GW and their washes

[Skywrath]

Disclaimer: Going on a rant here.

 

So this is my 5th bottle that spilled over, and in such a way, that 80% of it is spilt, before I got a chance to use it all. I tried holders, putting them in harder to reach places so I don't spill them over accidently, and just flat out being careful, nothing works. Putting my tinfoil hat on, I'm wondering whether they are designed to be spilt easily so we waste more money on the product, true to them being capitalist pigs. Anyone else had this frustrating experience happen to them?

Edited February 14, 2021 by Skywrath

[Grotsmasha]

Disclaimer: Going on a rant here.

 

So this is my 5th bottle that spilled over, and in such a way, that 80% of it is spilt, before I got a chance to use it all. I tried holders, putting them in harder to reach places so I don't spill them over accidently, and just flat out being careful, nothing works. Putting my tinfoil hat on, I'm wondering whether they are designed to be spilt easily so we waste more money on the product, true to them being capitalist pigs. Anyone else had this frustrating experience happen to them?

 

I used to be in the same boat, but THIS has stopped my issue cold. I keep Nuln Oil, Agrax Eathshade and Reikland Fleshshade in it permanently and have not spilt a pot since

[Karhedron]

I hear you!

 

Between taller pots and lower viscosity, it makes little accidents much more likely to result in catastrophic spillages than the shorter pots of thicker paint.

[Dagoth Ur]

Disclaimer: Going on a rant here.

 

So this is my 5th bottle that spilled over, and in such a way, that 80% of it is spilt, before I got a chance to use it all. I tried holders, putting them in harder to reach places so I don't spill them over accidently, and just flat out being careful, nothing works. Putting my tinfoil hat on, I'm wondering whether they are designed to be spilt easily so we waste more money on the product, true to them being capitalist pigs. Anyone else had this frustrating experience happen to them?

With you on that one - whenever I look at a pot of GW washes it activates my inner Dale Gribble.

[Magos Takatus]

I don't think I've ever spilled one of those pots. I've only knocked over the paint pots when they are open, and it's usually when the paint is thick enough not to flow everywhere. Just typing that has cursed me to know over my pots constantly. I've knocked over those pots while they were closed but that's about it.

[Firedrake Cordova]

I've been painting since the mid 1990s(!) and I've yet to knock over a pot of paint - the old GW/Coat D'Arms/Formula P3 pots are marginally shorter than the current 24ml wash bottles, so I'm going to assume those early years count (they are the same height at the lip of the pot - it's just the height of the domed lid which differs).   The closest I've come is an old hexagonal bottle of Brown Ink which didn't want to open, until it, err, did, with somewhat messy results

 

Have you tried wrapping a ring of Blu-Tac around the base of your pot? It should help keep it in place, and also help make it harder to topple by making the base wider, and also sticky.

Edited February 15, 2021 by Firedrake Cordova

[The Yncarne]

Haven't had the OP's issue to date. For those that do, there are things like Grotsmasha's solution that I've seen work for others.

[Halandaar]

I've never knocked one over in the entire time these big pots have existed and I'm not exactly some kind of spacial awareness savant.

 

I know it's 2021 but not everything annoying needs a conspiracy theory.

[Brother Tyler]

 

Disclaimer: Going on a rant here.

 

So this is my 5th bottle that spilled over, and in such a way, that 80% of it is spilt, before I got a chance to use it all. I tried holders, putting them in harder to reach places so I don't spill them over accidently, and just flat out being careful, nothing works. Putting my tinfoil hat on, I'm wondering whether they are designed to be spilt easily so we waste more money on the product, true to them being capitalist pigs. Anyone else had this frustrating experience happen to them?

 

I used to be in the same boat, but THIS has stopped my issue cold. I keep Nuln Oil, Agrax Eathshade and Reikland Fleshshade in it permanently and have not spilt a pot since

 

Y'know what would make that thingy better? I hole right in the middle. Then enterprising hobbyists could put screws/dowels down so that they could just spin their little holders around to get to the pot they want.

 

In all the years I've been painting miniatures, I've only knocked pots over once (maybe twice?), and that was when I was being careless. I have my desk set up so that paint pots are away from the edge and swinging hands/arms. I have to consciously reach forward to get to them, minimizing accidents.

