Transferring Citadel paint into dropper bottles

Here's a project that has taken me weeks longer than I'd have ever thought (or hoped).

Having recently taken the plunge and buying an airbrush setup (Iwata Revolution for those wondering) and having it change my life (no hyperbole, well maybe a little), I decided to take on the grand task of transferring all my Citadel paint (200+ pots) into a more convenient dropper bottle format much like the beloved Vallejo. The idea being that once I run out of a GW colour I will replace it with the Vallejo equivalent.

My initial eBay searches found me buying 100 cheap plastic dropper bottles much like Vallejo ones but a little smaller from a Chinese retailer for about £11.

They arrived after a few weeks and I began the project in earnest. The main problems, and there were many, went as follows:

• The openings on the bottles were tiny, pouring paint into them directly from a Citadel pot proved too much of a challenge, I must have wasted more paint doing this than I've ever put on models in my life.
• Some of the bottles were not perfect, and had tiny holes in them around joints and seals, something I didn't realise until later, obviously drying out some of my paint.
• Tiny metal funnels (eBay again, think they're designed for transferring perfume into other bottles) make the job easier, but you really need to thin the Citadel paint down dramatically and then there's the hassle of rinsing out the funnels every time you use them etc.

Overall I considered the project a partial success. After weeks I had moved most of my paint over to these little dropper bottles and was reasonably happy with the results.

The problems became evident when it was finally time to use the paints, I realised that hardly any of the bottles had a good seal on them, and most had dried paint in the dropper part, blocking up the hole. Not ideal.

I eventually found a different retailer on eBay (The Plastic Bottle Company) and ordered a few of their High Density 18ml bottles to test. They were much better quality with a firm finish and a secure lid. The 2nd stage paint transfer project began.

The process:

• Here's how the bottle come, in 3 parts. You simply push the dropper top into the bottle and screw the lid on once it's full of paint, easy.
  
  
  
• First things first with the citadel bottles is to remove the label and transfer it onto the new bottle, pretty simple with a nice sharp scalpel, you can then add some water to thin the paint to aid in the pouring stage which comes next. How much water you add depends on how thick the paint already is, I generally pretty much topped up the pot with water in most cases, and gave it a good shake.
  
  
  
  
• Once the paint is at a reasonable consistency and is nicely mixed, it should be ok to free-pour into the new pot, this could take a few attempts to get right, but by the time I was finished doing all 200+ of my own, I could pretty much do it blindfolded if needed. You never know. A good tip is to snip the little hinges on the back of the citadel pot to completely remove the lid, you don't want it flapping shut mid-pour or anything.
  
• Finally simply assemble the new pot and sling the other one in the bin.
  
• Bask in the glory of your new super efficient easy to use dropper bottle GW paint. Mmmm. Now just try not to go mad repeating this X times for your whole paint collection. We all go a little mad sometimes.

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