After hearing mixed information about Pine-Sol destroying/stripping Kato shells, and Chameleon being unavailable, I decided to test Pine-Sol on a Kato GP35 shell painted WP. Despite being slow,
Pine-Sol worked very well on the WP scheme considering there were three different layers of color in some places (black, orange, and silver). I've since extended my use of Pine-Sol to 1 Atlas GP38, 3
Kato SD40s, and another WP GP35 and have had no problems with the shells whatsoever. One of the SD40s was painted CN, and it virtually stripped as easy as an Athearn. Another was BN, which took about
three days and a CNW SD40 took nearly as long. In other words, the darker colors seem to strip easier than the lighter shades for some reason.
I'm always careful with the Pine-Sol, but if you submerge the entire shell and scrub it very regularly (4 or more times a day) to cut down on the soaking time you should have no problem. Whenever I
use Pine-Sol, I do get a chalky residue on the plastic, but this seems to rub off with handling, and shouldn't interfere with the paint.
Jason K.
Rules for stripping Katos:
1. Get undecorateds.
2. If you can't find undecorateds, keep trying.
3. If you still can't find 'em, try a blasting booth.
4. Don't have a blasting booth? Find some Chameleon.
5. Can't find Chameleon? Try Pine-Sol (name brand, original formula ONLY).
6. Not happy with the result? See rule #1...
Andy