Organising paint

I forgot who I am posting these for, and it is from some other thread, but, here is what 750 jars of paint looks like.

The first pic is what the "ready rack" looks like as of a few minutes ago, this is one of each paint that I have, the green tops are the colors I prefer to use, the white tops are other companies' ideas of those colors. (sort of as a back up plan) The boxes are Hot Wheels car collector boxes with the lids removed.

The clear boxes are a tip for someone that asked about storage of paints if you have more than one bottle of each, the bottom row of loose paints holds 16 jars of the Model Master size, the two cardboard boxes hold another dozen on the top row. that makes 28 jars per plastic box,,,,,and the 16 boxes stack and nest into the bottom of the paint rack, on one shelf,,,,,,they take up about the same space as a row of books would in a bookcase.

The last pic is to zoom in for the guy that wanted to know where to buy them, so he can see the label.

I hope this is of some help for anyone looking for a way to store and have access to their paint collection,

Rex

mtnman13

How do most of you organize your paints? Do you do it by color? German or American? Or do you just make them fit and dig?

          For me first it’s by manufacturer, and then it’s alphabetically by color.  I’ll then pull all of the colors needed to complete a build.  Painting as many parts as possible on the sprue and then assembling the subassemblies doing whatever touchup I might need, and then assembling the subassemblies.

          And as I said in the thread on multiple brands of paint, right now my collection is small enough that for the most part it all fits into a “large” cigar box.  I’ve of course have added a couple of more bottles and am not too surprisingly am out growing my cigar box and am already thinking what the next level will be.  Also as I believe I said in that other thread, right now my collection only consists of Model Master, Tamiya, and Testors.

          In the Testors I have both acrylic and enamel.  The acrylic paints I got from HHV they come a half-dozen colors in the black plastic try with the clear flip lids on a card with a “blue tube” of cement, and a “real nice” white plastic handle brush.  The only thing that those acrylic paints didn’t come with is the mixing tray/palate.

            You know the one that you can attach the “little” trays of paint to, to “customize” your palate.

I am afraid this is as good as it gets. this is my "most used" box. There is another one, The "occasional and special"  box, with twice as much in too.

Mine are divided into enamel and acrylic , then into color groups. Placed into small  Store, clear plastic lidded  boxes.  These I can slide under my desk/bench, and pull out as needed.

Within a few minuets I can find that I don't have the colors needed and try to figure which ones that I do have, "will do for now" .

I tend to group my paints by brands first and then by colors. And of course separated between acrylics & enamels... I have accumulated so many over the years that I have them stored in multiple ways: a rack, some drawers, an old large model box, a drink can "case flat"...

Order? What is this strange concept you talk of!

Mine is organized into two groups: dried out, and still good....

A friend of mine got this unit from a hobby shop that was going out of business. Lets me organize by brand and color. I have a lot more paint, but I use this for stuff I use more often.

Jay

I organize mine using colored dots - blue dots for enamels, yellow dots for acrylics. I also label them with color name and FS number mainly Model Master brand). Tamiya and Gunze/Mr. Color paints I don't label since they have colored caps.

I do have a handful of Aeromaster acrylics where I use hot pink dots for Russian colors.

Besides being separated by enamel, acrylic or metalizer/fancy car colors, I do pretty much like Don does and the go helter-skelter into one of those plastic drawer towers, each class into their own drawer. I do put a drop of paint on the lid when I buy a new bottle, to help with a quicker find, but that's pretty much as organized as I get.

I pull out the colors I need for a particular build, and they get thrown back into their respective drawer when I done. 10 min later, after perusing through the instructions of a new build, I go right back and may pull some of the same ones back out.

Every time I do this, I tell myself "I've got to get organized". I will someday.

I have about 100 Tamiya 23ml, 50 Vallejo, 30 MM enamel bottles.  I don't organize them; I store them in airtight containers in a closet.   I take out all the paints I need for a particular model and keep them on my workbench.  Once a model is finished, they go back to containers.

Don Stauffer

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When I laid out my most recent workshop, when we bought our current house about twenty five years ago, it is 12 x 20.  Never thought I'd run out of space with a shop that big!  Wrong!

My study is not as big as that, I could sure use some extra room...ya think?

I'm similiar to Don.  I keep all my paints in a plastic desktop drawer (mostly Model Master enamels).  No particular order.  When I start a new model, I take out all the paints that I need for that project and keep those on my desk.  The rest stay stored in the drawer.

I don't, they all go helter-skelter into a drawer in my bench.  Makes it hell to find the color I want, but I don't want to take shop space for one of those fancy racks.  Only organization I do is to muddle through the drawer and pick out the colors I need for a new model as I start build. I just leave those on bench surface.

When I laid out my most recent workshop, when we bought our current house about twenty five years ago, it is 12 x 20.  Never thought I'd run out of space with a shop that big!  Wrong!

I organize my paint by brand first, then by type.  I purchased an acrylic stand for a nail polish display that holds about 72 bottles of nail polish.  I started at the bottom with my MM and Testors Acrylics, then my MM and Testors enamels.  I also have a few pots of Humbrol and some Vallejo acrylics that finish it off.  I havent got to the point of organizing most of them by number, except for my RLM paints that I bought.

I organize by brand. My main brand is Tamiya, but I have other brands in small numbers. I don't bother organizing the other brands.

I organize my Tamiya paint bottles in numerical order. Tamiya has done us a favor by printing the number in large print so it's easy to read. I wish other paint companies would do the same, instead of printing the number in small print that easily rubs off (and is 6 numbers long).

I store my paints on a home made shelf mounted on the wall. That way the jars are vertical and I don't have to put labels on the lid.

Mine mix in together because of the plastic trays that I use.

This is an old photo, it is now double that size and almost all of the Vallejo formula paints have been given away.

But, you can see that Model Master jars, Lifecolor jars, 1 oz Polly Scale jars, Humbrol tins,  and what have you can all fit in either the "2 hole squares" or the "5 hole squares" together, regardless of brand.

I built a multi level paint rack, room for over 100 bottles. Next placed paint in sections by manufacturers, in groups, groups determined by colors, then going from darker to lighter. Labels redone in larger type to see easier. Too many different paint brands for an easily categorized method, doesn't sound like it would be efficient, but it works for me.

Patrick

Mine are in order by FS number. Because of a few different sizes in bottles, I have had to batch a couple of paint brands together, but withing those batches they are also sorted by FS number.

My storage boxes of the spare bottles are a different story, though. Those are just batched by paint company, just to get the bottles to fit in them and take up the least amount of space.

I use FS because then all the different companies that make any certain color (that actually matches) are all together on the rack when I look for a paint for the current project.

Rex

I put mine in number order. My main brand of paint is xtracolour and the numbers coincide with the subject the paints are used for.