My First Thoughts on Replicants Figures-Cleaning then Up-Painting

Replicants offers many uniquely posed 1/32 (54mm) figures. My first order included ten figures and consisted of several period pieces and a set of Apache Scouts or are they Renegades. The figures care cast in polythene. This is a relatively hard plastic and this is where I believe the problem with the clean-up of these castings lies.

Most of the castings are pretty clean of flash, but some of the figures do require clean-up of flash and parting lines. I have tried using a file to rid the casting of their flash, but this leaves more flash and stubble behind.

I found that using a blade of sharp and sturdy pocket knife to scrape the flash works well, but this is a tedious job, and only works to a point. I find it very hard to scrape away every bit of the flash. After a good scrape you are still be stuck with some stubble.

What seems to work exceptionally well, after the initial scraping, is to take a lit match or two and melt the flash stubble from the figure. I simply make a quick pass over the affected area and then rub my finger over the area to smooth the plastic down. Be careful here, you don’t want to melt the figure and you don’t want to inhale the smoke from this operation.

Once I was happy with the overall process, I scrubbed the pieces with soap and an old tooth brush. Once the pieces were dry I gave them a primer coat of grey spray paint. The grey paint will cover even the darkest of colors used on some of the castings. White did the job on lighter colored pieces, but it does take a couple coats of white on the darker castings. I was a bit worried here, that the second coat of paint might obscure some of the details on the casting.

Some say that you should start with the light colors than move to the darker. This makes good sense in that you can usually can give the brush a quick wipe and go for a darker color without having to wash the brush.