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I picked up a Vallejo paint bottle tonight....and my rare earth magnets were sticking to it. I took them off, and held them up to several more points.

I did a google search, nothing came up.....

Any ideas? Is it vallejo in general or some kind of weird radiation in my house?????

Was it a metallic paint?

Some pigments are made of iron oxides etc. that can be magnetic.

 prowla wrote:
Was it a metallic paint?

Some pigments are made of iron oxides etc. that can be magnetic.

Nope, just ordinary paint! I tried different colors and made sure they were not metallics.

Do they have agitators in them? Little metal BB's to make sure the paint stays properly mixed.

Nope, I did not put any in. I don't think they come with any.

What colour paints were doing it?

2 Spooky 4 me..


Seriously though what paint?

Could be the paint is paramagnetic. Haven't a clue why, though, you'd need a really strong magnetic moment on the molecule to get that effect from a rare earth magnet, right? :S

Isthere any kind of glue near the magnets? Is the surface of both the magnet or the bottle sticky?

I've actually had the same thing happen. Years ago I (foolishly) put stainless steel ball bearings into some of my paints to act as agitators. When I realised (years later) that they were corroding inside the paints, I started to remove them. For the Vallejos I used a stack of rare earth magnets to slide them out the sides, then try and use a second stack of magnets to get them out of the neck.

There were some that didn't have any magnets in them at all, but still created an attraction (non metallic paint). When I stuck the REMs in the neck, the paint "exploded" all over the room. (not the bottle, but like a blast of paint explosion from the neck when I put the magnets in the neck)

This was with a couple of different Model Colour paints.


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If you have any rare earth magnets and Vallejo paints (especially model colour) give it a try. It's bloody odd.

Eeek... I'm using Vallejo paints currently. Wouldn't like to think they've got metal in them... can there be some other explanation?

You got me curious so I checked. There are a few paints (in my collection) that have a very weak magnetic attraction. Even fewer have enough attraction to cause the magnets to stick and they are all greens and browns. I'm guessing that Vallejo uses ferrous pigments for certain colors which causes the attraction.

Well that makes sense. Metals are often used as pigments anyway, and hobby paint has denser pigments compared to most paints.

But wait, how do they work?