"Easiest way to transfer paint to new bottle?" Topic

I have some Foundry paints whose snap tops have broken. How can I transfer the paint to a dropper bottle without wasting half the paint? Thanks.

Pipette or syringe perhaps?

As the question is posed, I'd agree with korsunO, but I've never tried it. The old GW bottle tops stay on pretty well even with the hinges broken, so I'm not sure it's worth the trouble. (I still use the snap top bottles, so at some point, I toss in a mixing bowl and a little water, give them a good shake, cut the hinges and pour the contents into the next bottle of that color.)

Why not just buy new lids?

If you like the dropper bottles and can buy empties at places like Miniature Market. The top comes off quite readily and is not much trouble, you'll just need a small funnel.

Otherwise, the GW tops do stay on well, just make sure they are fully closed!

Being an old chemist,

We often had to transfer fluids with the least loss possible.
A glass stirring rod is what we would use.

If the paint is fluid (not too much of a gel) it will flow along a glass rod and into another container.
Wet the rod with the paint and keep the rod in contact with both bottles.

The surface tension of the paint and gravity should draw it along the rod and into the bottle.

The biggest problem with transferring acrylic paint between containers is the heavier pigment always accumulates in the bottom of the pot. Regardless of how well you shake and stir the paint, you will always lose some amount of pigment. And pigment is basically what you pay for. That is why highly pigmented artist water colors tend to be quite expensive, while less pigmented craft paints are not.

When you transfer paint, you get basically all the medium and binder, but not all the pigment, so the end result is some degree of dilution.

Having said that, I recently transferred quite a bit of Polly-S paint from their original glass bottles to dropper bottles. I used a metal cocktail stirrer to mix the paint and scrape as much of the remaining pigment from the bottom of the glass bottle as possible. Then, I just carefully poured the mixed paint directly from the glass bottle to the dropper bottle. After a lot of experimentation, including the use of small funnels, I found the "freehand pour" was the most effective for me.

Good luck