Passing Thoughts

I’ve been investigating Citadel Paints from our dear, dear friends at the price-gouging Games Workshop company. I’ll put up a review, but right now this can be a “quasi-review” similar to my insane rantings about Vallejo Model Air.

I bought some yellow and white Citadel paint in order to find out if it might provide better “one coat coverage” (hah!) than MM Acryl or some other out-of-production paint. Anyway, I’ll report my findings in detail one of these days…

In the meantime, I found out that these paints are very, very good, but, once again, the magical blue Liquor of Loki (Windex) can be used to thin the stuff and it works like a charm.

I also had some of the sacred Vallejo Metal Color and I was really worried about that— because I tried thinning it with water and that just didn’t do the trick.

The problem, my friends, is GRIT. The white Citadel paint was full of grit and “chunks” of cured paint. The same thing was true of the Vallejo Metal Color. This is a big fat disaster when trying to brush this stuff on. So… I hemmed and hawed for a moment or two and then I manned up and squirted an eyedropper of Windex into the Citadel Zombie Boner White (or whatever stupid name it has) and I stirred and stirred and THEN I PUT IT AWAY FOR THE NIGHT. I put some Windex in the Vallejo Metal Color and stirred and stirred and set it aside to dry (remember those days? remember patience???).

So what happened? Well, I checked it out the next day AND THE GRIT WAS GONE! Windex, once again, had worked it’s magic.

Dammit, I get tired of reporting the god’s honest truth and then reading over at the (now thoroughly discredited) Testors site that Windex can’t be paint thinner. The fact is, the only thing stopping us is our brainwashing. In the USA (in particular) things are not WHAT THEY ARE but HOW THEY ARE USED. Nothing can ever be adapted to a new use because some fool put “for use on windows only” on the label– and if you are a label-lover, forever will your destiny be spelled out for you by the girl at Target…….. “only for use on Windows! Other use is a violation of Federal Law!”

Sheeeeet….

2 Replies to “Passing Thoughts”

  1. We don’t get Windex herearounds (Denmark) so I tried some cheapo windowcleaner – did actually make Life Colour easier to brush; not good but easier. Make for less airbubbles. Also using it as a thinner in other paints.
    Thanks for the tip.

    1. I get a bit nuts when I’m confronted by this American inability to use products creatively. We yap about “freedom” but we don’t have the freedom to use window cleaner as paint thinner or drain cleaner as paint remover. Not done. Can’t be right. Opens us up to liability. Blah blah. Well– if YOU can’t do it safely, that’s YOUR problem (he said to a rhetorical “you” somewhere). But I can use DRANO to remove paint from Matchbox cars because I know that DRANO is caustic soda. If that makes me a criminal, then I’m guilty. If I’m dumb enough to try to use DRANO was paint thinner– well then I’m in line for a Darwin correction of profound consequence.

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