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There are lots and lots of chemicals that are benign themselves but become toxic when mixed

yep, two very common items while fine by themselves, and will remain nameless just in case some braindead kid decides it would be fun to try it, can kill you if you breath the fumes after mixing them.

I know those chemicals and found out the hard way how toxic they are when mixed. It's still a shame that som big coporation or iratte individual had to pick on a small time buisness.

It's still a shame that some big corporation or irate individual had to pick on a small time business.

true dat. it would have been better, if they had just told him to stop for the time being while they checked everything out, and then set him up with the correct individuals that would be able to help him further with his store. However, this is America, the land of the free to be arrogant, spitefull, no consideration for others, kick you when your down because, it makes me feel better country.

SebastionSynn wrote:

It's still a shame that some big corporation or irate individual had to pick on a small time business.

true dat. it would have been better, if they had just told him to stop for the time being while they checked everything out, and then set him up with the correct individuals that would be able to help him further with his store. However, this is America, the land of the free to be arrogant, spitefull, no consideration for others, kick you when your down because, it makes me feel better country.

Spoiler:

God, I wish I lived on Mars. -_-

You could always emigrate to cuba.

You could always emigrate to cuba

Naw, I have enough oppression right here, in the land that was taken from my ancestors, without the need to emigrate somewhere else, to be oppressed in whole nother fashion.

I bow to your wisdom and will now go assault my piggy bank.

Once again Les, your painting tips etc are incredibly useful and outstanding. I use your methods for my SW and bought an airbrush due to your work. I will attempt to make UK versions of your washes!
I'm glad your store is back and was wondering what did the moron who reported you do it for?!

This is awesome, Les. Thank you so much!

*post removed*

Please don't post pointless spam like this.

reds8n

awesome, I love it. I knew there was a way to make a wash cheaper.

Thanks for the recipe!!!

I finally made up a batch of this a few days ago, and have been playing with them since then.

It's much, much cheaper over time. For an up-front investment of $20 (I already had flow-aid and bottles) I got enough materials to make, like, a gallon of Badab Black & Devlan Mud equivalents. I found that the color matches are nigh identical to the GWS equivalents.

That being said, it's not exactly the same. They are a lot thinner and will pool up on you if you follow the recipe exactly. If you'd like a GWS wash consistency, you're going to need to up the matte a bit. Les touched on this briefly earlier in the thread - for me, I now do about 60% matte and 40% flow-aid. Also, these settle very fast and very hard. I wound up adding a lava bead agitator to each bottle, and you will need to vigorously shake for about 3 minutes before it's ready to use.

Also, I'm using tap water instead of distilled water, is this a problem? I have very hard well water, if that makes a difference.

Thanks for releasing the recipes, Les! I think this is probably the only way to affordably airbrush wash onto entire armies at once.

I hope this doesn't count as thread necromancy; I didn't see the exact ratio for a more GWS-like consistency in the thread, sorry if I missed it.

For what it's worth, this thread should be immune from necromancy. It is always worth having on the first page.

And I agree, that the upfront cost is offset by the fact that you will have enough to make washes for way more models than you will ever use them on.

The other nice thing is being able to control how heavy the wash is. For instance I made a regular sepia wash, and then for my Imperial Fist model, I made an insanely light body sepia that was very subtle.

GW washes are what they are. The only thing you can do to them is thin them.

Aerethan wrote:For what it's worth, this thread should be immune from necromancy. It is always worth having on the first page.

I wonder if it should be sticked, even.

Aerethan wrote:
The other nice thing is being able to control how heavy the wash is. For instance I made a regular sepia wash, and then for my Imperial Fist model, I made an insanely light body sepia that was very subtle.

I am really excited about doing white terminator helmets now with a very thin blue wash. I was able to do this previously with thin asurmen blue and then painstakingly re-working up the white areas, but the pooling feature of this with less matte should make this a snap. Pretty great stuff.

One notable difference also is the finish. GW washes have a very matte finish, and the home made ones have a rather glossy finish. Not that much matters after varnish.

If you want an very matte gw like finish , try using the Liquitex Ultra Matte Medium instead of the Matte. It's much flatter. I find if I add even a small drop of it to a mix made with the regular matte it reduces the sheen greatly.

Big thanks to Les for the recipe and this thread. I've just had by big box of inks and medium etc delivered to work from Blick. I forgot to get squeegie bottles though, so now I have to try and find some locally somewhere.

Shame the dropper bottles I ordered from a place in Singapore from eBay 8 weeks ago still haven't shown up. I just ordered some more from Thailand, but they'll be 3 weeks away.

I'll have to start making a wishlist of more stuff - some more ink colours and also stuff like the Ultra Matte Medium.


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Ouze wrote:I wound up adding a lava bead agitator to each bottle, and you will need to vigorously shake for about 3 minutes before it's ready to use.

