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Granted this is in no way definitive, but it definitely is interesting. GW pots claim to be 12ml. I claim otherwise. The pots themselves do hold 12ml, but I've not come across one that was that full.

First up we have 2 brand new 15ml bottles next to a GW "12ml" pot


Next, I'll be using old paint water for the baseline so that we can at least see where the top line is.


I then filled a bottle with exactly 12ml of water using a Terumo 10ml Syringe. I marked the top of the water with a sharpie so we can see it better


I then cracked open one of my back up pots of Graveyard Earth which had never been opened or used before.


I used the same style syringe as the water, but had to do it in 2 tries as the pot is oddly shaped for such a large syringe as the ones I have. I then tipped the pot over to get out about 5 more drops that the syringe didn't get. This is what was in the pot.




So doing a little math, I measured from the bottom of the bottle to the top fill line on the water and came up with 1 5/16", or 1.3125".
The measurement on the paint bottle shows 1 1/16" or 1.0625".

1.0625 is 80% of 1.3125. 80% of 12ml is 9.6ml. So GW is saving roughly 20% per pot from what they advertise.

Interesting, but (unfortunately) unsurprising. I'm glad I made the switch to Vallejo/CDA/P3 years ago now.

i just switched to vallejo and so far im really satisfied by their products!

did you also get the paint from the lid??
i am also not surprised by the result. the dry paints are even worse!!!
but, that said, i did buy a pot of necron compound, found out it was like half empty, sent GW an email and got a new one...

The pot used for the test has been sitting upright for about 3 months now, so there wasn't much paint in the cap.

I'm not really trying to bash GW or anything. I just saw this while I was transferring paint to droppers and thought it was interesting.

I have a decent number of old GW paints in bottles now, but when they run out they will all be replaced with VGC with the exception of certain GW base colors and washes.

...that's for the base colours and washes that you can still actually get.

Aerethan, just curious, where do you get your empty droppers at? I'm considering putting all of my last-gen paint in them if I can find them.

I've gotten them from eBay, and Vallejo ones from Maelstrom in the UK (ordered enough hobby stuff to get free shipping).

I think Reaper also sell empty dropper bottles.

http://www.usplastic.com/catalog/item.aspx?itemid=44774&catid=530

$.33 each is a steal. Reaper bottles are $2.5 for 3 which is over double the price of the ones I use.

scipio.au wrote:I've gotten them from eBay, and Vallejo ones from Maelstrom in the UK (ordered enough hobby stuff to get free shipping).

I think Reaper also sell empty dropper bottles.

I will definitely look into that. I'm trying to figure out a way to empty out my paint case so I can only have the newer paints in it, and I like the idea of having my old paint in droppers compared to pots on my desk

Very interesting Aerethan. Thanks for doing this, its given my the final push ive needed to just go and get the rest of the colours that i dont have yet in Vallejo. Only thing stopping my really was GWs shiney new range but sod em. If they are gonna stinge me of 3ml of paint, im gonna deny them my $6 for a pot of paint.

Vallejo paints on Maelstrom: $1.50 for Aussies (they overcharge here like GW do); P3 $4.

GW Paints here? $6 without the 20% discount some retailers offer.

In other words, an extra 4-6ml of paint from Vallejo (that won't dry out like my GW's did over 8 years, same with the glue which was hard as rocks) at a quarter of the cost. Not bad eh?

Hrm, so you seem to actually get half the amount of paint as you would get from a Vallejo bottle, if we consider that the 15ml droppers are standard from Vallejo and are generally filled to the point where you can't see any air-gaps.



