chance. I did, however, use Pine Sol with great success. It took a day or two, but the paint came right off. No damage to the plastic either. And the best part: you can rreuse the Pine Sol. Just strain the used Pine Sol through a piece of cloth to separate the paint! Like I’ve said on this forum, I don’t throw anything away!
Recently I decided to strip the paint from on old Varney plastic open hopper by soaking it in the same jar of 90% alcohol that I had successfully used to strip some other models. I forgot about it for several days. When I finally remembered it, I was astonished to discover that the Varney hopper was slowly melting in the solution. I left it in the jar (the hopper was beyond repair) and today the hopper is liquid. I wonder if it was because the model was made out of an early type of plastic or if I left it in the alcohol too long, or…? In any case, that was a first for me. -Lloyd
