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After a look online iv decided I want to transfer my gw paints to dropper bottles. Iv had a look on eBay and there's so many to choose from I don't want to get the wrong ones, I want ones that will have a controlled flow and won't just pour out as soon as the bottle is upside down so can you guys tell me which ones I'll need ? Or which ones you've got ?

I got the 20ml dropper bottles from US Plastics. I think it was 48 of them for $24 shipped here in the US. Not sure what it would cost overseas.

Amazon is also carrying them now.

I'd suggest the bottles from SHC Web. I've bought some of these meself. The 10ml size I've linked to will comfortably hold GW's 12ml of paint.
I also think the dropper itself is a better design than Vallejo's, too. The hole is very slightly larger than the Vallejo dropper, and is at the bottom of the nozzle, with an almost conical channel above it leading to the tip. IMO this prevents paint clogging the nozzle, separating into pigment and medium in the nozzle; all of which can be difficult to shake out and mix up again, with Vallejo droppers. But you still get a good level of control - you can squeeze out a whole drop, or let it squeeze out to the top of the nozzle, dot it on your palette, and let the conical channel and larger hole suck the rest of the drop back in again.

You're in luck, too! Looks like they've started selling the bottles as a whole package again. For a while they sold the dropper parts seperately from the bottles, which made little sense.

Thanks guys I'll take a better look at those later how do you find the 10ml bottles they look very small ?

You can get 50 15 ml dropper bottles for $10 with free shipping off ebay. First large quantity for cheap one I came across but there are plenty of options. It may be weird for you as Aussie ebay, not sure. I hear good things about the US Plastics Darefsky mentions too.

I use 20, 30 and 60ml bottles for washes and mediums and stuff, haven't tried 10ml so can't comment on them. I haven't transferred GW paints into them as I don't use them, but I've seen a lot of threads of people who have, it works fine. 15ml bottle is probably your best bet for 12ml GW paint pots. A little extra space for water to get the last bit from the GW tub.

I got mine from China, 200 bottles for £36.99

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/130676887665?_trksid=p2059210.m2749.l2649&ssPageName=STRK%3AMEBIDX%3AIT

With a variety of cap colours to choose from.

Theyre doing me alright so far, loads more than I needed so I've got spares for new colours or custom mixes.
Theyre marginally slimer and taller than a vallejo bottle. Same capacity.

Room inside for a full pot of citadel, a splash of medium/flow aid mix, and a couple of glass beads to act as agitators. They actually hold more than 15ml.

 Yonan wrote:
You can get 50 15 ml dropper bottles for $10 with free shipping off ebay. First large quantity for cheap one I came across but there are plenty of options. It may be weird for you as Aussie ebay, not sure. I hear good things about the US Plastics Darefsky mentions too.

I use 20, 30 and 60ml bottles for washes and mediums and stuff, haven't tried 10ml so can't comment on them. I haven't transferred GW paints into them as I don't use them, but I've seen a lot of threads of people who have, it works fine. 15ml bottle is probably your best bet for 12ml GW paint pots. A little extra space for water to get the last bit from the GW tub.

Is that brand you linked the type you use?

I've been wanting to get myself some dropper bottles but I'm always hesitant because I don't want to buy something cheap that causes the paints to dry out and I end up wasting hundreds of dollars of paint. I have a ton of GW paints and also P3 paints I'd like to put in droppers (I don't actually mind the P3 pots, it's just a hassle when you're airbrushing to use not use dropper bottles).

These are what iv been looking at on eBay, cheaper than all the rest iv seen online. http://pages.ebay.com/link/?nav=item.view&alt=web&id=400615781522
15ml for the extra water to rinse the gw pot out with.

Reaper sells them in blisters of $3 for 3 bottles. They are identical bottles to their Master series and work quite well. I use them occasionally to store pre-thinned colors for airbrush, since getting paint from a pot to a gravity well is stupidly hard.

However, if you really want bottles, I'd suggest using Vallejo. I have not found an efficient, waste-free method of transferring from pot to bottle yet :(

I must be weird, because I actually prefer pots for painting

Talys wrote:
Reaper sells them in blisters of $3 for 3 bottles. They are identical bottles to their Master series and work quite well. I use them occasionally to store pre-thinned colors for airbrush, since getting paint from a pot to a gravity well is stupidly hard.

