"Problem with Vallejo paints?" Topic

I just started painting again after a six month break only to find many of my paints were ruined. About three years ago I started switching to Vallejo paint as their pigment appeared to be superior to other brands and their squeeze bottles were quite convenient. Now that I am painting again I have noticed that a lot of the Vallejo paints have become unusable. The main problem seems to be pigment depositing on the bottom of the bottle and drying out. This pigment gets so thick and dry even vigorous shaking does little good. I use lead weights to help mix my paint, so I believe this is truly a quality control issue rather than a case of not mixing the paint properly.

Adding to my suspicion is the fact that most of the paint pots affected were those that I had bought within the last year. Meaning, brand new, unused pots are going bad. On the other hand my original set of Vallejo paints I purchased over three years ago seem to be fine. In addition, I have noticed a lot of newer Vallejo paint pots have a shiny glaze like texture which makes it hard to apply inks and stains.

Overall I find myself in the unthinkable position of being disappointed in Vallejo paints. When I first started buying these paints I thought God himself had created them. Now I'm not impressed. At 3 dollars a pot I would expect a longer shelf life and better quality control. Perhaps this is an isolated incident, but I wonder if others have had problems similar to mine?

By the way, only the Model colors have been affected, the game colors appear to be fine.

I have not encountered that problem with Vallejo and I have had most of the paints for at least 3 years. I have had some problems with paint separation, but that is more of a mixing (shaking) problem. Did you buy them all at once? If so, maybe you got a bad batch?

I did have one pot I bought with a similar problem about two years ago. I would have returned it but honestly didn't know where I had bought it. So I emptied the bottle into a little bowl and mixed. I added a few drops of thinner. It pretty much came back to life. One pot out of my 40 or 50 is not a worrisome ratio. And now that I sell the line I do check them (when they separate the colors can look all wrong) and give them a good vigorous shake before I mail them out.

Sounds like you've got a lot more than an isolated pot though.

Mark "Extra Crispy" Severin
Owner, ScaleCreep.com
Author, DeepFriedHappyMice.com

If you want to give another shot at mixing the paints, try this: make sure the cap is screwed on tight, put the bottle in a ziplock bag, and put it in your dryer. Set the dryer to "air dry" setting, then let it go for 15 or 20 minutes. I used this method with great success mixing white gesso and black paint and thinner over the weekend.

If you want peace of mind, you might want to use two ziplock bags—it'd be mighty messy if your paint bottle for some reason exploded while being mixed.

So far I have lost 5 pots out of 100 or so. Not a lot, but another 10 or so have that glossy problem. Once again these are all relatively new pots. I don't remember if I bought them all at once or where, it was a good year or so ago.

I tried "resurrecting" one by adding water and mixing the hell out of it. But something weird happened. The color turned into a jelly like substance which was totally unusable.

Operon,
Out of curiosity, Did you use the same lead weights in all of the pots, or were the bad pots using something different. Lead is one of the worst items to use as an agitator in acrylic paint, especially if left to sit, it has many contaminents. You need either stainless steel or glass as they will not have an effect on the paint. It is quite possible that you caused a chemical reaction due to your lead weight as an agitator. Which seems to be the case since you said that the "lot" that was effected was purchased within the last year, which I will assume these received the same lead weight from the same bag.

just a thought…..

Heritage Studios

Yes, they all had the same lead weight, which was an experiment. You may have found the cause of my paint problems. I tried stainless steel ball bearings before, but they rusted. So I used fishing weights on all the new paints. They worked great, but perhaps sitting for a prolonged period of time caused an adverse reaction.

I guess glass bearing are the way to go, but where does one find these?

Should be easy enough to find small glass beads at craft stores like Micheals, or whatever is local to you.

pick up some small round pebbles and use these – they are pretty inert and cheap…
Si

I bought a set of Vallejo a couple of years ago, in the wake of the Vallejo craze, and was pretty much disappointed right away.Basically the same goopy,gloopy, grainy crap as Citadel/Reaper/Howard Hues/et.al.
Slightly better package design (dropper bottle), at least until you need a pin to re-open the bottle, like a superglue bottle….
Hugely overpriced garbage.
Artist or cheapie Craft paints for me, thank you…..

I've noticed that if I don't shake Vallejo paint thoroughly before I open them the very first time I get a bad mix for the life of the bottle. It gets very thick and needs major flow improvement.

