I don't often paint with metallic paints, but I do own them. I had to use some sort of silver of sorts to paint the engine. I popped open a bottle of Tamiya X-32 Titanium Silver and the pigment was all gunked up at the bottom of the bottle. Not cool.
I stirred that pot with a toothpick for a good 5 minutes before getting all the crap stirred back in. I wasn't thrilled with this. At least once it was done, I was able to thin it fine and get it sprayed with problems. A+
So this page is going to be my new method of dealing with keeping pots mixed! This will work for any paints (assuming you can find a glass bead/marble/whatever small enough to fit into the pot of paint you have).
Materials Required
As shown in the photo below, the materials you're going to need for this project are:
- 1 bottle of paint
- 1 empty bottle to transfer paint to (if you're going to be thinning it)
- A paper towel or napkin
- Some glass beads or marbles
Time Required
All in all, this entire project/tutorial should take you no more than 5 minutes to complete. Obtaining all the stuff is the most time consuming part. You'll probably have to make a quick trip to a local hobby or arts and crafts store for the glass beads.
Cost
You can get them for probably no more than $5, especially if you're using a coupon.
Tutorial
OK, so here's a bottle of X-12 Gold Leaf that's been sitting in my box for a few months now. You probably can't tell from the picture below, but there's a definite separation between the paint medium and the pigment. It will be much more apparent in one of the later pictures.
What I found is that, while you could stir the shit out of this paint, it a) won't be easy and b) won't necessarily get all the pigment mixed in. I started hunting around my apartment and found a bag of glass vase marbles that my wife wasn't using.
As you can see in the picture below, they're the little glass stones you can buy at your local Michael's/Hobby Lobby/Walmart/whatever. It's a VERY common item at these stores, probably in the floral isle. They come in different sizes, so pick up whatever size works for your paint pots.
I tossed one into the paint pot. In the picture below, you can CLEARLY see the separation.
Now, I'm not sure if this is a common problem with Tamiya paints, but it definitely persists throughout my metallics. My other colors weren't NEARLY as bad as this (in fact, my pot of thinned black and purple had no separation at all, while my gray had some).
So what I did was put the cap on and shake vigorously for about 3-5 minutes. Some folks will tell you not to shake your paints. I say screw that - I've been shaking my paints for 4+ years with no issues. I'm sure there's a fine reason for it, so go ahead and avoid it if you so choose. But I shake mine.
After the shaking, I popped the lid off.
Nice. You can see that the bead is completely submerged and the pigment is mixed up.
I tried to get a shot of the bottle after I emptied it - prior to the glass bead mixing, this would have been a gunked up chunky mess.
So here it is transferred into my mixing pots. I'll do my next tutorial on mixing (super simple). But you can see that the paint is very uniformly mixed and the pigment is evenly distributed throughout. That's exactly what we're looking for!
There you have it! Hope this helps! Happy modelling!
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