[Cheex]

Glue it onto a 40mm base, problem solved.

[Slave to Darkness]

I've never knocked one over in the entire time these big pots have existed and I'm not exactly some kind of spacial awareness savant.

 

I know it's 2021 but not everything annoying needs a conspiracy theory.

Only pot I ever knocked over was Salmanders green, back in the days before Dark Angels green was even a thing. Being a kid and not having funds to replace things I learned to be more careful, and I am the kind of person who ends up supergluing his hand inside his mouth. 

[jaxom]

Poster tac under the bottle is what I started doing.

[WARMASTER_]

 

 

I've never knocked one over in the entire time these big pots have existed and I'm not exactly some kind of spacial awareness savant.

 

I know it's 2021 but not everything annoying needs a conspiracy theory.

Only pot I ever knocked over was Salmanders green, back in the days before Dark Angels green was even a thing. Being a kid and not having funds to replace things I learned to be more careful, and I am the kind of person who ends up supergluing his hand inside his mouth.

That actually made me giggle

[LameBeard]

Disclaimer: Going on a rant here.

 

So this is my 5th bottle that spilled over, and in such a way, that 80% of it is spilt, before I got a chance to use it all. I tried holders, putting them in harder to reach places so I don't spill them over accidently, and just flat out being careful, nothing works. Putting my tinfoil hat on, I'm wondering whether they are designed to be spilt easily so we waste more money on the product, true to them being capitalist pigs. Anyone else had this frustrating experience happen to them?

My son lost 80% of his new contrast paint he just got today. And he was being careful and we do have a holder. I am angry at GW because it’s just so unnecessary.

 

(Actually we recovered maybe 20% through some tedious syringing off the cutting mat. But you can tell why his Mother has banned Warhammer from the kitchen)

[Emicus]

I use bluetac. GW sells and 'anti spill' thingiemajigger as well.

[USNCenturion]

I spilled a Nihilikh Oxide and a Nuln Oil a few weeks ago. It really is it’s own unique feeling and reaction when that happens.

[MithrilForge]

Yep... i have spilt Nuln oil like 3 times   i managed to save half of it each time but yes... I did end up buying the 3 pot holder that Grot smasha suggested and yes i have Nuln oil/ Agrax earthshade and seraphim sepia in it and they don't spill anymore...  

it was so easy to hit the flipped up lid when your reach over to the wash pot or another brush etc... 

 

Mithril

[MegaVolt87]

I have spilt one pot a piece of Agrax and Nuln, pretty annoying. Both times it was reaching over the pots. Keeping them on the left and not reaching over them to get things like brushes, use the water pots etc, never spilled one since. 

[Noserenda]

Not split a pot in years thankfully, though i did knock a closed pot of skeleton horde into the bin and not notice until after i emptied it :( 

[BLACK BLΠFLY]

Everybody spills at least one pot .

[Jings]

If you can't trust yourself around the larger pots, start transferring them onto dropper bottles.

 

No point crying about spilt paint. It's not as if we haven't all done it at some point.

[Gederas]

The pots are kind of imbalanced, but that's due to the height, not anything purposely done.

 

I've never knocked one over in the entire time these big pots have existed and I'm not exactly some kind of spacial awareness savant.

I know it's 2021 but not everything annoying needs a conspiracy theory.

Only pot I ever knocked over was Salmanders green, back in the days before Dark Angels green was even a thing. Being a kid and not having funds to replace things I learned to be more careful, and I am the kind of person who ends up supergluing his hand inside his mouth.

Okay come on dude. You can't give that tidbit and just leave it a noodle incident and have us all wondering "how did Slave to Darkness superglue his hand inside of his mouth?" :lol:

[Skywrath]

Thanks for the suggestions, this will be taken into account. Looks like I'll have to get some of their holders, which again sort of reinforces the theory they are easy to spill. That being said..

 

I've never knocked one over in the entire time these big pots have existed and I'm not exactly some kind of spacial awareness savant.

I know it's 2021 but not everything annoying needs a conspiracy theory.

 

Clearly you didn't read the bit where I said "if I were to put my tinfoil hat on". 

 

Poster tac under the bottle is what I started doing.

 

Thanks mate, easiest solution so far.

