Mold on Minis?? - Advice Wanted

[Inarah]

The powdery white stuff in the 2nd picture looks suspiciously like the mold we had growing all over our basement a couple of years ago before we remodeled and had it cleaned out.  It was on walls, furniture, books, etc.  It likes a damp poorly ventilated area.  I had to go over everything with alcohol wipes.  

[Bruunwald]

I've never had visible mold on a mini, but those Woodland Scenics styrofoam sheets (the older kind for basing whole layouts, not the XPS stuff) sometimes come out of the package smelling of mildew. I have had situations where the mini was stored alongside those sheets, and then eventually the mini smelled faintly of mildew, as well. You couldn't see it, but you could smell it.

[MoonglowMinis]

On 1/25/2022 at 11:02 AM, Inarah said:

The powdery white stuff in the 2nd picture looks suspiciously like the mold we had growing all over our basement a couple of years ago before we remodeled and had it cleaned out.  It was on walls, furniture, books, etc.  It likes a damp poorly ventilated area.  I had to go over everything with alcohol wipes.  

If it is mold, I suspect it came from the old box of baking soda I had been using. Maybe coupled with the poorly ventilated sun room I used to paint in. But it's still strange, because baking soda is often used to TREAT mold. Bizarre that it could be the culprit, but it's the only common denominator.

Starting to research ways to treat mold without damaging the paint job.  I've sealed all the minis, but I really only focused on high-touch areas so they're not perfectly protected.  Plus the mold seems to be coming from underneath the paint, so who knows what that means in terms of treating it.

Some kind of spray would be ideal. Next best, a soak. Trying to avoid anything with a rubbing action.

[SotF]

2 hours ago, MoonglowMinis said:

If it is mold, I suspect it came from the old box of baking soda I had been using. Maybe coupled with the poorly ventilated sun room I used to paint in. But it's still strange, because baking soda is often used to TREAT mold. Bizarre that it could be the culprit, but it's the only common denominator.

Starting to research ways to treat mold without damaging the paint job.  I've sealed all the minis, but I really only focused on high-touch areas so they're not perfectly protected.  Plus the mold seems to be coming from underneath the paint, so who knows what that means in terms of treating it.

Some kind of spray would be ideal. Next best, a soak. Trying to avoid anything with a rubbing action.

Most of the time, the baking soda use to treat mold is because it helps deal with moisture and such in the air, same reason it's occasionally used in refrigerators to deal with smells by trapping water there. If it's left open for to long, it reaches the saturation point and is a place where mold grows as well.

 

It's a situation where you probably ought to do an air and surface test in the room because it normally means you might have a trickle leak somewhere and a lot worse of a mold problem than you're seeing...a friend's apartment kind of did that and they found the walls had ended up full of it, meaning he ended up moving and lose a lot of things because of it.

[MoonglowMinis]

2 minutes ago, SotF said:

It's a situation where you probably ought to do an air and surface test in the room because it normally means you might have a trickle leak somewhere and a lot worse of a mold problem than you're seeing...a friend's apartment kind of did that and they found the walls had ended up full of it, meaning he ended up moving and lose a lot of things because of it.

Fortunately, that was at my old apartment and I have since moved.  But obviously I've carried some mold with me and I just want to figure out a way to treat the minis without destroying the hours of work put into them over several years.

[SotF]

41 minutes ago, MoonglowMinis said:

Fortunately, that was at my old apartment and I have since moved.  But obviously I've carried some mold with me and I just want to figure out a way to treat the minis without destroying the hours of work put into them over several years.

Unfortunately, you're probably going to need to strip and repaint them or you'll likely have a lot more issues there

[The Steve]

On 9/21/2021 at 10:35 AM, MoonglowMinis said:

Fortunately we just moved out of that apartment. New home has better climate control.  Hoping it won't be a problem going forward.
 

It seems it's only affecting the baking soda, but I can't understand why. Or why no one else has experienced this. I know I'm not the only one using baking soda and super glue.
 

Fortunately they are all sealed.  Unfortunately, the mold seems to be growing beneath the seal...

 

what is boxing soap? that is the only think out the ordiary I see here that maye has a decificiding factor I see

[MoonglowMinis]

On 1/29/2022 at 12:18 PM, The Steve said:

what is boxing soap? that is the only think out the ordiary I see here that maye has a decificiding factor I see

Baking Soda is also known as Sodium Bicarbonate or Bicarbonate of Soda, is a powdery chemical usually used for baking or cleaning. It also has a reaction to Super Glue that causes it to instantly harden. People often use that trick to instantly bond parts of their minis, or to quickly fill gaps.  I had seen someone suggest using it as a basing texture and ran with that, making it my primary basing method.  Turns out my Baking Soda was harboring something else.

[The Steve]

I use water and cyanoacrylate and water some times

[ksbsnowowl]

Apparently this is a known issue with using baking soda. Here is a 2018 video that briefly discussed it at the 3:14 mark. 
 

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=KoxYU0otCHI&t=194s