Rust Monster! OR Don’t Use Zinc Coated BBs in Your Acyrlic Paint…

So, about 10 months or so, I decided to pick up something to help me mix-up my Vellejo and Reaper paints.  I decided on some zinc coated BBs. Why? Well, in hindsight, I’m an idiot. BUT,  at the time I was thinking that zinc coating/paint was used in industrial applications as a rust suppressor. I was also thinking that as the BBs would be submerged in the paint most of the time, there would be relatively little oxygen to oxidize them. Look, chemistry 101 was a long time ago, and I don’t remember much of it.

Anyways, I haven’t used my paints much in the past few months and we recently moved. So, last week when I was unpacking things and setting up my bench, I was horrified to see:

And:

So yea, that sucks…

All told I’ve got 16 bottles of Vellejo and Reaper paints thusly effected, as well as some of my Game’s Workshop paints. I experimented on a bottle of GW Fortress Grey and managed to salvage 99% of the paint into another bottle. But it was a less than efficient process using my syringes and dropper thingy and it took like 15 minutes to do.

So, I decided to buckle down and order these strainers from Micro-Mark to help speed up the process.  The strainers will also be used for prepping paint for airbrushing. I will also be picking up a whole bunch of these dropper bottles to put the paint into as well as for custom paint mixes.

I find using the dropper bottles makes my life far easier. Airbrushing? no need for pippettes or anything. Hand brushing? Just put a few drops on a wet pallete, and BAM!