Hobbyist fail, Dettol win!

Last year I posted about a test Necron warrior I painted, to see how easily I could make the process a “production line”, to get my planned 40K Necron army painted as quickly as possible. My plan was to use Plasti-cote silver spray, followed by Citadel ink washes (click on the link to see the results).

The experiment was a success (I can get the amount of time required to paint an individual miniature down to about 45 minutes), but also a failure (note the “last year” at the beginning of this post!). However, I have now finished my first squad of Necron warriors, and a Necron Lord:

It’s not all good news, unfortunately. I built three Necron destroyers, but managed to screw up the spray coat of silver: either I didn’t shake the can enough, or the air was too wet, but whatever the reason, the destroyers came up covered in a thick blobby coat of silver, and looked awful.

Necron destroyer
Necron destroyer

So based on recommendations from my friend Mark, I performed an experiment: I gave one of the models a week-long dip in Dettol (a British household detergent):

Dettol bath!
Dettol bath!

After a wash and scrub with an old toothbrush, the final result was an – almost – stripped model:

Stripped destroyer
Stripped destroyer

There is still a silvery coating on top of the bare plastic, but the lumpy crud has gone, and it should be good for another coat, and painting.

One thought on “Hobbyist fail, Dettol win!”

  1. Hey gaven
    The site is a great read all round, I dont know much about 40k style gaming except what I read on the blogs and in the mags. The silver spray thing was really interesting, the finished article looked damn fine. About the detol, never heard of that before! I use acetone mainly because I work in an industry where it’s readily available, Im used to handling it and it’s quick. I have had the problem with the paint leaving a fine film after cleaning, been using two stages, 1 dip to get rid of the majority of paint (I use an old tooth brush as the bristles dont cause much damage) and a second dip in nice new clean acetone/detol. I gotta try the detol next time though……..

    seeya dave

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