In the past, when I've wanted to customize a model, I've gone straight for primer. I didn't really do a lot of prep work or anything like that, partially because I just didn't think it was important. And it's not always needed, but in my naivety I became a bit "frustrated" when I painted over the last layer of paint that I was losing details. I'm not always the brightest crayon in the box.
Slowly I did finally get into prepping - mainly just sanding down logos and making sure no seams were visible, grinding at some odd points on the tips of hooves, you get the idea. After that came the idea of stripping the paint first. At first I thought I could try using the back of an XActo blade to just scrape the paint off.
Obviously, I gave up after a great amount of tedious work, but not without attempting to remove the paint with rubbing alcohol. It yielded slightly better results, but I got sick of it and just primed the horse.
Fast forward to a couple weeks ago when I started work on a swap pony. I tried to strip him after sanding, again, using the alcohol. Unfortunately, as hard as I tried, none of the paint was coming up, and I just put him aside and kept grumbling "Little Stinker" under my breath. The other day, I discovered my primer was missing, and unsure when I'd be able to go get more, I decided to use the XActo method. It wasn't working out. Luckily for me, my boyfriend found the primer this morning, so after he he sits overnight tonight, he should be ready to work on (finally!).
While I was waiting for Friend Of Mine (the TB in primer) to dry, I decided to try yet another method of stripping. I have a couple of models that have some thick layers of acrylic on them, and asked on a Facebook group page what the best method would be other than letting them soak in bleach mixture. One girl told me to try nail polish remover. So I did.
I was in shock. Just a little bit and perhaps ten minutes of work got him that far. Mind you, there's about three layers of paint on that horse, plus primer. You can see the OF peeking through in the first picture. I'm definitely going to continue to use this in the future.
I have a couple of others that need to be stripped - one of them was sealed and is a little trickier, not to mention slightly bigger (Classic scale). So I might try something else with her, but for the SMs, this is going to be a go-to from now on.
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