Finecast - getting soft after trying to free it from paint

Hi

The title pretty much sums my whole problem up. I bought some eldar off ebay for very cheap and wasn't aware there were finecast minis in the bundle. The models were so poorly painted I had to de-color them to get just a chance of making them look good after some treatment. I was told a ph-neutral hand sanitizer was the go to thing (simple green not available here, but I think it's something similar in formula).

Tried it on small parts through dipping minis heads in it and then rubbing them on a piece of cloth... worked very well on all materials: plastic metal and finecast.

Then I soaked the minis in overnight and today: The finecast was all wobbly. The colour went off quite easily and the material didn't lose any detail, but it's absolutely wobbly... I'm not sure if that will go away once the softening things in the sanitizer evaporated completely, but it's really putting me off... I think I just ruined 12 aspect warriors...

Do you have any experience with this or ideas on how to get those models stiff again?

Resin is porous, so I suspect some of the cleaner has snuck inside the models... I would soak them in cold water (probably overnight) and then let them air dry for at least 2 days... It may just need evaporation to clear the moisture

Stick 'em in the microwave. That should dry them out!








PS - DON'T stick them in the microwave!

Thanks, Massaen, I'll try that.

From my understanding of the chemistry of such things there's exactly 2 possibilities:

1. What you said works and they're good again.

2. The Cleaner sucked some components out of the resin and absorbed them, thus making it a permanent issue I most likely cannot fix. Only option then would be to drill them out, pin them so the army and legs done wobble, cut off everything else that's too wobbly to work with and replace / resculpt the parts

After good long soaks in simple green, I usually find my resin to be more than a little flexible. It always returns to normal after drying out. I can't imagine that alcohol (that's the only active ingredient in hand sanitizer) would have a worse effect than degreaser. I'll be interested to hear if I'm wrong though. Good luck!

I've heard this happen with a lot of kits- including the FW stuff in many cases, going so far as paint slouching off due to the fluid still seeping out.

As has already been stated I think the trick is to just leave it in a dry place for a few days until you can be sure there is no fluid left in there...