So, I've seen lots of people mention giving their wave 1 TIEs a wash to give them a hint of ESB/ROTJ blue.

I decided to go the other way around and will be repainting my future imperial ships in ANH white/light grey. While not technically accurate to how they looked in ROTJ, I do prefer the look of the white color and I like how the consistent colour scheme ties the fleet together.

After seeing Jay Adan's success in stripping his A-wing, I dunked my 3 TIE interceptors that I got from various Kessel Run events in simple green for a couple of days and scrubbed them with a wire brush. I managed to get most of the paint off but the remaining paint didn't really get in the way of the white primer I sprayed it with. I followed up with a wash of GW badab black and applied a drybrush of GWs new white dry pigment. The solar panels were simply painted chaos black. I repainted the canopy in chaos black and adeptus battlegrey. I finished off by sealing it with Testors dullcote and going over the black canopy glass again with Vallejo satin varnish.

In comparing the finished product to the original TIEs, I did notice that the stock paint job on the TIEs was quite heavy and had obscured some of the detail.

And here they are!

Here's how they look with the rest of the fleet

That looks like a really nice paint job. I too prefer the grey over the blue seen in ROTJ and other sources… now with that being said, I am MORE envious of your two Avengers.

Those look really good. :) I prefer the blue, but I also don't like how my interceptor doesn't really blend with the rest of my IMPs. 

I've always wanted to try painting my ships but I don't know how to go about it or if I'd be able to pull it off. 

This is really cool. One of my friends just mentioned this thread to me so I had to make sure that I found it!

I love how the ships came out. It's always nice to have something a little difference from everybody else. I was suprised that you used a wire brush. I could see going with a toothbrush, but I would have assumed that wire would scratch up the plastic.

Even after 3 days, the simple green didn't soften up the paint as much as the thinner you used. The plastic stood up the the wire brush pretty well. I tried to be gentle at first. It scratched it a little but was not noticable after the primer coat.

I've used a similar technique for years well repainting N-scale boxers and other rolling stock. It works pretty good but I would be afraid to use a wire brush and prefer old tooth brushes. I plan on repainting my interceptors and a couple are going to get the red recognition strip along the wings.

SleeplessKnight said:

I've never tried Simple Green before. I've been meaning to, but it does sound like a milder stripper than most. That makes sense since it's just a cleaning product.

How did you get those interceptors and the crazy looking ones on the far left?  I've been having trouble even finding a release date on them, let alone a local place for organized play (if that is how you got them).

I think he said he won the TIE Interceptors at 3 different Kessel run events and the other two are converted TIE Advances…I think there called TIE Avengers