So the epic self-discovery journey that was my eight (or was it nine?) posts on lead rot focused exclusively on unpainted lead figures. I also have discovered it in a few of my painted figures. I launched another operation on that front; it consisted of three days of activity over a week. Rather than blog about it in real time, I waited until I was (more or less) done and made it into a single blog post.
I used the same chemicals I did before, White Mineral Oil and Pure Gum Turpentine; see the picture for the exact brands, and an Amazon link at the end of the post. I mixed them 50/50 – eyeballed, rather than precisely measured. My plan was to scrub the figures with a toothbrush and the mixture, then let it dry and see the results. Hopefully there would not need to be much touch-up, but I knew that was probably unrealistic.
So let’s meet the four women who broke my heart:
That’s Clara from the Greywater Chronicles on the left; she is a Grenadier figure from the late ’80s. She has lead rot on the base. Beside her is Gretta, newly introduced in Issue 21; as I was playing through the last combat, I noticed her base also had lead rot. She is Ral Partha from ’78 or ’79. Next is a Grenadier thief lady from the mid or late ’90s; her rot is on the sword and sword-hand. This is of course very strange as the industry had moved away from lead then, but it is clearly on the figure. Finally we have another Ral Partha chick from the same time frame as Gretta; in fact, I purchased them both in a box of eight figures, one of which was Laine (I showed her in my other lead rot posts).
Let’s take a closer look at that last figure:
Gah! She has the worst lead rot of any of my figures. Looking at her base, which is bare on the sides, it seems that I may not have primed her (or Gretta) when I painted them in circa 1982. Not sure why, except maybe I wasn’t really worried about how she’d be in 2021 back then. Anyway, she’s in horrible shape.
To the rescue! So I mixed these two together and scrubbed with a toothbrush (no longer used, of course, for its original, intended purpose). I scrubbed the areas of rot, and also did a light scrub over the rest of the figure, as well, in case some lead bloom was lurking. I then set them aside for 4 or 5 days to dry.
This is them all scrubbed up and waiting to dry. So, four days later:
Clara looks good; the rot is gone, and the paint is still intact! There was bit of sheen to her, left over from the dried chemicals, that did not show up in this picture; they all four had this sheen.
This lady looked a LOT better, but still not great. So I put her into the mixture to soak for 2 days.
The other two were similar to Clara; so those 3 figures I ran under tap water to get rid of the residual chemicals, that I thought were causing the sheen. When dried from that water, the sheen was mostly gone.
Two days later, I removed the badly rotted chick, and she was further improved:
There has definitely been damage to the figure, but the lead bloom looks to be completely gone. No way to salvage the paint job; I’ll soak her in Simple Green and then prime her and start over, like I am doing with Laine. Maybe she’ll be a thief in GC; I hear Edges is trying to start his own guild and is on the lookout for recruits.
The other three, I painted over their bases, and then they will need just a little touch-up here and there.
This lady will also need her sword and hilt touched up. Still a little sheen, but that will be taken care of with the matte sealer. Maybe Edges will seek her out, too? Or is she with the established Thieves’ Guild? Hmm…
So this method works, with minimal damaging of existing paint jobs. That one Ral Partha lady may need a little more work after the Simple Green bath; I may have to use the wire brush to wear away some of the damage. If so, I’ll do a follow up post. But for now, I am happy to report that minor lead bloom can be treated with the chemicals without damaging the rest of the figure’s paint. You’ll have to touch up the areas the lead bloom worked on, of course.
Here are the two exact products I used, available from Amazon. If you but through these links, I get like 3% of your purchase, at no additional cost to you. Please help me keep my evil mind-control drones flying over the world! They ain’t free, ya know!