Do you find Lava beads heavy enough to use as agitators? I haven't used them myself, but my understanding was that they're quite light - perhaps not light enough to use as agitators. I need to find something new for paint agitators - I've used small ball bearings in the past, but they tend to corrode over time in the bottom of my paint pots, which I obviously prefer to avoid...

Or are they perhaps heavy enough for washes but not enough for paint?

Aerethan wrote:For what it's worth, this thread should be immune from necromancy.

All of the tutorials in this section are, so long as the content remains.

I saw this thread a few months ago and didn't think much of it, other than, wow, that's cool. but recently school got real heavy and I didn't think I was going to finish my deathwing before adepticon. I came across Ron Saikowski's deathwing quick and dirty tutorial and combined with some custom washes, I have much higher hopes of finishing on time. honestly, this is a worthwhile investment and I can't thank Les enough for posting this.

so for about $90 i can roughly make 48metalic washes, standard washes, and the like. That is actually a good del. . . hmmm and I can create my own combinations. Darker blues, deeper saphires, and the like. . . I love it.


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Oh let me add, its tax return so this is PERFECT!

Now all I need is how to make my own weathering pigments. . .

Yes the nice thing about this is the sheer number of inks available. Daler-Rowney alone has 38 colors, and then from there the mixes of them are endless. I should probably invest some of my own tax return towards increasing my ink collection.

Spending about $150 and I can make roughly 150 washes. Hmmmmm oh the possibilities. . . I do want some deep ameythest (sp) color washes. . .

For those looking for bottles: http://www.usplastic.com/catalog/item.aspx?itemid=44774&catid=530

Note that the picture is a 10ml bottle, not the 15ml that I linked. These are the same ones that Reaper and Vallejo sell at some ridiculous markup.

I realize that this may be a thread necro (just getting under the wire according the the Dakka FAQ , but I recently discovered this thread and quickly decided to make a group of my own washes. I happily started clicking links and adding various chemicals and bottles and whatnot to online shopping carts, when I hit a snag.

The Liquitex Flow-Aid additive listed in the recipe is currently out of stock, and won't be available for nearly a month. This makes me a sad hamster. :(

So in the short-term, I'd like to find a suitable replacement for the flow-aid listed in the recipe. In the long-term, it may help if Dakkanauts can find workable alternatives in case the ingredients listed here go out of stock again.

Kung Fu Hamster wrote:I realize that this may be a thread necro (just getting under the wire according the the Dakka FAQ , but I recently discovered this thread and quickly decided to make a group of my own washes. I happily started clicking links and adding various chemicals and bottles and whatnot to online shopping carts, when I hit a snag.

The Liquitex Flow-Aid additive listed in the recipe is currently out of stock, and won't be available for nearly a month. This makes me a sad hamster. :(

So in the short-term, I'd like to find a suitable replacement for the flow-aid listed in the recipe. In the long-term, it may help if Dakkanauts can find workable alternatives in case the ingredients listed here go out of stock again.

While I can't help you with advice on a flow-aid replacement, I thought I'd let you know that I'll be very happy if it truly is available next month as currently estimated. I've been waiting since October, and each time it gets close to the expected in-stock date it gets pushed back again and again.

Dick Blick may be out of stock, but Michaels carries it, or you could try Golden http://www.dickblick.com/products/golden-acrylic-flow-release/

It's the same stuff.

Aerethan wrote:Dick Blick may be out of stock, but Michaels carries it, or you could try Golden http://www.dickblick.com/products/golden-acrylic-flow-release/

It's the same stuff.

Awesome, thanks for the info, Aerethan. And many thanks to Les for the great tutorials.

welp y'all are going to hate me but whatever. Didn't really work for me. I followed directions, and shook the vial as much as I could stand, and painted up a fig... ruined the fig. Now its all dark grey, but admittedly the 'black' did pool into crevices... wewt.
So one thing I'd like to point out, the matte medium initially came out all pasty like some thick hand lotion--I was squeezing the bottle so hard to get it to come out my hand was shaking. Not sure if this is normal, but didn't really seem like Les had much trouble. Also, no matter how much I shake up the solution, the medium will not completely dissolve.

This stuff is so thick, I can hold the bottle upside-down, cap completely off, for more than a minute (maybe indefinitely) without it coming out.
Did I get a bad batch, or something?

Anyways, thanks for trying to help me. Guess I'll stick with Mop&Glo & alcohol for now...

you have a bad batch of matte medium. It should not be any thicker than any other paint off the shelf. If you have bad medium, the wash won't work right and you'll need to strip the mini. Sucks that this happened to you. Buy a new bottle of medium and try again.

Hey does anyone know the GWs verson of soft body, i really don't want to order something online and my local hobby store only sells GW paints so yes thank you.

GW doesn't have soft or heavy. They have one style of wash and that's it. You could water down any of those to make them softer, but you can't make them any heavier.

IMO the only GW washes worth having these days are Ogryn Flesh and Devlan Mud. Gryphonne Sepia is a far third. Everything else is meh.

That said, my Soft Body Black wash gets used a lot these days, especially in my airbrush.