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As an actual Biologist, I can tell you that everything is likely to have bacteria on it unless if you have sterilized it properly. As soon as you open a sterilized paint bottle, airborne bacteria will immediately colonize it resulting in bacteria in your paint.

Anyway, GW washes are acrylic washes so the pigment is probably what smells, so to test it out, I put a sample of Devlan Mud (the primary "smelly" paint) into a spectrophotometer to see whether bacteria really were growing over a period of 8 hours. The readings were stable at 510nm - 535nm showing there was minimal bacterial activity actually happening, if bacteria really was growing and metabolising the paint then the absorbance would have shifted quite a bit.

So later, I went to the physical scientists to ask about acrylics and the bad smell, and I managed to find someone who knew a little about paints. It turns out that acrylic pigments that are brown (umber) are metallic in nature and are bound by either a organic porphyrin ring or in acrylics the pigment is bound after a polymerisation reaction between Acrylamide (a neurotoxin yikes!) and Acrylonitrile after heating between a solution of Sulphuric acid and Sodium Hydroxide (50/50%) with the pigment itself being an iron/manganate mix. So the answer was, the actual paint itself should smell as a mix of metal and sulphur which is a plausible cause of why Devlan mud smells as it is.

Of course, it might not be right, but I don't have the resources to perform a chemical analysis of the paint (I'm in the wrong department!) but if I manage to convince someone to let me use the physical science labs, then I'll try and find out.

nomsheep wrote:

Lord Scythican wrote:I just drank a paint pot of delvin mud. I will let you all know the results in the morning.

But if you die how will we know?

Nom

If he never replies again, we will know

Even if on the off chance that there is actually something wrong with the devlin mud Games Workshops legal team would destroy you anyhow.

Skippy wrote:

nomsheep wrote:

Lord Scythican wrote:I just drank a paint pot of delvin mud. I will let you all know the results in the morning.

But if you die how will we know?

Nom

If he never replies again, we will know

if he does, we can just get another one right?

Nom

Archim3des, when will your microscope camera be arriving?

Archim3des wrote:microorganisms living in a pot of paint are eating something. And then taking a dump.
THAT is what worries me.

Well, if you could fashion a "bacteria centipede" then you may be able to alleviate the poo issue.



King Ghidorah

Snarky wrote:As an actual Biologist, I can tell you that everything is likely to have bacteria on it unless if you have sterilized it properly. As soon as you open a sterilized paint bottle, airborne bacteria will immediately colonize it resulting in bacteria in your paint.

Anyway, GW washes are acrylic washes so the pigment is probably what smells, so to test it out, I put a sample of Devlan Mud (the primary "smelly" paint) into a spectrophotometer to see whether bacteria really were growing over a period of 8 hours. The readings were stable at 510nm - 535nm showing there was minimal bacterial activity actually happening, if bacteria really was growing and metabolising the paint then the absorbance would have shifted quite a bit.

So later, I went to the physical scientists to ask about acrylics and the bad smell, and I managed to find someone who knew a little about paints. It turns out that acrylic pigments that are brown (umber) are metallic in nature and are bound by either a organic porphyrin ring or in acrylics the pigment is bound after a polymerisation reaction between Acrylamide (a neurotoxin yikes!) and Acrylonitrile after heating between a solution of Sulphuric acid and Sodium Hydroxide (50/50%) with the pigment itself being an iron/manganate mix. So the answer was, the actual paint itself should smell as a mix of metal and sulphur which is a plausible cause of why Devlan mud smells as it is.

Of course, it might not be right, but I don't have the resources to perform a chemical analysis of the paint (I'm in the wrong department!) but if I manage to convince someone to let me use the physical science labs, then I'll try and find out.

Wow, what an informative post... thanks for that! I might ask the biologists here, too

nomsheep wrote:Even if on the off chance that there is actually something wrong with the devlin mud Games Workshops legal team would destroy you anyhow.

Skippy wrote:

nomsheep wrote:

Lord Scythican wrote:I just drank a paint pot of delvin mud. I will let you all know the results in the morning.

But if you die how will we know?

Nom

If he never replies again, we will know

if he does, we can just get another one right?

Nom

I will leave a note for Mrs. Scythican to let you all know. As for getting another one, there is only one Big Mek Scythican!

YAY, and after you win the lawsuit, the cost of that lawsuit, and the cost of having all their products subjected to biological testing will double, no, TRIPLE, the current price of GW products....

thakabalpuphorsefishguy wrote:YAY, and after you win the lawsuit, the cost of that lawsuit, and the cost of having all their products subjected to biological testing will double, no, TRIPLE, the current price of GW products....

If they lost case which is unlikely, even if they won it, they would problably go bunkrupt quickly due to the insane amounts of controviesy in a suit like that and the signficant drop in sales, price hike then drop then you get the picture...

It wouldn't stop me buying their stuff, i'd just use different paints IF it came to that.

Nom

I wasn't worried I just wanted to know the science behind why it was funky......funky is a scientific term right? Thanks Snarky.

Deathshead420 wrote:I wasn't worried I just wanted to know the science behind why it was funky......funky is a scientific term right? Thanks Snarky.

