Moving on from Vallejo Model Air

shaun5603

New member
Thats actually funny when you find it on Etsy, it's clearly a Vortex Genie that's cleaned up and painted red with a new sticker - he even gimps it by removing the On/Off/Touch selector.
That is to say, its a great machine, but I find it ridiculous that the seller just rebrands it and calls it "his own".

No shit, never would have know that.
 

oistene

Active member
If you start to use a lot of Scale colours, do yourself a favour and get a mechanical way to shake them. I bought a nail polish shaker for 25 dollars of eBay, works great.
 

7thSon

New member
If you start to use a lot of Scale colours, do yourself a favour and get a mechanical way to shake them. I bought a nail polish shaker for 25 dollars of eBay, works great.

I'm leaning heavily towards getting a Vortex Genie 2, I think it can be equipped with accessories (or DIY'd) to hold several bottles at a time - that would be really useful to run through the whole storage from time to time.
 

Ddmkr

New member
The same Vortex Genie that costs almost 400$? If you can afford it then by all means, just seems a bit excessive. I bought the cheapest jigsaw for 10 euro and it works like a charm with S75 paints. 30 seconds and it's perfectly mixed. It's a bit noisy though but I don't mind that.
 

7thSon

New member
The same Vortex Genie that costs almost 400$? If you can afford it then by all means, just seems a bit excessive. I bought the cheapest jigsaw for 10 euro and it works like a charm with S75 paints. 30 seconds and it's perfectly mixed. It's a bit noisy though but I don't mind that.

It costs around 100€ on ebay, I find it worth it to not have to use the jigsaw which is not very discreet.
I have a jigsaw rigged with a clamp, but it's super noisy, not something you want to use at night, it is incredibly powerful though.
 

7thSon

New member
while a machine like that is really handy, but the separation is not THAT bad.

I guess it depends on who you ask, a lot of people have been writing regarding the Scale75 paints that you need to shake them for several minutes, that would get old very quickly for me.
The jigsaw has been great for my VMA metallics that have congealed a bit too much, that movement is really brutal, I wonder if the Vortex Genie would manage similar results if you just get the aggregator loose in the bottle.
I had to run the jigsaw for several minutes to get the paint to come alive again, and even then it still had little bits of congealed paint in there, so I guess those metallics were, and are, half dead.
 

bullfrog

New member
If you don't want to splash the cash on a Vortex you can get shakers designed for agitating nail polish bottles of eBay for ten bucks. Still does the job perfectly. You might have to run it a minute or two longer but it has always worked unless the paint is beyond use.
I usually recommend people get a few paints of the brands they are interested in but the flaw in that advice is that each brand has its problem paints. You might think that a certain brand is crap but you just picked a bad colour or that you like one bottle but the rest of the brand is rubbish. I've found that out the expensive way. A brand that suits someone else's painting style may not suit yours so take everyone's, including my advice with a grain of salt. Personally I love VMA and VGA paints as the way I paint I use that translucency to my advantage. Most people dislike the VGC and VGA yellows and greens etc but I love them. I've bought a box of Scalecolour and disliked them so much I've never used them since. You need to choose one or two from most colour sets rather than one or two from each range.
I've found P3 paints to be the surprise gem due to the liquid pigment they contain rather than fine pigment particles suspended in binder.
Keep in mind the other brands of paints that military modellers use like Lifecolour, AK Interactive and Mig AMMO. The themed sets with acrylic paint and pigments are great. More and more I find myself going to those when I'm painting figures.
MAxx is right in saying you have your favourite colours and tend to waste the rest if you buy an entire paint line. Pick a mini and then buy a few paints you know you will definately use on it rather than buying the paint then trying to find a way to use them. It's a false economy if you buy an entire range due to the cheaper overall cost if you only use a third of the colours.
 
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Ddmkr

New member
while a machine like that is really handy, but the separation is not THAT bad.

Don't know what is your experience with S75, maybe you got some magic batch or something, but there are some colours that seperate like crazy and even after a week or so they need to be shaken for 60-90 seconds in a jigsaw to be properly mixed again. I cannot even imagine how long it would take by hand.
 

7thSon

New member
If you don't want to splash the cash on a Vortex you can get shakers designed for agitating nail polish bottles of eBay for ten bucks. Still does the job perfectly. You might have to run it a minute or two longer but it has always worked unless the paint is beyond use.
I usually recommend people get a few paints of the brands they are interested in but the flaw in that advice is that each brand has its problem paints. You might think that a certain brand is crap but you just picked a bad colour or that you like one bottle but the rest of the brand is rubbish. I've found that out the expensive way. A brand that suits someone else's painting style may not suit yours so take everyone's, including my advice with a grain of salt. Personally I love VMA and VGA paints as the way I paint I use that translucency to my advantage. Most people dislike the VGC and VGA yellows and greens etc but I love them. I've bought a box of Scalecolour and disliked them so much I've never used them since. You need to choose one or two from most colour sets rather than one or two from each range.
I've found P3 paints to be the surprise gem due to the liquid pigment they contain rather than fine pigment particles suspended in binder.
Keep in mind the other brands of paints that military modellers use like Lifecolour, AK Interactive and Mig AMMO. The themed sets with acrylic paint and pigments are great. More and more I find myself going to those when I'm painting figures.
MAxx is right in saying you have your favourite colours and tend to waste the rest if you buy an entire paint line. Pick a mini and then buy a few paints you know you will definately use on it rather than buying the paint then trying to find a way to use them. It's a false economy if you buy an entire range due to the cheaper overall cost if you only use a third of the colours.

I don't mind spending the extra money to get the Vortex, I personally don't trust a plastic mechanical shaker from china for $10 to last very long. I'll be able to use the Vortex to shake other things in the long run as well, I bet it works great with spray cans too.

As I said before, I understand the idea of getting only "the paints you use", but for me that's really quite hard. I sat down this week and went through the scalecolor range and picked the ones I wanted going "That one.. and that... and that... and that..." and I still ended up with paints for 150€, so the same amount it costs to just get the whole set more or less.
I think I might need help or at least some kind of guideline as to what colors to get, and not to get if hand picking is going to be an option.

I got a hold of two Reaper colors this week from an online store, and tried them, seem quite good - definitely more coverage than VMA and dries matte. The stocks were poor though and the reaper paint sets seem very large and not that diverse if I'm not mistaken.
This coming week I should be receiving paints from Scalecolor, Fantasy & Games, P3 and DarkStar for testing, really looking forward to getting some experience with them to base my purchasing decisions on.
 

bullfrog

New member
I've had my ten dollar shaker for almost three years now and it's used on a daily basis. The only difference I've seen is that it does take a little longer but not significantly so.
 

Dragonsreach

Super Moderator
Staff member
If you don't want to splash the cash on a Vortex you can get shakers designed for agitating nail polish bottles of eBay for ten bucks. Still does the job perfectly. You might have to run it a minute or two longer but it has always worked unless the paint is beyond use.
I usually recommend people get a few paints of the brands they are interested in but the flaw in that advice is that each brand has its problem paints.
Like bullfrog I coughed up for a cheap nail varnish agitator, worth every penny seeing as my arthritis is getting worse.
As for what this lady said about problem colours , Yes True!
VMC In reds and ochres tend to have heavier pigment densities and do ‘Clog Up’ unless the bottle shaken like Tom Cruise does in Cocktail.
 
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