EDIT: On the other hand, as the vast majority of Vallejo paints are quite thin, you might be getting more or less equivalent pigment levels, and that is difficult to judge without watering down the Graveyard Earth to a similar consistency.

how about putting 12ml back into a GW pot and having a look at how full they are, your refilled one and a GW one.

to be honest i'm not totally convinced, yeah i can understand a mil difference here and there, but i'm sure that their paint bottling factory is automated and the system calibrated for filling 12ml bottles, then the bottles are weighed and the ones that pass get the nice GW sticker on it and go to the shops with just about 12ml (i wouldn't be surprised to find 11ml instead.
but saying that they have production set to 8-9ml per bottle and just put a 12ml sticker on seems a little odd. I honestly don't think people (GW) are that shrewd. I would understand and expect (as has happened) 12ml pots going from $3 to $4 to 5$ and now $6 but always being the same 12ml bottle.

but then again business is business so who knows. and personally i don't paint tons upon tons of mini's so a single pot will last me a good long while enough so that i doubt i will miss a couple of ml missing.

still i think vallejo are the shiz and i wanna get into p3 one day see what it's like. maybe in 50 years i'll have saved myself enough money and paint to call it a life well painted lol

As a statistician, I'd also like to add that you only did this for one bottle. I'm betting that there will be a fairly wide distribution of paint levels below 12ml, although probably not above.

Shaozun wrote:Vallejo paints on Maelstrom: $1.50 for Aussies (they overcharge here like GW do); P3 $4.

GW Paints here? $6 without the 20% discount some retailers offer.

In other words, an extra 4-6ml of paint from Vallejo (that won't dry out like my GW's did over 8 years, same with the glue which was hard as rocks) at a quarter of the cost. Not bad eh?

Vallejo paints from Maelstrom are £1.89 each, which is more like AU$2.94. P3 are £2.25 = AU$3.50.

I've never seen an Aussie retailer who discounts GW stuff by 20%. 5% and 10% sure. Who does 20%, out of interest?


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Rogues Gambit wrote:
but saying that they have production set to 8-9ml per bottle and just put a 12ml sticker on seems a little odd. I honestly don't think people (GW) are that shrewd. I would understand and expect (as has happened) 12ml pots going from $3 to $4 to 5$ and now $6 but always being the same 12ml bottle.

but then again business is business so who knows. and personally i don't paint tons upon tons of mini's so a single pot will last me a good long while enough so that i doubt i will miss a couple of ml missing.

The thing is, GW have been in the business of slowly selling us less product for more $ for years and years now. Shortchanging consumers from the amount of product listed "on the tin" is an unscrupulous tactic that's been used for a very long time by manufacturers. It's not about them saving money on that 2ml or last 50cm of toilet paper - it's about making you buy more faster.

scipio.au wrote:

Rogues Gambit wrote:
but saying that they have production set to 8-9ml per bottle and just put a 12ml sticker on seems a little odd. I honestly don't think people (GW) are that shrewd. I would understand and expect (as has happened) 12ml pots going from $3 to $4 to 5$ and now $6 but always being the same 12ml bottle.

but then again business is business so who knows. and personally i don't paint tons upon tons of mini's so a single pot will last me a good long while enough so that i doubt i will miss a couple of ml missing.

The thing is, GW have been in the business of slowly selling us less product for more $ for years and years now. Shortchanging consumers from the amount of product listed "on the tin" is an unscrupulous tactic that's been used for a very long time by manufacturers. It's not about them saving money on that 2ml or last 50cm of toilet paper - it's about making you buy more faster.

Okay i'm willing to believe that, but how do you know this? what have they been providing less of for more $ or providing less of for similar cost as years gone by? Has there been a look into pots from 20 or even 10 years ago to see how ml levels have fluctuated (other then this been extremely difficult to gauge for a number of factors). Have GW been putting less models into their spru sets? did they used to provide 20 space marines in their tactical squad box as opposed to the 10 you get these days? or maybe they gave you multiple weapons choices but now limit them in the current multipart plastic sprues?

i haven't been around GW kits/paints/other stuff regularly enough and long enough to witness them providing less for more $ to make you buy things more often...now this sounds like a good business practice and i'm willing to believe it, but what evidence do you have to support this?

So far all i have seen is this paint comparison which does in fact show we may be getting less then 12ml but considering the impossibility of actually transferring 100% of paint from one pot to another i am simply skeptical that they are short changing us by as much as we think, i'm sure there are fluctuations but i don't think they are as large as they appear to be simply because of the complexity associated with accurately measuring such claims.

Very interesting post Aerethan, thanks for that.

