My Birthday Present

Its my birthday and I wants it.

Saturday was my birthday. I decided a week before that I would buy myself a present. Its not often that you turn 64 and have a song about it. What I wanted was a foam cutting table. What I needed was an ultrasonic cleaner. It is not often, but there are times when I need to clean minis. Occasionally, it is when I buy another person's figures and I want to repaint them, but more often, it is due to a catastrophic painting disaster, usually involving bad primer. A voice inside of me said, "no, don't do it!", but I had a can of almost full automotive primer that was sitting far in the back of the shelf in the garage. I don't know if it was the primer itself, or that the temperature in the garage was suboptimal, but the result was at least 50+ guys coated with a very grainy primer. I soaked them for a week in turpentine and then for about five days in Simple Green. Even with an old tooth brush it did not get much of the primer off. So, I went to a local discount tool store called Harbor Freight and got an ultrasonic cleaner. 

  

These used to be very expensive, but are now more affordable. It was well rated by the miniatures community. I did a test run and it definitely sped up the cleaning process. I still needed to go over a few with the tooth brush again, but for the most part, I am pretty happy with how well they got cleaned. I think there seems to be a correlation between the type metal and the ease of cleaning. Essex miniatures, which are of a softer metal, seemed to resist cleaning more than compared to either Museum Miniatures or Khurasan Miniatures. Both have harder metal. For my next cleaning project I bought a whole bunch of 3mm WWII and modern miniatures awhile ago, and want to repaint those.