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Edit whoopsie wrong forum section, most certainly isnt news :/ intended for P&M, I have pressed the alert a mod button... but if any mods see this, could be a dear and move it over please (sowwi) - Awesome thanks unknown MOD!

Hi everyrone.
I'm in the market for a paint rack... have been shopping around for one for a while.

Building one is certainly an option. I use dropper bottles, bought form china, but theyre very similar to a vallejo bottle, just a tad more narrow and tall.
My current best idea, is to source some pipe (basically any pipe, but my first thoughts were white pvc plumbing stuff.) that is 26mm on the internal diameter. This would fit a vallejo dropper with a mm etiher side for wiggle room.
Cut the pipe to 50mm lengths all the same, ad stick them all together side by side (so that the pipes run parallel) and just slot the paints in.

For sticking.. I'm thinking silicone sealant (aka caulking) and boxing it within a frame made of something I can probably find in the shed.


I'm just struggling to find a cheap piping that would suit. 26mm seems to be an odd size.
I've got over a hundred bottles to rack up, and would like space to put a few more so that I dont overflow the rack and be in the same (paint bottles everywhere) boat again soon. So perhaps 150 or even 200 slots.

I could probably half the length of these pipes and the fix a backing board 25mm away to stop bottles falling through - saving on overall pipe purchase.

... Does anyone know where I might get a pipe to suit my needs?
Or have a better paint rack suggestion? Price isnt too big a deal.. but I dont like wasting money per say I'd really like one of the back to basix clear acrylic racks but they seem a bit steep when i could build it cheap and cheerful and buy more paint or figures with my budget instead!

Nice idea might have to steal it
Check out the clear PVC pipe
http://www.pipestock.com/pvc/pvc-pipe
25mm should work

Also wayland do some nice paint stations 120 paints capacity is about 35€
Or if DIY is the way forward just create a ziggurat and have 50mm pieces of wood upright to hold them in place.
Or use a drill saw 25mm and cut holes in a 50mm deep piece of wood by your desired length, thin mdf under to keep them in place

Thanks.

I've found this;
http://www.theplasticshop.co.uk/acrylic-tube-extruded-clear-26mm-od-to-40mm-od.html

I'm wondering if these guys will do the hundred odd cuts for me too and just post me a load of even chunks of pipe. I'l email them a little later on.

I could then lay them out flat on a board and stick them all together at the sides (to create a flat face), perhaps putting double stacks here and there as a spacer, and attach a board to the back of the spacers. (If this makes sense? - I'l draw it later, I'm sure that would describe it better)

I've seen a lot of designs for the racks, each with its own pros and cons too. So custom building something might be better.

Edit; using such a small length of pipe... I might not even need to be using a rigid pipe material, which opens the door to hoses too

I have few bottles of vallejo paint and I was thinking about similar idea. Only different is paper pipe. Acctually I found at my workplace piece of chromed pipe in perfect size(you can use palstic asswell). Just roll with thick paper more like cardboard with pva glue, few layers and you have lots of pipes wich are cheaper than plastic. Years back I was makining rocket models so I know that those pipes are solid. Your idea of ready cutted pipes is great only jot shure does silicone sealant gonna glue them. Why dont just use super glue?

i've had rather good luck using these display racks i got off amazon, they're sold as finger nail polish racks i believe

In a similar situation to yourself and after a call to a local lumber yard and a price for £9 i got 45 ft of 1.5 inch rough cut square section and made 3 of these....


Although mine were mostly for citadel paint style im sure changing the dimensions would serve your needs also.

I used a bucket for pains until like 3 years ago when the kids emptyed half them out on me now I have a tacklebox with a lock lol. 140 paints in a blob hard to find anything

I like those stepped racks you guys have.

But I'm thinking about a wall hung rack, something to hold the paints like this would;
http://www.back2base-ix.com/index.php?_a=viewProd&productId=367
By essentially making a honey comb style wall (hexagons would work.. but I was thinking round pipes)
Right now its looking like buying a length of pipe and cutting it into small pieces, If I could get a pipe cutter to make that job easy and clean, that would be excelent!
Im finding most pipes state the external diameter and not the inner... I onyl really need to know the inner for this project to work. And it needs to allow wiggle room for my paint bottles, which are just shy of 24/25mm wide.

I actually transfer all my citadels into these bottles, which I bought 200 of from china, and place glass beads into as agitators too. I have some 50ml bottles too which are about 35mm wide, I could also look to add slots for these I suppose.

The caulking I was thinking because its cheap... superglue would probably do, my first thoughts were hot glue gun.

