How many times can you paint over a model ?

[GreyCrow]

Hello guys, just a quick question for the more artistic minds among us.

 

How many times can I paint over an existing color scheme for a model ? My army is painted already, but I have several schemes in mind that I would like to try, but I don't know/don't want to spend time removing the paint with solvant...

 

Hence the question ! After which amount of layers using Citadel paint is my model going to be ruined ?

 

Cheers

[Demus Ragnok]

I don't know about ruined but with each layer of paint you lose fine details. So however much detail loss you can stand is up to you.

 

As for stripping I have soaked models in Simple Green for as little as 24 hours and scrubbed with an old toothbrush and hot water and gotten very good results.

[Aqui]

It all depends on how thick each layer of paint has been applied. To a degree, the age of the paint applied is also a factor. I've noticed that the older paints are thicker than the more recent sets.

Way back, I once painted and repainted some metal Terminators with three layers of paint before the details were hidden. Each layer was quite thick (I was trying to apply Space Wolf grey, and the basecoat was white and hand painted on, which didn't help [GW sprays were not as common back then around '89-92, and as I was confined to my room for painting, so spray paint was not allowed by my parents])

As for removing paint, it is a lot simpler than it may seem, and if you use the right product, doesn't take that much time In the end, I suppose what you might consider "ruined" is relative to what I would call "ruined" - there is no right or wrong answer

If you want to test paint scheme, perhaps this item might be a solution. I use them for testing colours etc. They're relatively cheap and it would not matter at all if they are covered in a lot of paint, as you'd get the general idea for colour scheme testing

[Dumah]

I'll second the recommendation for Simple Green. It's quite inexpensive and you can find it almost anywhere that sells cleaning products. Even if you're not patient enough to soak it for more than a few hours, a good scrubbing with a toothbrush should take care of most of the paint and even a bit of base coat.

[Thunderhawk3015]

Depends on how thickly the paint was put on to begin with.  I'll throw another recommendation for Simple Green into the mix along with another product I've been using Dawn Power Dissolver.  Its citrus based but it removes the paint in 5 min for me. 

[Fibonacci]

I don't know about ruined but with each layer of paint you lose fine details. So however much detail loss you can stand is up to you.

 

As for stripping I have soaked models in Simple Green for as little as 24 hours and scrubbed with an old toothbrush and hot water and gotten very good results.

I have also left plastic models in simple green for months with no problems at all.

[Gurth]

http://www.tsoalr.com/comics/2003-10-27-017_Smik.gif

[Forté]

You can ruin the detail with one coat.

[reckoning]

Simple green. Nuff' said.

[SW1]

If your in the UK try fairy power spray or if you don't mind waiting a few days dettol (the brown one).

 

The advantage of dettol is you can let the sediment settle out and then reuse it again and again!

[Hemal]

You can buy the Sainsbuty own-brand "dettol" as well, much cheaper than the branded stuff

[Cyrox]

Bear in mind that if you are in the UK then Simple Green is unavailable

 

Fairy power spray is great - it strips metal minis in a couple of hours and plastics in 12-24 hours. All they need is a quick scrub with a toothbrush

[battle captain corpus]

I think a lot of it also boils down to how you paint your miniatures...

 

- Do you water your paints down?

- How many layers are you using?

- What sort of level of detail do you paint to?

 

BCC

[Hemal]

Simple Green can be ordered in teh UK - its actually manufactured here though not sold as such

[Secretpaintgeek]

If your in the UK try fairy power spray or if you don't mind waiting a few days dettol (the brown one).

 

The advantage of dettol is you can let the sediment settle out and then reuse it again and again!

I'll second that. The dettol works a treat. I find a bath in dettol for half hour then a scub with a toothbrush and the occasional blast from some power spray works a treat. One tip though, Dont use water when the mini is covered in dettol as it seems to turn it all gloopy. Just scrub and blast with the power spray to get the dettol off then rinde with water and its all good. Quick and easy

[GreyCrow]

Thanks for the advices guys !

 

Unfortunately, I'm in France and I don't recognize all the products you just told me about haha ! Would you happen to have the name of a chemical used in thoses products, like the name of the solvant, so that I can try and find an equivalent ?

 

Cheers !

[Stercus]

Dettol is a mixture of chloroxylenol, isopropanol, pine oil, castor oil and soap. It's used as an antiseptic for dressing wounds, and in Australia for killing invasive toads. If you get it on your hands don't taste it or breathe too much in, its pretty toxic.

 

Edit: found out it also contains caustic soda solution. Really don't want to ingest this stuff.

[GrandMagnus]

I have a standard of "twice is the limit". This is especially for when I start a new project and Im still kind of testing how the scheme should like (as in I know what colours to use, but not sure what highlight or shade, etc). Mostly because I add thin layers of paint. If Ive already done this I turn to use Fairy spray, its excellent.

[Brother Dallo]

I use acetone free nail polish remover, which is probably relatively easy to source in France. I buy from a shop called SuperDrug, if that means anything to you. Strips paint fine, and short immersion doesn't damage models, but don't do what I did, and leave plastics in for several weeks. Lost a bit of the detail, and there was some warping, but I tend to leave parts in for 10 mins and scrub them with an old paint brush. 

 

Dallo

[Kilofix]

Nurgle models can be painted over an infinite number of times. I have a Plaguebearer that's now the size of a Great Unclean One.

[ElectricPaladin]

It's like meth - not even once.

 

Ok, that's not entirely true. I have a bunch of chapter luminaries from my Exorcists that I hung onto when I sold the rest of the army, because all I had to do to fix them up for my Knights of Blood was repaint one arm (you know, techmarines and librarians and chaplains have special color schemes with one arm and shoulder painted in the chapter scheme, so it wasn't hard to repaint them for a new chapter).

 

But in general, if I was changing more than just one arm? No. Never. Nuh uh. In my opinion, it's really obvious what you've done and it looks terrible.

 

As far as stripping, I recommend you try a lot of agents. Different paints and primers react differently to different chemicals and require different degrees of babysitting and different amounts of scrubbing. You should experiment some and find out what's best for you, and then still expect it to suddenly not work on something primed and painted by some guy in a different state. It's kind of an ongoing process. Simple Green is a good starting point, though. LA's Totally Amazing is great as well.

[GreyCrow]

Thanks guys !

 

The idea so far was to mainly take my painted models and reprime them black, using that as a base paint, then focusing on the details rather than painting a completely different color on top :)

[Firepower]

I'd recommend stripping.  Simple as that.  Yes, there's a joke there, but I'm going to take the high road and not give into my 12 year old sense of humor...

 

Just this once.

[Phantomzero17]

I bought some Terminators a few months ago and ooooooh man the layers were thick enough to turn them into blobs.

 

I'll echo what many others said.  Depending on how thick the layer is you can paint over.  But if I'm going to do a total re-color I'd strip them first.

[Teetengee]

My suggestion is to not reprime if you don't want to strip them. And if the colors aren't similar, you probably won't have much luck, so striping is your best bet. It is hugely dependent on how thickly you applied the paint the first time.