The Unofficial Airfix Modellers' Forum

I use hot water from the tap, seems to be good enough.

jRatz wrote:I use hot water from the tap, seems to be good enough.

Ditto.

David

If you find hot water cumbersome, how do you cope with making a cup of tea or coffee?

I tried all sorts of methods until I came across the hot water technique. It works 100% of the time with minimal fuss and little risk of spilling paint.

Eric Mc wrote:If you find hot water cumbersome, how do you cope with making a cup of tea or coffee?

One litre at a time, and not on my workbench.
For hot water to work, I either need a reservoir of hot water standing by on the bench, or get up, run the hot tap for over a minute to convince it it's not the cold tap, hopefully get the top loose without burning my fingers, and return to the bench. Ok if your doing large areas, but I suspect it will get old real fast when doing detail painting with lots of different colours; I'd spend more time messing with the bottles and water than painting. I have very little patience for working around problems with my tools

Irrespective of the method you might use to release stuck lids, I suspect it might be worth thinking about why they stick.....
If you dip your brush in the pot and then use the neck of the pot or bottle to scrape off the 'excess' then you are likely to have problems. Instead, use a spare piece of sprue or an old glazed tile to dab any surplus paint onto. You can then pick up paint from the tile or sprue while it is still fresh to avoid wasting it.
Alternatively only pick up a small amount on the brush in the first place.
Apologies if I'm teaching people to suck eggs!

Hot water and vicegrips (if necessary). The vice grips can be adjusted to grip the lid without applying so much pressure that they shatter the bottle.

rob_van_riel wrote:

Eric Mc wrote:If you find hot water cumbersome, how do you cope with making a cup of tea or coffee?

One litre at a time, and not on my workbench.
For hot water to work, I either need a reservoir of hot water standing by on the bench, or get up, run the hot tap for over a minute to convince it it's not the cold tap, hopefully get the top loose without burning my fingers, and return to the bench. Ok if your doing large areas, but I suspect it will get old real fast when doing detail painting with lots of different colours; I'd spend more time messing with the bottles and water than painting. I have very little patience for working around problems with my tools

You are making such a large mountain out of a molehill or a large lake out of a saucer full - pick your own metaphor.

You don't need a "reservoir". All you need is a kettle and a saucer or dish. I do the lid removing on my kitchen worktop - as that is where the kettle and the dish will be. No need to be lugging water to your workbench - wherever that may be.

You make it sound that you have dozens of paint bottles that you've allowed get into a state. I find that they only stick now and then so it may be once every couple of months that I might have to perform this simple task.

Sorry my advice was not to your liking. I'll try and exercise my (non-existent) psychic powers next time I suggest something - just in case it might upset the person I'm trying to help.

Eric Mc wrote:Sorry my advice was not to your liking. I'll try and exercise my (non-existent) psychic powers next time I suggest something - just in case it might upset the person I'm trying to help.

I'm not upset, I just don't think hot water is the optimal solution for my specific conditions, which mean hot water is not readily available in the immediate vicinity of my workbench.

As several people here have pointed out, prevention is probably an even better option, but merely shaking the bottle (of fumbling and dropping it when trying to grab it from just beyond easy reach) is enough to get some paint attached to the lid, which willfind it's way into the threads once the bottle is opened. Even though I try to be careful, sooner or later I slip up.

I think my experiment with inner tube is going to work though. It turns out mountainbikes have just the right size for Gunze and small Tamiya jars. I just put a ring of this material onto a properly stuck jar, and it gave me sufficient grip on the glass that a single pair of pliers produced enough leverage on the lid to get the blighter to open.

I never shake pots or bottles of paint, always stir to avoid (other than accidental reasons) paint getting to the cap

iggie wrote:I never shake pots or bottles of paint, always stir to avoid (other than accidental reasons) paint getting to the cap

That's the theory. In practise, old habits like shaking paint tins die very, very hard It only take one flick of the wrist to get paint in the threads

Yeah. I'm a shaker too. Just comes instinctively!

David

spitfire1677 wrote:I use one of Mr Hobbys cap opening tool, LINK, if you shop about you can get them a wee bit cheaper.

kin ow much?

I've tried all sorts of techniques over the years -

jamming the top of the jar in the hinge line of a door and using the gap between the door and the door postit as a vice ( that was back in the days of the old Airfix paint bottles)

using an actual vice

using a proper jar lid opener

using brute strength (not that I have much of that)

NOTHING works better for me than the hot water technique I've described above. Little effort, low risk - works every time.

Even if Rob thinks it's far too much effort I hope others give it a go and see how they get on.

Just now, a larger Tamiya jar decided to be a nuisance, and since the mountainbike tyre isn't big enough for those, I decided to try the hot water option.
The water made my fingers and the jar very slippery, and reduced the bond between the label and the jar. Also, my attempt to keep at least some of the hot water off my fingers required me to tilt the jar, introducing more paint to the threads for next time. The cap didn't loosen one bit; even after drying off the water I couldn't get the cap to move with my hands, and my subsequent actions with a pair of pliers was hindered by the reduced bond between label and glass.
I don't know how everyone else here makes this work, but on this end, the technique is a total failure, which only causes more trouble.

Here's my method. Run hot tap, not too fast, a gentle stream is all that I have found is necessary and a slow stream also reduces the chance of splashing. Have a towel or cloth handy. Hold Tamiya jar on its side and concentrate the top in the stream of hot water pointing the whole jar at a downward angle of approx 45 degrees to help keep water away from the jar end, slowly turn the jar to allow the water to heat the top up evenly, keeping fingers to end of jar just in case any hot water does creep along. Remove from the water stream after 20/30 seconds or so. Remove top using the towel. If it doesn't budge try again, holding top in the hot water stream for longer. So far this has honestly never failed and, touching wood, I've never scalded myself either. I've also used a kettle in place of the tap although there is a higher risk of scalding but at the time there was no hot water in the system and I needed the paint pronto so it was a case of needs must!