Good Morning Jungle Painters,
today there is another Material Unpacked for you.
This time we are at number 67 of our reviews.
This review is definatly connected to one of our articles named "Room for Freshness".
Roman got pretty annoyed by having to fight some bottles of colour to give a drop of good mixed colour. Maybe you know the problem: If you are too lazy to shake the bottle like a madman you might first just recive a big drop of the colour binder on your wetpalette. Not a good mixed colour.
We encountered these problems extremly with Scale75 colours (find a review here), but nonetheless there are also many other brands that you might be confronted with this issue. It often happens if you do not use a specific colour to often.
Well, what can you do?
Not much, honestly. Shake it like a madman, BUT make your shaking more relaxing with
stainless steel agitating balls.
Roman was sick of not having them and took an afternoon to put one in every single bottle of his.
Prepare yourself with a tissue, a blade and a nipper. - tools every miniature painter should have in his collection of tools. It might get dirty as this is also a good moment to do the rare work of cleaning up the top of your paintbottles- just in case they are as messed up as Romans.
Roman started by using the nipper to remove the head of the bottle. If it is a little stuck go back to your black and carefully try to pry open it and then get back to the nipper again. Well, lesson learned, try to wear an old shirt or a Massive Voodoo Workskirt to not get your clothes messed up with flying colour.
When the pot is open feel free to dump one agigator ball inside. It is important that you use stainless steel ones. If you use others they might rust and mess up your colours.
You can get the stainless steel ones in huge numbers at PK-Pro for a fair price.
Blubb!
Recently during Roman's painting class in the Netherlands he found also Agigator Balls made out of glass by Scenery Workshop. They are not as heavy as the stainless steel ones, but work too.
Well, if your bottles look like this sometimes you might want to take some time to clean them up.
It took a little while but painting is more fun when you shake your colours with agigator balls and cleaned up paint bottles. Believe us!
Keep on happy painting!
Posts
Did the same last week with my 2 yo son.
When I shake the bottle I feel the steel balls. Such a pleasant feeling
NIpper? Is that the direct German-English translation? :D
Am happy with all the agitators that I received in the last Bananalicious contest, and have bought a ton more for all my colors.
Side tip.. once inside, and the lid on tight.. give them to little kids to shake. They will think it is a game and making music, which keeps them occupied! Mixed paints and occupied kids.. Win/Win!!!
The agitator balls are GREAT for my scale75 paints. I'm sure they have other uses, but paints that separate easily are my prime candidates.
Since the use of agitators is something I've wrote about recently and I also follow Massive Voodoo with interest, I figgered I'd chime in here. I've used metal agitators before - not stainless steel per se, but zinc-plated metal BB's that in the end turned out to be only non-reactive zinc-plated with a nickel core. Once the zinc wore away over years of repeated shaking (I've got some acrylic paints 20+ years old at this point), the interior core started to corrode inside my bottles and make a big mess.
I've learned my lesson and now use ONLY non-reactive, non-degrading agitators in my bottles. No bits of sprue, no white metal tabs, no BB's, no plated metal core beads - only inert weighted glass beads. I can get them inexpensively on sale at local craft stores by buying lengths of 6mm glass bead necklace, usually at half price using a store coupon.
I, too, put them in every bottle, clean up the bottle tip and opening, and mark the cap with a spot of color as a ritual whenever I buy a new bottle of paint, or periodically when I shake and check my collection.
Here's the post from my own blog: http://tinweasel.blogspot.com/2015/01/hobbytiptuesday-agitators.html
Hematite beads are readily available in most hobby locations that do any kind of jewelry making aisle (I go to a store called Michaels here in Canada) They are chemically neutral heavy and cheap.
Just make sure whatever agitator you buy is large enough that it wont become lodged in the neck of your dropper bottle.
Die Kugeln habe ich jetzt auch in die meisten meiner Acrylfarben gefüllt und so habe ich gemerkt, dass ich viel zu viele Farben habe: Gut 180 Kugeln verschwanden in den Töpfchen. Oo ;)
Mit den Kugeln geht das Aufmischen schneller und gründlicher, wirklich gut. Gerade meine neuen P3 Farben, wo man trotz langem Schütteln immer noch Verfärbungen im Pott sah, werden jetzt endlich richtig durchgemischt. Übrigens Roman, falls Du sie noch nicht kennst, guck Dir die Formula P3 Farben mal an. Die sah ich in einem YT-Tutorial und in deren Farbpalette tummeln sich echt coole Farbtöne.
LG,
Erik (vlt. sehen wir uns auf der Painting Crusade in Brüssel)
Tinweasel fyi stainless steel is not corosive and way better than glass which could broke and is too light! stainless steel is the best and it's less expensive than glass