Two years in paintstripper!

I bought some Neomics fantasy football goblins in, I think, mid-2010. I basecoated them with paint-on white primer, but overdid it somewhat. This goblin shows where I scraped away some of the excess paint on the model's undersides, and also demonstrates many areas of excess build-up. Looking at this picture now, I'm amazed I didn't strip this one.

Some of the miniatures had too much paint on them to simply scrape off, so I put five of them in a bath of Dettol, and left them.

For over two years.

The longer I left them, the less enthused I was about opening that Pandora's tub. Today- for some reason- I decided it was time...

External examination reveals an opaque liquid with dense sediments.

I removed the lid, and wafted the air cautiously (as I was taught in high school science)- still smells like Dettol. I ran a hot tap into it to clear the Dettol out, which revealed a sludge of miniatures, paint, and softened Slottabases.

I scrubbed with an old toothbrush, which removed the worst of the sludge, but after a while it was just spreading the goo around. It has this wonderful tacky, stringy quality to it.

These are rubbery and soft now

After several minutes of scrubbing

Luckily, I had a small amount of mineral turpentine around, and that helped clean off most of the rest. I'm going to leave them to dry, then do the turps thing again to clear off any residual muck. Then I'll be back at square one! Maybe I should strip that figure above...

After mineral turps

Don't know what it's done to my hands, let alone the local drainage system...