lacquer paint removal on soft plastic
lacquer paint removal on soft plastic
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Custom WorkstationHello,
I'm completely new to painting action figures so I was wondering if someone here could help me out. I was bored so I decided to paint a three inch tall action figure with movable parts and made out of soft plastic. I sprayed the whole thing with lacquer paint (no primer) and it took four to five coats for the whole thing to be covered. There are a few spots with blobs of paint so I scraped them off and now I have bunch of areas of chipped paint. Pretty much a few parts of the original action figure is showing. I actually care now about completing him to the way I want.
So I have two options that I wanna try but I would need some help in doing them and I'd also like to know which would be best
1. I wanna remove ALL of the lacquer paint. How would I do that besides scraping all the paint myself with a knife? I was hoping to maybe dip him in chemicals or something. And let's say I get all the paint off, should I use a coat or two of primer to hopefully make the paint stick??
2. Cover the revealed areas with a brush, however I only have acrylic bottles (Tamiya), not lacquer ones. The lacquer spray can I used is also Tamiya. I used metallic blue and I'm planning to use acrylic metallic blue from the same brand, they're just different kinds of paints. Is this a good idea??
Thanks to anyone taking the time to read this and for sharing your thoughts!
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Posted by
heavyarms on Tuesday, November 3, 2015
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Thanks for the feedback btw!
I know miniature artists and model workers dunk their model parts in brake fluid to remove paint, but that's a different kind of plastic, didn't know if it would just dissolve your soft plastic, but glad to hear it worked out. Use a toothbrush to get rid of the leftover gunk, see if that's less damaging than a knife. Acetone is still my go to for very fast paint removal.
•I'm sure if you just spray and sand the area a few times the gouges will be be reduced, depending on how deep they are. Usually minor flaws go away once I've primed and painted something
Lacquer is what nail polish is right? Try wiping with acetone. Don't soak the figure though. Acetone dissolves plastic, but you can remove paint from figures if you just work quickly and rinse it often.
You can paint acrylics over anything, but if you paint lacquer or enamel over acrylic paint it will dissolve it and make it sticky. Then again, you can spray a lacquer sealer over acrylics, so maybe lacquers are fine.
Generally you should stick to acrylics when painting action figures, using lacquer or enamel runs the risk that they'll react badly with the plastic, mainly soft plastics.