This is what I'm going to get:


or



Both come in 120 pot sizes & cost £27.99 + P&P each.

http://www.wargame-model-mods.co.uk/ourshop/prod_2859239-paint-stand-120-bottles.html

I have been looking about the net for prices on dropper bottles to put all mine into, if you dont mind me asking how much were the 200 you bought??
having said that the new citadel bottle also looks like it will last and i dont want to throw away all the paint that would be left over from pouring them into a new bottle.

I spent about £45 on 200 15ml bottles, and 20 50ml ones, and a few hundred little glass beads.

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/130676887665?_trksid=p2059210.m2749.l2649&ssPageName=STRK%3AMEBIDX%3AIT
This is the exact listing on ebay that I ordered. So £36.99 for the 200 clear white top 15ml bottles. (just shy of 19pence per bottle) When you empty a 12ml citadel and add a rough 10% of medium, its a nicely filled bottle, then carefully peel up the label from citadel and wrap it around these drop in a few 6mm glass beads to help with shaking before you pop the spouts in too Those cost me £2-3 for 400 if I recall correctly (also ebay). Doing this alone reduced the desk clutter considerably as these bottles are a good 25% more narrow than the citadel pots; verticle space a plenty, but horizontal desk area is at a premium. I want to take it further and have a wall rack so I can reclaim my work space!

The 'wasted' paint left in the original pots was retrieved by washing it out with medium, which I planned to add about 10% of to all my paints anyway. I made a big bottle up of distilled water, flow aid, matte medium mixed up that I normally use to thin as I go, once I couldnt pout any more from the citadel pot, I put a squirt of my thinner medium into it and shook it up to help the residual paint pour out. If your not keen to add a bit of medium to everything at once then maybe dont try finding a spatula that fits or something) I got them on ebay, it took a fair while for them to arrive tbh. But that was expected. I couldve paid maybe double to have some shipped from the UK the next day.... The store also offered multiple coloured lids... I was tempted to order lots of 50 with seperate lid colours rather than 200 all white. But I did get the 20 50ml ones with blue lids... which went onto my washes.
Mightve liked another colour to distinguish airbrush thinned paints out like VMA have black lids while VMA have white.

The current winner on the pipe is this
http://www.cityirrigation.co.uk/acatalog/Metric-uPVC--Pipe-32mm-10-Bar-x-5m-HPPM032.html

Internal Diameter: 28.4mm
External Diameter: 32mm
Length: 5 metre
Colour:Light Grey
Material: uPVC

Price: £6.02 (£7.22 Including VAT at 20%)

I think I can make a rack that will hold hundreds of paints for under £10-15 .. it depends how I'm going to go about cutting such short lengths of pipe neatly.


Thats the only push fit plumbing pipe I can find right now that states the internal diameter.. does Dakka have any plumbers? that could confirm for me wether or not I can expect this to be a standardised size for all 32mm polypropylene pipes? I mean 28mm would be a tad loose for my bottlkes.. I was aiming at 26mm to be loose enough.. but the price is so much lower to use an industry standard material that I'm not quibbling about 2mm more wiggle than anticipated. ...

Screwfix do a 10*3m length of this for £18 ... so its dirrrty cheap - I could make a few racks with that much of it.

Edit again,
Found 32mm waste pipe at 99p/meter... thats highly likely the winner! Il take a bottle of paint along tot he store with me to check it fits or if theres a better sized option. But yeah... 99p/meter , making 25mm lengths and setting them 25mm away from a board should allow for 40 pieces per meter, So for a 200 paint rack, I'm talking about £4.95 ... Call its £5.94 for having a meter to ruin / waste too

..I've got a couple of lengths of shelving kicking around, I might saw one up and box in my 200 pipes and have a little shelving unit made out of it too for stashing the brushes and things that might go along with he paints.

Edit again again
heres a photo of a quick sketch i did on paper


Hopefully I can build something like this. Since drawing it, its occured to me that if I angle the paint rack part, they wont be flush with the bottom of the shelf but I would like it angled just to keep a bit of gravity on my side. Plan to enclose it in a triangular box sat between two shelves with a mid way shelf on one side or either side and centralise the rack .And then mount eh whole thing on a shelf bracket... It could sit ont he desk I suppose.. a bit like a hutch,

So here it is

In the end I changed the design slightly as I made it.



It cost me about £20 to make, and holds 190 bottles in the tubes.
The pipes cost me £1.99 for a 2m piece from Wickes. 32mm waste pipe, push fit. They wouldve been slightly cheaper at screw fix.
I used 6 meters. And have about 20 tubes left over. I thought I might make a mobile painting tray for a next project.

