Contempt After Investigation


What you see here is 48 jars of ****flex and *****flex paint. The ***** is supposed to be better than the ****. I've never seen much difference. At an average cost of $2.50 per jar, you're looking at $120 here. Most of it was spent a long time ago. This little experiment began over 11 years ago. You can't say I haven't tried. I even painted one really nice model with the 5-star stuff, and narrowly averted disaster. I always said the blues and reds and oxides worked the best, the whites, grays, and black - especially "super gloss", the worst.
A few months back I tried a fairly old bottle of Santa Fe blue and found it intact, and it worked well enough to use as a base dark blue for the handrails on my SD45 (over gray delrin). I actually went and bought a fresh new bottle of Santa Fe blue for next time, not knowing when it would be. This evening, I wanted to paint over the BN green handrails that came with my P2K U28B. I got out the Santa Fe blue, and wouldn't you know, it was dried rock solid in the bottle. Well, it has been a while, so no biggie. Good thing I got that extra bottle! Found it. Waitaminnit, it's also hard as a rock.
So I figured, the color doesn't matter - I'm going to paint over it anyway with Scalecoat blue. So I found a brand new unopened bottle of "dark tuscan oxide". Sounds promising. The paint stirred up just fine. I didn't thin it, just put a little in the color cup of my Millenium VL. Dum de dum, let's try spraying a little on the handrails. Oh look, salad dressing. Oil and vinegar. Oh joy. Into the bathroom for a quick spray of Windex. I decided that this experiment has gone on long enough. I could really make other use of the shelf space and that nice 99 cent plastic tub.
I'm sure I'll get the usual comments about "user error". Hey, you know - you could be right. Then again, a wise man once said "insanity is doing the same thing over and over again expecting different results". I believe in giving something a fair chance, but no sense being bloody stupid about it. I just wasn't meant to be the poster child for **** or ***** or even @!^#% if it ends in "flex". Don't cry over lost paint, most of it was dried up anyway. I can't believe I actually carried the stuff out here when I moved. I feel better now!