Making paint easy to put in the airbrush

Bryn Crandell
Not a bad idea. Only issue I could see is the round glass balls preventing good flow out the tip. How well does it work?

Wim van der Luijt
I've also put them in all of my Vallejo bottles. Have seen this only once, nothing a gentle shake couldn't cure

Spanjaard
not a bad idea.

Rex
here is where you get the bottles,,,,,and other mixing products
modelpaintsol.com/

I am more a fan of glass bottles with the right caps,,,,but, a lot of people like the "Vallejo style" of bottles,,,,,this guy's stuff should work for them.

Wim van der Luijt
@rex: $4 for 5 bottles is pretty steep, I got 50 from China for the same price and the glass beads were also very cheap Aliexpress.com is your friend

Rex
just a link, Wim. I am sure that there are many places to beat those prices. But, on other parts of that site, he shows how to use things. That is free info.

I pay a lot of the glass bottles and the separate caps. And I use Hematite beads (Can't shatter, and can't rust)

As for the worries about plugging,,,,,,I never turn the Vallejo bottles upside down and squeeze them, there is no control that way. You just shake the heck out of your paint, tip the bottle to the side, and gently dispense the paint by drops. The glass bead won't ever get up there to plug anything up then.

And as Wim and I can both testify, it is perfectly all right to shake paint,,,,,,,as long as your bottle system is set up for it. Model Master jars don't come with caps that allow shaking and long paint life. Change the caps, or use any poly bottle and you get the "drip-down" that is needed for long paint life.

Chris Greathouse
+1 Thanks for the info! I bought a bunch of stainless steel agitators... will those rust? And buying eye dropper bottles and transferring shouldn't be too hard.

Wim van der Luijt
rust? no....make sure there us no residual grease from the manufacturing on them though

Daniel Klink
Very clean and proper color organisation.. But typical gerrrman i have to note that the colorrrs are not in the correct numerrical order!!!😉

Wim van der Luijt
All down to my anarchist Dutch spirit 😄

Gluefinger
Hi Wim, I am surprised to learn you add thinner to the bottle. I have tried that but found that with some makes of paint, this leads to the mixture drying up fast and/or changing chemical properties. Did you have any problems with this, especially with the Revell paints?

Wim van der Luijt
no problems at all. But I cannot say how it will work with the original containers

Gluefinger
Good point! It never came to my mind it could be the container creating the problem...

Wim van der Luijt
those revell cubes really suck!

Richmond
Greta idea - Is there any particular difference between the glass and the stainless agitators

Wim van der Luijt
I could get my hands on glass easily, it's inert and that seemed important to me. I would be concerned about grease residu on stainless (from the machining) so I went with glass

Valters Orlovskis
If using stainless ball instead of glass one You can use a magnet to keep ball from falling down to allow paint flooding when filling airbrush. And, in addition, You can use strong and small magnets to made some kind of stand for bottles - magnets will attract metallic balls and keep bottles stable in place.

Lex Jassies
Chris Greathouse, the stainless steel balls won't rust. I use 6mm bearing balls ordered from Aliexpress, 100 balls for €1,75, for several years now. But what Wim stated, clean/degrease your balls first. No pun intended 🙂

Treehugger
I think having mixed paint in separate bottles is a good idea, if you need to spray a lot of paint. Otherwise I think a 10ml glass jar is ok. After mixing my paint in my 10ml jar and pouring the contents into my airbrush, I quickly clean the jar and wipe it dry. I also like filling the jater with water to dry remove any fibers that maybe came from the tissue paper I used to wipe the mixing jar dry. Then I place the mixing jar, upside down on the table.

I use a tea sift, to try catch flakes of paint off Vallejo primer and paint bottles, there clearly are flakes coming off the primer bottles. I then quickly try clean the most of the paint in the sift with semi-lint free tissue paper (but has loose fibers), and then I place the sift into a container of water, so I don't have to pause my work to fully clean the sift, I can do that later.

Once you notice that your regular loose Vallejo paint bottle aren't flowing when you press the bottle holding it downwards, be careful and avoid pressing too hard, ELSE, you risk the loose top nozzle popping out and paint pouring out. 😄

I have both stainless steel balls, and glass spheres. I initially bought a big bag of glass spheres, and I am very happy with that. I only boght the metal ones later on to try them out. 🙂

Wim van der Luijt
@Valters Orlovskis: Not all stainless is magnetic 😄 so your mileage may vary