Dettol V Mr Muscle!!!!!

I know many of you have followed the rather pleasant/unpleasant* saga of Ray and Fran's brush with Dettol. I was interested for two reasons, first I have a lot of lead requiring paint removal and second, I get a kick out of either Fran or Ray suffering, it's a weakness of mine.

First up Mr. Muscle. Cath had tried a can from the back of the cupboard that she has stopped feeding me as I seemed to thrive on it. I know this as I heard her mutter something like "It's as shite on these buggers as it is my old man" So armed with a fresh can and latex gloves I grabbed a small handful of figures popped them into a takeaway plastic box and let rip. After about twenty seconds I stopped coughing and another ten minutes regained my sight. Not to self, don't bend over target whilst spraying! On the tin it says don't leave for more than a hour, so next day I opened the tub and took a few figures out of the gunky liquid and started rinsed. Some of the paint came right off. Next was a sit down with toothbrush and tweezers. With about 10-15 minutes a figure you tended to get most of it off with the occasional bit that was hard to remove and would need a second session. Not really as fast as I need it to be and the amount of chemicals leaves me worried about the local water table if I crack on through the lot (plus I am supposed to make some money off this you know).

Marks out of 10? A charitable 6.

 

 

Anyone who has followed the experiences of Fran and Ray will be looking at the picture above and assume Mum has already washed the babies face and no it's not chocolate on the face, it's scar tissue!! This ticks a few boxes from the off. A nice sized bottle costs just £1 and as it's not a spray can I don't get blow back on first use!!!

Again I just chucked a load of figures in and left overnight. Come the following day I checked the tub and looking from below it looked like the paint had just melted off some of the figures. I opened up for a quick inspection and after twenty seconds I could see again and after ten more minutes I stopped coughing. Oh well at least I got a bit of variety. Given that Cath was standing over me most of the time no gunk found it's way around the taps, kettle or Jaccobs**

Turned out the paint had not come off the figures in so much as turned into a suit one size too big. We quickly found using a brush on the figures just annoyed the gunk causing it to stick back tight on the figure. But using tweezers it's possible depending on the paint and primer) to peel great chunks off, indeed I have managed to peel one figure of all it's paint in just one piece.

I did leave some figures in for four plus days and the Dettol continues to strip the paint and some of the metal off making it even easier to get some of the paint off.

 

I have to say whilst the Dettol is truly gag worthy and leaves both the figures and your paws stinking of the stuff I much prefer the Dettol. So I can confidently predict my house will continue to smell like the plagues only just left the house for the next month or maybe two. Anyone visiting over the Christmas period will be introduced to the new game of strip the figure.

 

Here is a random selection from the twenty plus that are stripped, only a few hundred to go. So between prepping figures for the Painting Challenge *** and stripping lots of figures I am getting stuff painted.... honest.

*Delete as desired.

**

*** Now have 8 Regiments of Cavalry and 10 of infantry cleaned and primed in 6mm, the infantry are Italian and cavalry is French. I also have assembled six Japanese 28mm WWII and my 28mm Samaria that arrived a couple of days ago. Should get these primed over the weekend.