However, if you really want bottles, I'd suggest using Vallejo. I have not found an efficient, waste-free method of transferring from pot to bottle yet :(

I must be weird, because I actually prefer pots for painting

I sort of prefer pots for hairy brush painting, but only if they're good pots, not the crap that GW puts out. I don't mind the P3 pots. But droppers are fine too, just give them a shake and squeeze it on to your palette and you're good to go. The only person I know who hates droppers is a guy who paints directly from the pot, he doesn't use a palette at all as much as I tell him he should start using one to help improve his painting

But when it comes to airbrushing I much prefer droppers, I can just hold my airbrush in one hand and drop the paint in with the other. With a regular pot you have to get the paint from the pot in to the airbrush which is just more awkward.

So overall I prefer droppers to pots, and I prefer ANYTHING to GW's piece of crap pots.

Anyone have any good ideas for how to transfer paint to dropper bottles from the pots?

The tutorial I read online said to just use a small funnel and pour it in, scrape any leftover paint with a large brush then put a few drops of water or flow air in the gw pot shake it up and the pour into the dropper bottle. Obviously you won't get all the gw paint out tho.

 troa wrote:
Anyone have any good ideas for how to transfer paint to dropper bottles from the pots?

Mostly you'll be thinning the paint a bit.

For the right size funnels, look on eBay for Hip Flask Funnels. Small, cheap, and perfect for the job.

 troa wrote:
Anyone have any good ideas for how to transfer paint to dropper bottles from the pots?

Careful and steady pouring.

Then add some medium / flow aid mix to the GW pot to help retrieve whats stuck around the sides - mix it in and pour again. then peel up the label from the GW pot and stick it to the new one. maybe put a drop of the colour on the cap too. Voila!


Edit; I couldnt find a funnel small enough (and I own a hip flask with funnel )

Just resorted to a careful slow pour, its not as hard as it looks.

Candle_man wrote:
Thanks guys I'll take a better look at those later how do you find the 10ml bottles they look very small ?

Like I say, I've poured 12ml GW pots into them and they fit snugly, but okay. The product page itself mentions the max fill is 12ml.

However, if you're worried about getting every little scrap of paint and want to add a couple mls of water or medium to slosh it out with: ta da!

AllSeeingSkink wrote:
I sort of prefer pots for hairy brush painting, but only if they're good pots, not the crap that GW puts out. I don't mind the P3 pots. But droppers are fine too, just give them a shake and squeeze it on to your palette and you're good to go. The only person I know who hates droppers is a guy who paints directly from the pot, he doesn't use a palette at all as much as I tell him he should start using one to help improve his painting

But when it comes to airbrushing I much prefer droppers, I can just hold my airbrush in one hand and drop the paint in with the other. With a regular pot you have to get the paint from the pot in to the airbrush which is just more awkward.

So overall I prefer droppers to pots, and I prefer ANYTHING to GW's piece of crap pots.

Funny that you like the current P3 pots, since they are identical to the GW pots from like.... 20+ years ago (late 80's)

I dislike bottles when painting out of a bottle because after basecoating, I rarely want one whole drop of paint. Usually, I swish the tip of a #1 or #2 brush onto a wet palette, dip the tip of the brush in water, thin slightly, dry the brush against a paper towel, and then take a tiny bit of paint onto my brush. I'm pretty good at guessing how much I need on that first swish, so I waste almost zero paint. One drop of VMC is like 10x more than I need most of the time. On a wet palette, it makes a mess over night, because it just bleeds everywhere (especially VMC!) and then I have to start with a new palette.

On certain colors like white, I use flow-aid to thin instead of water. In this case, waste is a necessary evil, and I use 1 drop each of white and flo-aid. Mostly, this is because I don't want to contaminate my flo-aid dispenser with a brush, and I can't dispense less than 1 drop (I transfer flo-aid into an eyedropper).

On an airbrush, a pot is a total waste of time.

Oh, one other nice feature of a pot (for me) is that I can use a flat, metal stir stick to break it up a lot easier than I can with a bottle. There is no waste because you can scrape the stir stick off of the inner pot rim.


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Candle_man wrote:
The tutorial I read online said to just use a small funnel and pour it in, scrape any leftover paint with a large brush then put a few drops of water or flow air in the gw pot shake it up and the pour into the dropper bottle. Obviously you won't get all the gw paint out tho.

My trick is this --

Usually, I want paint in a bottle for airbrush, and paint in pot for painting. So, I mark a dropper bottle at 1/3 and 2/3 with a pen. I fill the first 1/3 with liquitex matte medium, and then the next 1/3 with GW paint. I don't like funnels because I'm pretty sure I lose half the paint that way, so I cut a very fat round pen right down the center (making a long waterslide). After I'm done, I use a metal palette knife with a rounded tip, wet the end slightly with flo-aid, and get almost everything off of my paint slider. Shake like crazy, and presto! I use the rest of the paint in the pot just as "pot paint"

These days, though, I've gotten much, much lazier, and I almost always just use Vallejo Game Air and Model Air colors that are "close enough".

