I may have painted myself into a corner: an airbrushed custom-mixed shade of Tamiya acrylic gray has somehow laid itself down in varying shades of light and dark. Perhaps the paints (white and dark grey) separated in my mixing jar and gotten deposited in my airbrush cup from different layers. Anyway, some pieces are gong to need to be repainted and I am worried about excessive buildup of paint on the small details if I spray too many times. Already with just one coat on the ship railings I can see them get fat. Three coats (original, bad one, and respray) will be too much, I fear. My question is: Is there some way to strip off dried acrylic paint from heavily PE'ed styrene plastic without casing damage to the plastic or making the CA'ed PE come loose? Eeeek, Stephen

I have seen it done on armor with ovencleaner on the model and sealed in a plasticbag for a day - clean with water and a stiff brush .... But my guess is, that a stiff brush would be very bad on your model ?

If you use an airbrush and not a rattlecan, You should be able to give it a fine coat/highlight to even out the colors - and is a little variation that noticable when its weathered ?

Cheers/Jan

Dear Jan: Yes, it looks like I will need to upgrade my airbrush skills. I wonder: have you or anyone else tried using an ultrasonic bath to strip acrylic paint from plastic? If I had one, I'd try it. Thanks,
Stephen

I have tried ultrasonics to clean my airbrush, but haven´t been too impressed, might come from no using the right cleaning agent.

But it might allso make all your PE pop right of the model ...

Try soaking in Windex for a day or two. Should remove almost all of the paint.

After testing the Oven cleaner & bag method:

+ After a day Tamiya acrylics came of just fine

+ I didn't need to brush, just rinse (I used a showerhead)

+ The stuff I used seems to eat the glue I used, some of the smaller parts got loose. Use a sieve or wash over a bucket.

+ The glue used was IIRC Humbrol glue, the one in the glass with an applicator brush and well dried (multiple weeks)

+ Same for the color, had been dry for weeks