10 years in storage and the paint is still good!

Yes, some paints have a very long shelf life.

I have some tamiya acrylics which must be pushing 25 years or more and are still perfectly usable. I've also got some "plain old" Testors enamels in the little rectangular jars which are, I'm sure, older but still appear to be usable.

I find some paints in my collection having price labels for $1.65 for Testors MM enamels and some of the square bottles for as low as 80 cents! Some places are now asking close to 4 bucks for the MM paints! There are even two bottles of Pactra paints-Battleship Grey and Flat Dark Olive-all still good! I think some of these are going on 15 or more years!

Not to give away my age, but I remember buying Pactra paints as a kid at a store called Duckwall's for 12-15 cents a bottle! Pactra used to be part of the Plastikote company but the line was sold to Testors some time ago.

Why is it though, that bottle of paint you just bought fresh a month ago has turned to a hard rubbery mass the first time you went to use it?

jimbot58 wrote:

Why is it though, that bottle of paint you just bought fresh a month ago has turned to a hard rubbery mass the first time you went to use it?

Chemicals like paints react to lots of agents in the envronment, and the chemical compositions of paints have been changed over the years. Maybe paints go off faster when certain hazardous chemicals are replaced with not-so-hazardous versions.  

Like when treating boat hulls for algae: It seems that the most efficient paints tend to contain some pretty nasty toxic chemicals - which happens to be the reason why these paints reject algae so efficiently. Loose those toxines and loose the effects they bring to the party.

If some of the toxines that have been replaced in paint recipes over the past decades had as purpose to extend the shelf life of the paint, one would expect that contemporary paints go off faster than the older recipes.

DoC

I do miss Polly S and Pactra paints. I still have a few Polly S that have to be at least 25 years old. My few Pactras left are not quite that old. Both lines had some colors no one else does today. Unfortuantely. And yes, I remember the Aeromaster lines too! Good stuff! Glad to hear some of your stuff survived father time.

Well, I've got a bottle of Pactra Scale Model FLATS, Olive Drab, that is at least 34 years old and still good. It cost $0.49. On the other hand, I've had bottles go bad after just a year or two so go figure!

 

If only I had a time machine to go and buy old paint lines....