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Does anyone bother to pour their citadel paints in to dropper bottles? And if so, why not just buy a similar vajello (or other) colour?

I've never thought of doing that myself. I tend to just use vallejo for a lot of my stuff.

I poured a couple into dropper bottles, once upon a time. Mostly because once upon a time, GW packaged their paints in those dry-qwik bolter shell pots.

Yes, all the shades have gone into dropper bottles after I got fed up of perpetually knocking those tall citadel pots over!!

mrFickle wrote:
Does anyone bother to pour their citadel paints in to dropper bottles?

I have done that for many years. Dropper bottles give you finer control over how much paint you use, and if you are a clumsy moron like me, you can't really spill it. Once I dumped a whole pot of badab black, I never went back to flip tops.

mrFickle wrote:
And if so, why not just buy a similar vajello (or other) colour?

I use several brands of paints because some brands have better colors than others. I have found P3 makes an excellent white and khaki, GWS... used to have great metallics, and so on. I also like to be able to color match older projects that I never finished. I use plenty of Vallejo but I have not found a single manufacturer where I like every color.

I've moved GW and P3 colors to eye dropper bottles in order to make it easier to use in gravity-feed airbrushes. I also find that it's easier to get the right thinned consistency. I thin the paint in the gw pot, move it to a mixing jar and then thin it to airbrush consistency and then move it to the dropper bottle. The thinning usually increases the volume significantly and I'll have plenty left over in the mixing jar.

loads of people do it. they usually switch the labels over too. I've never done it myself, mainly because my paints only just fit into my box, and if i put them all in droppers they wouldnt.

One benefit many forget is that not only can you drop out just what you need, but you can also drop out and mix more easily without risking contamination of either pot.

It does take a while though and can be a pain to get the last of the paint out of the pot, but it does work well and easily.

I don't find dropper bottles to be much more useful for mixing. It might just be me, but mine get the ends clogged, then too much comes out, so I try to scrape it back into the bottle, but then the air pressure forces more out of the nozzle when I put it back on.
The only real advantage for me is that the paint doesn't gum up or dry out like it sometimes does on gw pots.

Use a pin rather than trying to push it out when the nozzle gets blocked.

I tried the moving the GW paint over to dropper bottles but found they dried out extremely quickly and the bottles were almost always clogged. Is there any trick to have that not happen? Maybe I just got crappy dropper bottles but they looked OK at least to the naked eye....

I've heard one trick is to store paint upside down; the paint then pools around the opening and seals it with itself. Whilst if stood upright the paint collects at the bottom which means moisture can escape out of the top.

So where’s the best place to get dropper bottles? Do you buy ball bearings to go in with the paint?

I got a random pack of 15ml bottles off ebay and a pack of glass bearings to go with it. If you go for glass it will never rust or taint your paint. Steel ball bearings are not all made to the same standard and some will rust. You won't know which ones until its rusted and stained your paint. So go with glass, the price difference is pretty much invisible and you get the same performance without the risk.