Well, I declare this a success!
Today the postman was kind enough to deliver me some figures that I had bought on Facebook. They were partially painted and the glue was giving up, definitely candidates for stripping. Given I was home alone with the kids today I decided to experiment. I have an ultrasonic cleaner to use for my airbrush, if you use an airbrush and don't own one, go and buy one! It makes keeping the needles etc clean, incredibly easy. Plenty of reviews etc out there for the so I won't go into too much detail.
For anyone who doesn't know, an ultrasonic cleaner is essentially a water bath that has sonic 'Waves' pulsing through it. These waves cause tiny bubbles to form on the surfaces of any object placed in the bath, as they pop they remove dirt etc from the surface. I mentioned using it instead of a toothbrush during paint stripping to a friend the other day and he tried it. Got some shiny figures after 2hrs in the cleaner and no scrubbing required. I thought I'd go a step further though...
Changing the water in these things is a bit of a pain as no one seemed to realise that getting the water out would be far easier if there was a spout... Or if the plug disconnected... Preferably both! However I reasoned that as the cleaning process uses sonic waves it should be possible to put a jar in with a matching water level and still get the cleaning effect. Which means you should be able to put the figures in with cleaning fluid...
So I tried it. The glass ramekin has today's test liquid: Dettol. No soaking overnight etc, just straight into the liquid and into the cleaner.
The photo was taken about half way through so the Dettol has discoloured with the paint. As a control element I have put the same number of figures in another ramekin of Dettol and left it to soak.
So after about 50mins in the cleaner I took them out to check progress (okay I peaked earlier too). This was the result.
As you can see, most of the paint is gone already and I suspect I could have taken a toothbrush to them at this point and finished them off but that wasn't the point. One thing I did notice at this point is the glue that had been in the figures kept it's paint colour. Made it easy to spot and flick off with a blade though. Back in they went!
After another 40mins I decided to stop and finish the test. An hour and a half seemed like a good length of time and far quicker than normal.
Pretty damned clean. Something I should point out here is that I got a bit carried away and used some water to start cleaning the Dettol off. Anyone who has used Dettol as a stripper knows this is fatal to the process as it combines with the Dettol and acrylic to create a horrible gloop that is nearly impossible to remove. This didn't occur... However I wasn't going to take chances and quickly switched to very soapy water to continue.
Here is a close up of an arm to show the paint is gone after a rinse in the water, no scrubbing.
And here is a tiny bit of paint caught in the back crease.
Which came out with the flick of a cocktail stick, no effort required.
This figure was the 'worst' for having paint still on it.
And after passing a toothbrush over it a couple of times gently...
The colour in the belt is a bubble not paint.
So as you can see, after an hour and a half and practically no effort I have some shiny new figures!
But what about the control pot I hear you ask?
This was after the same amount of time and a proper scrub with a brush. It also started to turn into the dreaded gloop so I popped it back in the Dettol. I shall run them through the cleaner later.
If I get the chance tomorrow I shall try the same process with fairy power cleaner.
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