Brad thanks for the link. Looks like there are few Staddens on Ebay. Are most Staddens out there painted by collectors? How can you tell if it's an original paint job? How do you remove paint from a figure? If I repaint something , I usually just prime over the old paint job.
Good questions all-let me make sure I don't leave any out--
Are most Staddens out there painted by collectors?
In my experience, yes, I think I've come across one or two that were sold painted from the factory, but they had such paint loss over the years that there was no value in keeping them unchanged.
How can you tell if it's an original paint job?
The standard factory paint had a distinctive style, and if you can get a hold of copies of the old "Traditions" magazine--was it Roy Belmont-Maitland who published it?--there were often color pages in the magazines that showed figures painted in the shop. There was also a hardbound book published that took many of those pages and collected them as an overview of the line.
The style was to apply shading, but it was very crude, with little or no blending to the highlights, sometimes with outlining. It was such that you could say, once you've seen examples, that you couldn't describe it, but you know it when you see it.
I understand that there were figures painted by Mr. Stadden himself, or his son, too, I think, or other noted painters, which were of much better quality. I think Trooper in the UK could enlighten us more on that question, too, he's posted a lot of good info on other threads here, when it came to discussing Stadden figures.
How do you remove the paint?
I use oven cleaner, whose active ingredient is lye. If you do, you'd want to use it in a well-ventilated area, and use gloves. But my method is to place the figures in an old glass baking dish, then to spray a good coating of oven cleaner on them, and let them sit for a couple of minutes. The lye will dissolve most of the paint in one pass, and also most glues that may have been used on a figure to attach various pieces. That's not a problem for me, since I do this to start from scratch, anyway.
After a couple of minutes, the cleaner's foam starts to show color from the paint it's eating away, and I will immerse the figure in water and scrub it with an old toothbrush. Most, if not all of the old paint will come off with one pass, but otherwise, repeat the process until it's all off. I dry the figure with paper toweling, and let it stand to dry.
I use toothpicks, pins and old dental tools to scrape away gently any paint that has settled into engraved details. (I think toothpicks are called cocktail sticks, in the Commonwealth.)
Other painters here will have other cleaners that they use, and there's no right or wrong one, necessarily. I just happen to use oven cleaner.
I hope anyone else here in the forum who has more info about Staddens or cleaning figures for painting will add it here, too, and fill in any areas I've left open or correct me if my info is wrong.
Prost!
Brad
Just kidding. You are right about ebay, the shows & auctions.... muarerail.com has auctions going on at the end of the week up the block from my in-laws in Phoenixville, but all old stuff. Ebay/auctions/shows are like a box of chocolates...
