How to strip paint from plastic models

Eric White couldn’t find a Northeastern style caboose painted for the Lehigh Valley, but a vendor at a train show had several models in another paint scheme. In less than an hour, Eric had a model that was ready for new paint. Watch this video to see how he stripped the original paint.

VIDEO TRANSCRIPT BELOW:

Today we’re going to look at stripping the paint off of a plastic free car model. I have a Pro 2000 series steel center cupola caboose here. This is painted for South Branch. This is also what’s known as a northeastern style caboose.

And I need to get into Cornell Red to make it a proper Lee High Valley caboose. So today I’m going to start with scale coat to paint stripper.

This is generally worked well for me for just about any kind of paint that I’ve had to strip off of a model, and it’s a plastic compatible. It’s safe to use on plastic. The other thing we’re needed something to pour the paint stripper in. I’ve got a cheap disposable bread pan here, one that my wife is deemed no longer appropriate for kitchen use, and some old toothbrushes. Again, these are no longer going into anybody’s mouth as you can see.

OK, so I’m going to use the smaller of the two bread pans because the idea is to have just enough stripper to cover your model, but since I’ve used this one before, I can’t tell if it’s black paint or a whole.

I’m going to go belt and suspenders here and put it inside the other pan, so if I.

Made a horrible mistake. It won’t be as horrible as it could be.

So I need to remove the plastic glazing from the kupla here.

You see, I’ve got a.

Nice little blue glove on.

’cause you don’t want to get this on your fingers if you can help it.

It doesn’t sting much.

And you’ll notice that this is obviously been used before you can reuse this stuff. So when I’m done.

I’ll run through a coffee filter and.

Put it back in the bottle.

So it’s got a little bit of a smell to it, but it’s not terrible.

Looks like I’m gonna go all in here.

OK.

Let’s see, we got here. It’s been in the soaking bath for about 10 minutes.

OK, so you can see we’ve got some bubbling here.

So the first thing we do.

Pick it up.

Grab a toothbrush. Look at that like butter.

Well, not like butter but.

Easier than skinning a chicken.

I assume ’cause I’ve never actually skinned a chicken.

So what we want to do is get as much of this pain off of here as we can. As you can see, it sort of falls back on.

I’m just going to keep dipping the brush into the.

Stripper Minnesota push it off.

Now it’s really sticking there on the corners.

But that’s probably not going to matter too much. Obviously this will get a coat of primer.

I’m going to make a few modifications to the model.

Sometimes the stripper will help loosen glue joints too. I don’t think that’s going to be happening here, but.

I’m not sure if this smokejack is really what I want have to look at my reference photos and see.

OK, so this is basically where I want it to be.

Next thing to do is to go wash all this off just using your typical soapy water stuff so.

What is the water here?

With dishwashing liquid.

There we go.

And we’re done.

We’ve got a little bit of silver here and here.

I can either pick that off with a toothpick or just leave it and it’ll be alright.

Maybe you can see the South Branch lettering again. Once I primer this, it’ll be gone.

And here’s the kupalo.

So in less than an hour we now have a non decorated model.

Wasn’t that long and we can use this stuff again? I gotta do.

Pour it back in.

There we go.

And you can see how the filter is catching all our paint chips so.

The bottle would be good to go for another model.

So sometimes you can’t find the exact model you want, but with about an hour of your time and a little bit of paint stripper you get closer to the models you want for your layout.