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Hello . In the midst of waiting for some thinners to arrive to continue my Y-Wing build, my thoughts wandered to an unfinished 1/35 Dragon M1A2 SEP I'd put in the garage. I still have all the parts for it (though it would probably take me a while to discover exactly what I put together and haven't) and I figured this might be a good opportunity to use some of my greater knowledge to fix it up and finish it. Part of that process is to repaint it with sprays, masking it off for the camo scheme. Currently, the main parts are done in tri-colour NATO, which I hand-painted from the jars. I'd like to redo it in the same scheme with spray cans at some point, but I'd also like to try and restart the painting completely by resetting to the bare plastic. The current paint layer is pretty thin so spraying over probably won't make much difference to detailing, but all the same...does anyone know of a plastic-friendly, easily obtainable means of stripping the paint? I've seen some suggesting IPA, but others say its difficult to obtain. Would these methods also fog up clear parts or affect the glue (that's partly degraded in some places, which was a bit of a happy flaw in the end )? Cheers in advance

I needed to strip the old paint of a badly wore out diecast toy, not a problem, I have done it before and never had a problem. Last time I did it, I used to use Brake fluid, but, they have changed the formula to a more "green friendly" substance and the stuff will no longer touch paint. So, decided to go to extreme, Nitromors, I immersed the item in the green gunge for about 2 hours and when I pulled it out, the paint was hardly touched. I did a Google search on the stuff and found out from one of our sister forums that the company changed the formulae in 2010 and removed some harmful substances in the mix and replaced them with "friendlier alternatives". Nitromors still does strip some “household paints, but instead of taking 10 mins, the time has been upped to 30 mins, even then, not all removed. So, another site recommended Caustic Soda, available from DIY stores(but banned in USA and many other places) Its classed as Mangers Drain Cleaner or Paint stripper………..this has been removed from the shelves as DIY stores deem it too dangerous to sell, BUT, they do sell their own drain cleaner and Paint stripper and on the side of the tub/bottle….this product contains no Caustic Soda……….Health and Safety Issue………….so, next stop, Oven Cleaner, it used to work, guess what? It no longer does. Put an item for stripping in the mix 1 hour ago and the paintwork, has just started to go gooey, paint beneath, still rock hard…………..Hmmmmmmmm, so……..I came home, Ebayed Caustic Soda and I managed to find some, but wondering, when it arrives whether all harmful chemicals have been removed. Nail Varnish remover, Cellulose thinners, enamel thinners, white spirit, tried em all, none work or did the expected job I also tried to get hold of some Tippex thinners……..apparently this is also a harmful chemical and since 2006 has been a banned item worldwide, some say, Tippex is now waterbased, but if you can still get hold of original Tippex and it gets thick, use Nail Varnish Remover, not too much or it melts the container. Well, with the EEC rules and Health and Safety various hobbies are now becoming dangerous and a liability to modellers Health? Its forcing Modellers to look for alternatives and taking risks on even more dangerous chemicals to arrive at the same results as before these “friendly “ alternatives took there place. Watch out because soon, I bet you will not be able to remove chrome from plastic when an alternative solution replaces what you do now. If memory serves me well, I think that they have already had a go at enamel paint………..