First up I sanded the outside of all the pipes to help with the glueing later.
I used a circular drop saw and cut all the pipes double the length i needed. And then halved them at an angle. (15 degrees)

This gave me two pieces with the same angled end. But without reseting the blade angle every piece.
Cleaning up the cut ends with a craft knife took a while :/ perhaps the saw wasnt the best tool but It was like 400 cuts.

Once all cleaned up, I used a glue gun to glue them all together, against a flat board with the angled face to the flat. This gave me the mostly level line up of tubes with a slight slope in the same direction. (the sanding was important, they wont stick well without it)

I used some cheap white shelf board to build the frame, I spent the remainder of the £20 on an extra length.. I had some already.. so perhaps £30 total spend.

Voila, Custom wall mounted paint rack with storage space for bits and bobs on the cheap.
Its a big big (700mm wide by 900mm tall ish) but I have a lot of junk to stash away so thats not all bad, It could sit atop a desk too if you dont want wall mounted.


I

I bought one of these mate. Bit pricey for what it is, but easy to put together and looks good when done.

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Wargames-Scenery-BNIB-Paint-Storage-System-Rack-30-GW-Citadel-Tamiya-size-/351040138848?pt=UK_Toys_Wargames_RL&hash=item51bb9f6e60

Yeah i did see lots of styles of store bought paint racks.

Nothing that could hold 150-200 bottles for under £20.

It wouldve set me back atleast £40 for a wall mounted rack with horizontal bottles to hold that many. And then it wouldnt have had any bonus shelving. - am much happeir with what I've made than I wouldve been with any storebought solution that I could find. (And I spent 3 weeks shopping round)

This ones A nice cheap DIY paint rack that doesnt break the bank. Involves a bit of effort making it, but you cna make it suit your needs and space... any shape/size is possible.

The tubes I used were white pvc 32mm push fit waste pipe, industry standard, dirt cheap waste pipe for sink basins.

HairySticks wrote:

It cost me about £20 to make, and holds 190 bottles in the tubes.

*Looks at expensive paintier*

*Is jealous*

 Vermis wrote:

HairySticks wrote:

It cost me about £20 to make, and holds 190 bottles in the tubes.

*Looks at expensive paintier*

*Is jealous*

Yeah I seen those rotating carousel racks.

I really wanted a wall hanging rack tbh, back-2-basix make a really nice clear acrylic one. But it certainly wasnt under £20 to hang shy of 200 bottles

Using pipe like I have done here you could make any size, shape, colour rack you want.

I did find clear acrylic tube made to any size you want... its just nowhere near as cheap as white pvc trade pipes

You wouldnt even need to have the shelving bit around it if you dont want/need it... maybe you want a desk mounting thing, like a desk top hutch spanning the whole desk, or a tall narrow tower to save on table space.... whatever you think suits you best
I wanted to show everyone the use of 32mm waste pipe though. Vallejo bottles fit well enough for £1 a meter. - they could be a bit tighter fitting but whatever! I shopped around a fair bit, and short of ordering a specialty made pipe to fit perfect, the push fit 32mm waste pipe is a the closest industry standard I could find so suit what I needed it for (to fit a vallejo bottle)

This box fits the paints well and lets them be moved easily when necessary and can be closed to provide another nice flat surface which is very helpful frequently. Was a wine box from somwehere.

I have a paintier 80, which (as mentioned) cost a pretty penny even before shipping from the States. Problem is, I put a couple of new bottles on it recently and realised that was it. It's full, even with my paints stacked 3-4 rows deep. (which is flippin' inconvenient in itself) I've been dithering about splashing out on another, but now I think I'll take a leaf out of your book!

Yonan: what brand of craft paint do you have in the wine box?

 Yonan wrote:
This box fits the paints well and lets them be moved easily when necessary and can be closed to provide another nice flat surface which is very helpful frequently. Was a wine box from somwehere.

Spoiler:

I previously had all these bottles sitting in a creme egg box (the box that 48 come in )
It was a nice fit for vallejo's but It was full I needed to fit more in. Putting this up has free'd up my table space too.
Mobility wasnt an issue.

 greenskin lynn wrote:
i've had rather good luck using these display racks i got off amazon, they're sold as finger nail polish racks i believe

Spoiler:

Those look great.. how long are they? I see several diffrent lenghts on Amazon. It looks like yours can take 14 droppers on a level.