In today’s vlog I’ll tell you how to strip a plastic miniature with an ultrasonic cleaner. Stripping miniatures, especially plastic ones, seems like something difficult, but in reality it is not. To do this I used a concentrated degreaser and a ultrasonic cleaner, generally used for jewelry. Knowing how to strip miniatures is useful for those who are fan of old Warhammer miniatures for example and struggle to find them in a new or in good condition. With this technique you can buy the worst painted miniatures you can find in the markets at bargain prices and make them look good as new.
This is a technique I learned from eBay Miniature Rescues friend Casey, he uses it on virtually every video of him!
How to strip plastic miniatures with ultrasonic cleaner
What you need to do is get yourself a ultrasonic cleaner and a concentrated degreaser. The ultrasonic cleaner is used to clean the recesses and the most unreachable parts of the jewelry, but in that case water is enough. In our case we will add some concentrated degreaser to the water, which must then be diluted. According to product indications, 1/20 of product is required for one part of water, that is, 200ml per liter of water. I honestly went a little bit by eye, not knowing exactly how much liquid the sonic cleaner bowl contains.
The process to strip miniatures will take some time. The ultrasonic cleaner has preset programs, the longest is 10 minutes. In the video below, I was on my second attempt at stripping a miniatures. So I thought that at each cycle, the miniature should be brushed and cleaned by the color that gradually comes off. In reality this is not the case. Before brushing, it is advisable to let the ultrasonic cleaner and degreaser work for at least three consecutive cycles. By doing so, in a third test I could see that the paint comes off much easier, but above all the cleaning times are drastically reduced.
In this way, I was able to clean the Warhammer 40,000 Conquest primaris that I had painted in this video a couple of years ago, simply in 40 minutes, the equivalent of 4 wash cycles. Not bad isn’t it?