The jelly like effect I have seen with a number of brands of acrylic. As far as I can determine it is due to extremes of heat or (more likely) cold.

If I get a mixing problem I add a small amount of surface tension breaker to the thinner and stir vigorously before shaking. So far that has worked every time but I haven't needed to do that with any Vallejo stuff yet.

I thought fishing weights were no longer made of lead, they aren't in the UK. Lead should not have any effect on the paint, most chemical pigments are pretty un-reactive and made more so when coated in acrylic medium.

This is worrying if it is quality control, it wouldn't be the first range that this has happened to.

Tony H

"pick up some small round pebbles"…like the ones that float? :)

Perhaps the weights are not 100% lead. They are the Water Gremlin brand. As far as I could tell they were completely un-reactive. However, I have not used my paints in over six months as stated above. So perhaps in that time they were exposed to the elements, or had enough time to react.

Whatever the case I am hesitant to purchase anymore paints. 3 dollars is a lot of money to waste on a paint that "might" go bad. Among my newer Vallejo paints, even the ones that have not gone bad are so damn thick, I wonder if all the shaking is worth it.

This leaves me with the problem of finding another source of paints.

Go Derivan Minis
Australian Made, 36ml (twice that of Vallejo, 3 times that of GW)

The come in eye dropper bottles too.

I've had these paints for 18 months.
The pigment is ground for airbrushing as well just thin with 9 parts water, one part surface tension breaker.

Out of the complete 72 range set I've had no paint separation except for the 6 metallics.
The paint separation has been nothing like what you mentioned above.

I put the smallest glass marble I could find in each metallic paint bottle(just fited through the throat of the bottle) I've never had a problem with the metallics since.

The only other variation I've done is add some black to the gun metal because I felt it was too light in colour.

Go here to read what Mike Siggin's has said about Derivan Minis (Wargames Illustrated)
link

Go here to fine out about the paint from Matisse Derivan.
link

Go here to find out who sells it, including USA and UK
link

I don't work for Matisse but they have sponsored my club painting competition (Leviathan)for (well this will be the 5th year). They also helped my club get a spot at the Sydney Royal Easter Show for the now 4 years to promote our hobby.

The Sydney Royal Easter Show attracts over 1 million people over 2 weeks and we are there with our hobby display for 2 of the busiest days.

Great paint, great people. Happy to recommend them

Sorry
The link I gave for Mike Siggins comments about Derivan Minis takes you to the general page at Caliver Books. You have to then go to the paint section on their web site

this should be the direct link
link

I've had a big set of Vallejo for over two years and I get to paint only once in a blue moon (I mean months go by). I've had no trouble whatsoever. I placed three glass beads in every bottle, a project in itself I know, and use a Robart hobby paint shaker. The time and the money for the shaker, 25.00 if I recall, have seemed to be well worth it.

I'm still using some Vallejo Model Colours that I bought at the Sheffield Triples that must be at least from 1999 and have not had any problems with them. I don't add anything to the bottles and just give them a shake before using to mix the pigment & solvent.

What size glass beads do I use in the paint bottles? I have a bag o' beads from Michaels, but they're really tiny. Does the size matter for keeping the paint mized?

The beads have to be heavy enough to move in the thick paint to remix the pigment that has separated from the carrier fluid.

The best bet is stainless steel ball bearings. I have been told by the local supplier they sell them to the tatoo shops, as the tatooist put them in the ink bottles to remix the pigments in the ink.

The trick is the ball bearings have to really be stainless steel. If not they will rust and ruin the paint.

So make sure they are really are stainless steel.

The mouth of a vallejo bottle is wide enough for about a 8mm diameter stainless steel ball.

The Derivan minis bottles are bigger and I have order 11mm stainless steel balls. they were cheaper than 10mm has they were described in an imperial measurement (hence the odd 11mm size) (More demand for machinery parts in imperal meassurements)

I ordered from here
conbear.com

Just on this again, make sure the stainless steel is marine grade. Just like everything in life there are different grades of material (and different quality) for different purposes.

The main problem i have is colour matching, you would expect bottles with the same number to contain the same colour, they dont. Amongst others i have 2 different colour browns both no.872, and 3 different reflective greens no. 890. This really pi**es me off.

They definitely differ from batch to batch in colour and pigmentation quality.

Does anybody know why? Are they constantly changing suppliers?