Contrary to popular belief Acetone is not a skin-melting acid of destruction and is one of the safer, simplest of keytones. Your body actually produces this every day and you excrete it, how about that? Acetone is generally safe to touch tho it will dry your skin out quickly removing essentials oils while it evaporates. It has no carcinogenic or mutagenic (yes that's a real word) effects on your body so you don't need to wear an Organic Vapor Respirator mask like you would with spraypaint. Here we'll be using this chemical in the process of customizing action figures. You can buy acetone at any hardware shop like Ace/Lowes/Home Depot or from Walmarts paint department.

Before we start here are some points to remember.

1: Acetone is highly FLAMMABLE. Don't smoke, run your hair dryer, hot glue gun, or anything fire/heat related near it. The canister you buy will have similar warning labels on it so heed them. DO NOT USE NEAR AN OPEN FLAME!

2: Work in a well-ventilated area so the fumes don't build up. Acetone evaporates quickly and it's the vapors that are flammable. This can cause flash-bursts if there's a static discharge around paper towels soaked with acetone so you should soak them in water and flush them instead of throwing them away.

3: Never soak a figure or any part of it in acetone no matter what you read on any message board! This will destroy the plastic and some individuals like to troll customizers by suggesting they soak the figure. You'll end up with a melted mess if you do. Also watch out for clear plastic. Some can be wiped clean with acetone but with acrylic and others it will dry it out and make it crumble. As a rule of thumb I don't use acetone on clear plastic as I noticed it crumbles the light-piping in Transformers figures.



Ok! Here's the deal. Acetone is used for two main things in customizing: Removing paint and 'knocking down' plastic. Removing paint is self-explanatory but knocking down plastic literally means to melt the surface of plastic back down. You know when you sand the surface of softer PVC plastic can get fuzzy? Well acetone is what you need to smooth out the surface before you start painting. Now let's get to the guide.

SMOOTHING PLASTIC