If you use dropper bottles you don't HAVE to use a whole drop. You just invert the bottle so the tip is on your palette, let the paint run on to the palette (maybe give a little bit of a squeeze if you need to coax it out) and you can get whatever amount you want, even a fraction of a "drop".

I think you actually waste less that way because the only paint that leaves the bottle is what is on your palette, you don't get any on brushes and what not (I always use a different brush to what I paint with to get paint out of pots as I don't want paint in the ferrule and I typically don't want that much paint on my brush, so the excess just gets washed off in to my water pot).

I did this for about 150 GW paints, best decision ever.

I bought the cheapest bottles on ebay. This is the same one I got (over 12 months ago) and they are still fine.

http://www.ebay.com.au/itm/120413037791

I also added some agitators (these were the perfect size);

http://www.ebay.com.au/itm/300861578740

And I used these funnels to pour them in;

http://www.ebay.com.au/itm/181128545610

The process was time consuming and annoying. Open bottle, put in 2 nuts, put in funnel (it fits if you jam it), open paint pot, add flow improver and drying retarder (figured why not while I am at it), shake the hell out of it, pour into funnel (try not to hit the edges of the funnel, you will waste paint), when it has dripped mostly out I then used a #3 paintbrush to sweep out as much as I could and wiped it into the pot.

The pots have held up really well, no spills, no issues. GW paints have separated quite a bit, and shaking them will immediately jam the nozzle with medium and not pigment (or something). Suffice to say, it is a pain - some paints are better than others, but what I generally do if a paint is separated is take the nozzle off, squeeze the bottle, put the nozzle back on and let the negative pressure suck the nozzle clean. Rolling is also better than shaking to begin.

You can always get paint back into the bottle as well by using it to suck up excess paint drops.

I also bought some printer labels and made some nifty GW themed paint labels for the bottles. Overall, it is so nice not having to deal with those horrid little bottles, would do again.

I'm not sure I'd trust stainless nuts. I've used stainless nuts and screws in underwater applications and while they don't rust as fast as high tensile steel nuts, they most definitely do start corroding after a while.

I expected the paints would run out or die long before that needs to be an issue, and so far I've not seen any rust through the paints

E: you've got a point though, and it is nothing I considered until now

Glass beads work as agitators, too. Good job on decanting all your GW paints!!

AllSeeingSkink wrote:

 Yonan wrote:
You can get 50 15 ml dropper bottles for $10 with free shipping off ebay. First large quantity for cheap one I came across but there are plenty of options. It may be weird for you as Aussie ebay, not sure. I hear good things about the US Plastics Darefsky mentions too.

I use 20, 30 and 60ml bottles for washes and mediums and stuff, haven't tried 10ml so can't comment on them. I haven't transferred GW paints into them as I don't use them, but I've seen a lot of threads of people who have, it works fine. 15ml bottle is probably your best bet for 12ml GW paint pots. A little extra space for water to get the last bit from the GW tub.

Is that brand you linked the type you use?

I've been wanting to get myself some dropper bottles but I'm always hesitant because I don't want to buy something cheap that causes the paints to dry out and I end up wasting hundreds of dollars of paint. I have a ton of GW paints and also P3 paints I'd like to put in droppers (I don't actually mind the P3 pots, it's just a hassle when you're airbrushing to use not use dropper bottles).

They look like one of the 3 types of bottles I've tried, they work fine. Another is similar and also fine, the third is fairly different and at 60ml more useful for washes, mediums, water, windex for airbrush cleaning etc. Certainly not for transferring GW paints to, but I like having them handy for larger volumes. Drying of paints in cheaper dropper bottles... not sure how much of a problem that could be. I haven't noticed it whereas it was very noticeable with old GW pots -_-

For agitators, a thread here recommended hematite or lava beads. I've tried both, both work fine with no discolouration of paint in a year or 2 of use so far.

Something I haven't seen mentioned yet is that if your paints have been used a good bit already you may have some crusty bits in the paint pots that will clog up your fancy new dropper tips. When I did this operation with 100+ gw paints I used one half of a metal mesh tea ball as a strainer to catch any cured crusties. A lot of my paints were older so I needed to do this. You have to wash the funnel and strainer between each paint so up to you if the extra caution is worth it.