A while ago I did a few posts on paint stripping.. (See Parts 1 and 2 in the blog history).
At the time, someone said they had heard Coca Cola was worth a try and acetone free nail polish remover.
So here are the results.
Coca Cola - 100% original full fat(Sugar) coke!.. well.. it made some of the paint sticky, it had no effect on the miniatures material, be it metal, plastic or resin. Paints from Vallejo, GW and Army painter, showed no real weakness to it.. on some older models the stuff did soften the paint a little but, compared to Detol (pinesol solutions) it was no where near as good.
Acetone Free Nail Polish Remover - This stuff is odorous.. if you like the smell, great, but don't sniff too much, or you will put your health at risk!!! It might be acetone free, but that means it has had one chemical replaced with another! (or more likely many). Also don't spill it on your nice polished table tops, or you will be heading for the yellow pages to get it repaired!
However.. it eats paint! Yes. It works pretty good. I mean, on metals and most plastics and resins.
The "Most" bit however is key. I tried it on some GW plastics.. without issue.
I tried it on some resin scenery pieces I picked up off a bring and buy a couple of years back, and it worked fine. I also threw in a resin GW cr*pc*st, sorry fine-cast figure! DONT! I don't know what resin they use, but it didn't seem to like it. Metal figures however, not an issue.
Now, it did pretty well with most paints too, but there is a cost consideration. If you can get Detol cheap, then you tend to get more for your pennies, than nail polish remover though prices to vary.
However, I have found detol may discolour and go cloudy, but it still strips paint. I found the acetone free nail polish remover evaporated far faster and after a couple of dippings of 48hrs etc, it started to loose its effectiveness faster than Detol.
So now I am back to using Detol and only use the acetone free nail polish remover for metal figures where I need to get the figure turned around quickly.
So.. over all I still rate Detol! For price, re-usability, effectiveness and lower chances of killing me or making me seriously ill.
The biggest tip for detol.. soak the figure in it, then rince the figure off in detol, yes, detol, not in water. Use a tooth brush, but don't touch water on it, till the paint is off the figure. As, as soon as you add water, it nullifies the pine-sol content and causes any part dissolved paint to go rubbery and very stringy! So have one pot of clean, detol, to put the "soaked" figure in and use to wash off the paint in following a soak, before then rinsing in hot water.