I don't like the GW bottles to begin with, of course I'd prefer a dropper but even the old GW bottles seemed to preserve the paint better.

I STILL HAVE the very first GW Citadel paint sets and they were in my parent's attic (extreme heat and extreme cold) for many years - they still work fine. Some of my newer GW paints have dried out in less than a year.

LadyCassandra wrote: On the other hand, as the vast majority of Vallejo paints are quite thin, you might be getting more or less equivalent pigment levels, and that is difficult to judge without watering down the Graveyard Earth to a similar consistency.

It depends on the color. There are some colors that are excellent in Vallejo and some that are not. IME VJ paints cover at least as well as Citadel.

Thank God this thread hasn't derailed like the old one did.

A few things:

1. I did say that this wasn't definitive.
2. This same result has been the case on every paint I've transferred.
3. The new GW Layer paints are much thinner than the old ones, or VGC.
4. On Sunday I'll do another little test where I clean out a GW pot, fill it with 12ml water, then compare that to a paint filled pot.

Lastly, I'm not trying to bash GW. I haven't said that they have some evil motive behind this. It could be an error, it could be a sales tactic. The only reason I bothered making the thread is because GW charges much more than everyone else for what we knew to be less paint, and it turns out that it is even less than advertised.

If vallejo is 17ml at $2.39 and GW is $2.96 for 9-10ml then That is a huge disparity.

I switched over to Vallejo last month. The new GW paints came out and since they are different in formula from all the ones I currently have I figured it would be a good opportunity to experiment. I bought a couple of blues and I really like the dropper. I also like that they aren't as thick as GW as this makes it easier to keep my paints thin when I am painting. It seems with GW I have to really focus on thinning. The Vallejo paints do well with a normal wet brush. I am also really happy to be supporting some of the other Hobby companies out there as it allows me to choose where and how I spend my money. I recommend buying a bottle or two to give it a try.

Rogues Gambit wrote:how about putting 12ml back into a GW pot and having a look at how full they are, your refilled one and a GW one.

Yeah, that would seem to be a more accurate method than trying to get all of the paint out and measuring that.


A sample size of 1 pot isn't particularly significant, though, as UK labeling regulations currently only require a product to have the correct volume on average, provided that no pot has less than half of the stated volume. So a 12ml pot can technically have just over 6ml of paint in it and still be sell-able, so long as there are also pots out there with more than 12mm in them which are pulling up the average.

Given the number of pots of paint that GW produce, you would need a fairly large sample size for this sort of test to be meaningful.

scipio.au wrote:I've never seen an Aussie retailer who discounts GW stuff by 20%. 5% and 10% sure. Who does 20%, out of interest?

Milsims.

I do not think that using a dropper is the best way to figure out the exact amount of paint in a pot. Even pouring it out, how much paint is left clinging to the sides and bottom of a pot. A much better way would be to get a graduated cylinder, figure out the volume of an empty pot, and then drop an open pot into the cylinder and measure the increase in volume (after stirring to get the air bubbles out in both cases). I mean we are talking extremely small liquid amounts here, 2 mL is quite a small amount to measure in such a way.

I did a test with an empty paint bottle and a new paint bottle of creamite white, and found that the weight of the paint was .84 oz (not fl. oz). Now without knowing the exact density of paint, it is impossible to say what the liquid measure of paint is, but perhaps someone can fill in that blank.

However, if the same weight of water was in the cup (i.e. replacing paint with water) it would be .84 fl oz of water, which would be 24.8 mL. With a basic understanding of density, that means that in order to have at least 12 ml of paint, the density of paint needs to be at least 2.07 g/cm3.

Now, the question would be is paint twice as thick as water...at least for the ceramite white in my pot, i would think it is, but it would be better if we had an exact comparison between paint and water by weight.

Is it possible the GW paint already had some evaporation going? Every GW paint pot after 2nd edition was designed to rapidly dry out. After a 9 month stint away with the Air Force ALL of my newer GW paint was dry, while all of my 2nd edition era paint is still fine. Needless to say I use Valajo now.

If your not happy with the product. Change. We all have choice. Seriously get back to painting.