 

If you can't trust yourself around the larger pots, start transferring them onto dropper bottles.

No point crying about spilt paint. It's not as if we haven't all done it at some point.

 

You misunderstand the term crying about it, when this thread was asking for how to deal with it. 

[Slave to Darkness]

The pots are kind of imbalanced, but that's due to the height, not anything purposely done.

 

I've never knocked one over in the entire time these big pots have existed and I'm not exactly some kind of spacial awareness savant.

 

I know it's 2021 but not everything annoying needs a conspiracy theory.

Only pot I ever knocked over was Salmanders green, back in the days before Dark Angels green was even a thing. Being a kid and not having funds to replace things I learned to be more careful, and I am the kind of person who ends up supergluing his hand inside his mouth.

Okay come on dude. You can't give that tidbit and just leave it a noodle incident and have us all wondering "how did Slave to Darkness superglue his hand inside of his mouth?"

Was nothing exciting, had a loose tooth and had glue all over my fingers. 

[N1SB]

Fratres, I love this because IMHO this is one of those clear cases where Warhammer teaches you the skills, habits and thinking that extend beyond Warhammer in that meatspace we call "real life".  God this is such a good line of thought.

 

My belief is - pots spilling is NOT an intentional design flaw...but paradoxically GW is incentivised to leave the problem alone.

 

Hear me out, because I noticed a trend in your posts and I want to ask a question, and the best answer already appeared.

 

 

+++ Paints Are Insane Profits For GW +++

 

 

What is a pot of Citadel paint/ink/etc.?  It's literally just water mixed with stuff they sell for a huge mark-up.

 

Disclaimer - yet at the same time I'm NOT saying they're priced wrong, or that we're stupid to buy them, because the value to us as painters is worth more.  This Contrast paint stuff, it's value proposition to me is time savings...and I happen to find it fun to paint with, which are things I'm very willing to pay for myself.

 

Awhile back there was this Internet celeb that sold her dirty bathwater for like US$20 a pop! I heard about it while painting because I had YouTube on autoplay and I was shaking a bottle of Agrax Earthshade and I was all "lolololol...simps" thinking about idiots who'd actually buy some gamer girl's dirty bathwater.  Then as I popped the cap on my Agrax Earthshade, I realised that I myself was simping for GW's dirty bathwater.  It was a reminder to judge not.

 

GW has a notably high "gross margin", which means their take on stuff they make, it's comparable to Big Tech (just above Google, a little below Facebook...and incidentally close to LEGO actually).  But it's an aggregate average percentage number, so things like very elaborate miniatures are probably a little lower, while paints are the types of things that pull that average up.  So paints are definitely important to GW's overall business.

 

You probably already noticed, GW's painting tutorials on the Warhammer TV YouTube channel or White Dwarfs are good, they do lead to good results, but also encourage you to buy way more paints than you actually need?  They probably help new Hobbyists paint better, but they certainly help GW sell more paints.

 

Yet even with all that in mind, I do NOT feel the wonky pot design is a Feature Not a Bug like GW wants you to spill paint just to sell you more pots.  I think just as you, me, everyone spilling a pot of paint is an accident like anything else, but it so happens GW might benefit rather than be penalised for it.

 

 

+++ Is GW's Wonky Pot Design a Legacy Issue Problem? +++

 

 

Here's the part where I was reading what you guys posted and it leads me to this question please.

 

The question: are the pots you've been spilling recently taller than the normal ones, like those tall pots of shades and Contrast?

 

The original design for the pots were these short, stocky pots with big bases.  Yes, I remember a time when they had these weird hexagonal pots.  So I reckoned the purpose of those original short stocky pots was, with a low height and a big base, they were less likely to tip over BUT if they did they would spill more of the contents.  It was a calculated trade-off, also possible branding issue, like this is how you will recognise GW paints as they come in funny pots.

 

That entire trade-off calculation falls apart when you decide to just make those pots taller.  It's like that old analogy with the QWERTY keyboard on computers, how QWERTY was designed to deliberately slow down typing on typewriters when the thingies that punch the letters on the page can get jammed up if you went to fast, but it got codified even for computers and now we're all typing inefficiently, and it's too late to change now as everyone's already used to it.  That's a Legacy Issue and I wonder if that's closer to what we're experiencing.

