My buddy
Dave over at Ex Fide Vivo scrounged around in his (also significant) hobby storage area and unearthed a few Eldar goodies which he donated to the cause - however he will no doubt regret such a magnanimous decision at some point in the future. We have a running joke about gifted units kicking the butts of the giver going back nearly twenty years, when I gave him an old War Walker which proceeded to ANNIHILATE my army in every game thereafter, much to our amusement! The big find was an old Armorcast Tempest that has been kicking around in a box for a decade or so.
When Dave got the Tempest, it had already been through multiple owners and it had been, shall we say, extensively primered. So into a bucket of Simple Green it went. ...That was three weeks ago. Stripping the paint proved to be an archaeological process - turns out the model had five coats of primer and paint on it. Green when Dave had it, apparently it had also been blue, red, orange and white over the course of its lifetime. I'd pull it out every couple days, give it a good scrub uncovering the next layer and then back into the dip it went. Eventually went through two gallons of Simple Green just to get it to what you see here! At this point after one last good soak in a fresh bucket all that's left is the 'scraping all the nooks and crannies' step which as you can imagine is going to be a rather tedious process. Luckily, I can do that in the living room while watching a movie, as you can currently melt lead in the hobby loft. Oof!