No problem, I might actually try and do some gram stains to figure out what sort of bacteria are growing on the washes if people are still interested. My lab supervisor is in America so I pretty much have free reign over the labs right now

Snarky wrote:No problem, I might actually try and do some gram stains to figure out what sort of bacteria are growing on the washes if people are still interested.

Very interested! I'm also wondering about how long you had to let it grow... it seems like people are saying the smell becomes much more noticable over time, but I'm thinking that's a rather long time (weeks to months). So that might make a difference? But at that point, it could have all manner of things in it particularly with the "brush lickers"

RiTides wrote:

Snarky wrote:No problem, I might actually try and do some gram stains to figure out what sort of bacteria are growing on the washes if people are still interested.

Very interested! I'm also wondering about how long you had to let it grow... it seems like people are saying the smell becomes much more noticable over time, but I'm thinking that's a rather long time (weeks to months). So that might make a difference? But at that point, it could have all manner of things in it particularly with the "brush lickers"

I would assume that it's because the carrier evaporates, making the pigment more concentrated - and therefore smellier?

Or something.

But I too am very interested to see who I'm sharing my Devlan mud with!

You could just spread some of the wash out on agar and see what grows.

Howard A Treesong wrote:You could just spread some of the wash out on agar and see what grows.

That's the plan. I'm using three different types to try and get some pure cultures going. I'm only incubating for 24 hours rather than 72 since I don't want the lab techies to throw away my samples (they should be safe in the incubator for now...)

Orki wrote:I have also noticed a correlation between wash performance and age/stench too. The physical properties alter with age, and I don't mean that they are simply thickening/drying out as all water based paints do. They progressively stop behaving 'correctly', as if the binders are no longer functioning correctly, and as well as feeling wrong upon application they no longer pool or disperse properly, pigment is held in irregular suspension etc. They just gradually start sucking, for want of a better phrase.

Damn, I was really hoping that there was an opposite effect, the nasty buggers that are stinking up the paint are actually what makes it so great, and by forcing GW to 'fix' the issue we get a Delvan Mud that's no longer the Gak.

I am a sick and twisted individual

Results are in!

Snarky wrote:

No problem, I might actually try and do some gram stains to figure out what sort of bacteria are growing on the washes if people are still interested. My lab supervisor is in America so I pretty much have free reign over the labs right now

Don't bother! It's shigella sonnei, and gram negative.
Lab results in ladies and gentlemen, hold onto your butts.
If my pot was any indicator, you could give yourself some minor diaharrea by ingesting it.

At least from that pot. Now that I (or snarky) knows what to look for, should be able to detect if any of the five pots that should be in today also contain any.

Well... that should scare a few posters up a bit (the diarrhea part that is)

Thanks a ton for all your work!

Not my intention, and if I'm reading this wiki right, not cause for concern at all unless people are doing shots of GW wash.




Automatically Appended Next Post:
But still fairly gross. Really hope it's just my wash.

Pretty benign then.

I was secretly hoping for good old salmonella typhi type B...

I didnt think shigella sonnei could survive for long outside the human body.
You might have made some sort of discovery if it can be cultured in devlan mud. Everyone said devlan mud can do anything

Fairly certain you'd be wrong on that, montrano.
Seeing as how it survives on lettuce watered with contaminated water.

If it can only cause mild diarrhea, Devlan Mud is less dangerous then some Vallejo paints, which contain cadmium among other toxic heavy metals.

Thanks for all the hard work! Now I feel vindicated for abstaining from brush-licking.

_Tim?

Meh, I just smelled a pot of wash that's over 10 years old, from 2nd edition. (the kind in the rubbery pop-tops that were 17.5 ml.)

Yup, smelled like a bad fart, like always. But the paints of the same age smell like the ones now. I have about 6 bottles(including the old colored metallics), and they all still get painted onto my figures, and work fine.

Snarky wrote:

Howard A Treesong wrote:You could just spread some of the wash out on agar and see what grows.

That's the plan. I'm using three different types to try and get some pure cultures going. I'm only incubating for 24 hours rather than 72 since I don't want the lab techies to throw away my samples (they should be safe in the incubator for now...)

Nice! Would be cool to have confirmation (or not) of Archim3des results.

montrano wrote:You might have made some sort of discovery if it can be cultured in devlan mud. Everyone said devlan mud can do anything

That would be amazing . Devlan "Miracle", indeed!

Archim3des wrote:
If my pot was any indicator, you could give yourself some minor diaharrea by ingesting it.

Why would you ingest the paint pot though?

Isn't shigella sonnei transmitted via a fecal-oral route? I'm not worried about germs in my paint but I'm actually a bit bothered by the idea of poop in it. Call me old-fashioned.

Anyway, worse things in your kitchen, yadda yadda yadda. No need to repeat all that. But I'm quite surprised by poop germs in paint. I wasn't expecting that at all. How long do they remain alive in it?

This is the most interesting thread in sort of a while. Much love to Arcimedes and Snarky for the info.

Wow! What a great thread. This is one of the most interesting posts I've ever read. Thank you all, especially you Archim3des, original and interesting. Congrats!!

Welp, there have certainly been more toxic things on my keyboard than some shigella sonnei. Notable examples are:

1. Jagermeister
2. A possum
3. A manuscript written by a man in my creative writing group who I swear had never even -seen- a body of water before.
4. Milk that I thought was bad but then turned out to be yoghurt.