 

All their store racks and stuff are designed for pots shaped this way, for example.  Hard to reform all that.  Can do, but is it worth it?  GW probably thinks not.  Like if they do change it, how many customers will complain they like the current version more?

 

I spilled 2 pots of paint in my life, both were memorable experiences that highlighted the issue.  1st was during the 1st ed Rogue Trader era, I spilled my good friend's Chaos Black, to this day I feel bad about it because it was his paints, he was even so gracious as to help me clean the paint I spilled on my socks (we took shoes off in his house, see, I still remember it).  The 2nd was recently with a tall pot of a dark blue Shade.  There was a 30 year gap in between, but there's an added factor.  I had 30 years of muscle memory dealing with the old stocky pots.  You give me that new tall pot, I lift my brush and expect it to be high enough to go into the old stocky pot but I don't clear the rim, knock it over.  That was my "man...I'm getting too old for this" moment, as if being a middle aged man still playing with toy soldiers wasn't an obvious enough sign in the 1st place.

 

 

 

My son lost 80% of his new contrast paint he just got today. And he was being careful and we do have a holder. I am angry at GW because it’s just so unnecessary.

(Actually we recovered maybe 20% through some tedious syringing off the cutting mat. But you can tell why his Mother has banned Warhammer from the kitchen)

 

 

 

Re: Brother Lamebeard, thanks for this great sharing and for being a good dad.  Your son's situation is different than what I said above and I think it's even more important.  I don't know any more than what you shared, but even then I see it's not about the price of Contrast paint or the poor design of the pot per se, it's the bad experience he and your wife had with Warhammer.  It's like you were trying to create a good Warhammer experience, you were doing GW a big solid favour and it's like GW itself sabotaged it.  Or even better, you were teaching your son fiscal discipline, making good purchase decisions with limited pocket money and GW ruined that, which is even worse.  But I reflect on my 1st spillage, this might've been a good Life Lesson for your son to learn now...it was just a pot of paint and not, say, something like a motorcycle accident.  You mentioned you were rightfully mad at GW, which is good because it means you're not mad at your son, but please be reminded to make sure your son knows that distinction if he doesn't already.

 

Now, I want to just confirm that question, but I think that's it.  I don't feel GW intended this problem, it's just something that came from trying to extend their pot design to beyond (literally height-wise) than what it was meant for, a classic Legacy Issue.

 

 

+++ Now the Evidence that BOTH Proves and Disproves the Conspiracy +++

 

 

I use bluetac. GW sells and 'anti spill' thingiemajigger as well.

 

 

^ Based and underrated post.

 

So you sell a product that has a problem.  Then you sell another product that solves that problem.  How are you NOT profiting from the problem you created?  But does that also mean that you deliberately planned the problem ahead of time?  There are times when that happens, but not every single time.

 

I worked in Big Tech (my Techpriest avatar isn't a put-on, it's a truer face of me than my own) and my organisation was famous for selling software, then tools to manage that software...in fact, that's where the real money is at the Enterprise level.  Customers mocked us for it, and rightfully so.  For my own part I can honourably say that it wasn't some ploy, because our software was very feature-rich to do too many things, and with that flexibility came complexity, which needed powerful management tools to simplify the process.  It also happened that the tools usually came from these smaller software designers that we would later buy out, so it wasn't like we made those problems up in the 1st place, but they honestly weren't bugs, just stuff we learned along the way.

 

This is a case where I don't think the conspiracy is entire wrong...but we can de-couple its components.  I think GW profiting from this flaw can be true.  I also think GW didn't intend for it to be a flaw, but that they honestly don't want to change it now.

 

 

+++

 

 

Anyway, TL;DR - every time I look at a bottle of Agrax Earthshade (I've got 2 to 3 bottles at any given time) I now think of it as GW's dirty bathwater and I honestly feel that while GW profits from this issue yet I don't feel they designed it to be that way.  Not saying I'm right, and I found I'm really not contradicting anyone here, we have the same thoughts and even interpretations, but I do suspect they're separate issues.  I think it's a good experience for a young person to spill at least 1 thing in their life as a lesson.

Edited February 15, 2021 by N1SB