Sunday, June 30, 2013

I'm a pot half-empty man...



For small scenic work such as dioramas, I'm a big fan of ready mixed wall filler. It's reasonably clean to use as you don't end up splashing water and powder around at the mixing stage.

An old credit card or one of the free advertising cards Lovefilm insist on sending me works as a spreader. While I wouldn't try to cover a large area in the stuff - far too stingy for that - for the sort of work I do at the moment it's idea. Even for a layout, I'd keep a pot handy for patching and bodging.

Anyway, I open a new tub from Wilko and what do I find?  Air. I mean, there the right weight of filler (I check on the scales) but the amount of notfiller is disconcerting.

So I send a query e-mail to customer services and received the following response:

Sometimes items are supplied in tubs/boxes/containers that are slightly larger than the actual contents as when filled, they may fill a larger area but once the content has settled it can reduce in size. Does this make sense?

Actually, no. The filler is squirted in the tub as a liquid. It might settle a little but not this much. I suspect there is a standard pack size for normal and my preferred, finescale filler. The later is denser than the former, hence the air.

Not to worry. It's cheap (£2.90 for 600g) and does the job. Half of it will probably go off before I use it anyway.

2 comments:

Iain Robinson said...

I find that some pots of Humbrol Acrylic enamels are very much less than full, while others are filled right to the top...annoying, as these pots aren't cheap. I find that I'm switching over to Wilko's matchpots for non-frontline jobs such as weathering and concrete etc.

Phil Parker said...

Interesting that several people are looking at non-modelling paints for modelling jobs. I wonder if this is just open-mindedness or that the quality of those is improving.