I am just curious how many here have accidently spilled a bottle of paint all over their bench, work and themselves and how many have ruined their clothers in the process? In the last three days I have dumped two bottles of paint on my bench, well actually a bottle and a paint marker that the end let go as i was shaking it. got blue paint all over my pants, model, bench, floor and shelving. What a mess.
Joe
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No paint but multiple bottles of Tamiya Extra Thin!
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It has happened and kept happening until I learned to be careful.
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Done glue and paint, too regularly, use my old layabout clothing ,so not worried about spills
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I more concerned with dropping cutting blades. I know my ankle isn’t fond of it.
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Use the lightest possible handles for them blades …
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Same to no paint, but spilled a nearly full bottle of extra thin all over the lower wing of a Hasegawa Jill, gonna build it like this now
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Too many times to count, so I greatly dislike bottles with a narrow base. I take active measures to address like bottle holders etc.
Examples:
Mr Paint is good paint but the bottles will tip over if you look at them sideways.
Spare Paasche bottle is the perfect mr Paint bottle holder.
Likewise with Liquid Cement. I like the Tamiya bottles better due ti the bigger base for the bottle. I use an ild Tamiya bottle for Testor’s LC.
However, even that square bottle can tip over. I like using a bottle holder.
Have total loss too many models over the years witha spilled bottle of LC, not to use a bottle holder. Also made some home made ones.
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I may have you all beat.
Way back, when I still used Testors Model Master, I always had a problem with my lids getting dried onto the jars. I kept a pair of pliers that I used to break the seal and twist off the lids. Of course, one day, trying to open a bottle of Flat Black, the pliers proceeded to rip off the entire top of the bottle. Black paint went everywhere…I mean everywhere. Ever since then, I have had a homemade tattoo on my left hand. The lid with part of the jagged bottle still attached, ripped open the back of my hand, and black paint settled into the wound. It is still there, 15 plus years later.
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@corsutton Cory, wow!
That sounds disastrous and painful! 
Can’t match that one.
WorstI’d ever heard was a friend who liked to heat up his Model Master paint…by putting the bottle of paint on the waist band of his underwear. He said the lid came loose and he had olive drab 
balls for weeks.
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Not a regular habit,but yes an occasional Tamiya bottle.More often I’m lazy about putting the cap on my gravity fed and turning my hand over while airbrushing,but fortunately i never dumped the cup on a model.
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I keep a few big blobs of BlueTac around to hold those pots down & only peel them off the base when the tops are firmly back on.
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What I do now is put a bit of sprue along the handle and wrap masking tape around it. That breaks up the natural round of the handle so it won’t roll and if placed properly doesn’t mess with your grip.
As for dropping I tend to lean further forward over the table now when holding a knife. The wooden barrier between my soft bits and the blade seems to have improved the situation.
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I laughed my ass off on that one-
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Yikes!
Glass and large metal tools …
In 54 years of modeling I have only spilled paint once - very recently. I was airbrushing, and had an unexplained twitch - which sent paint flying out of the paint cup of the airbrush and splop! onto my jeans. They were old, no big deal.
I keep my Tamiya glue bottles from tipping with the aid of a VERY nice aluminum DSPIAE glue bottle holder, which I cannot do without -
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As a kid I spilled some Testors red bottled paint onto our gold shag carpet. (Hey, it was the seventies - we had avocado appliances too) I cut a square out of carpet thsat contained the red paint, and then moved my bunk bed a little - then cut an identical square fron the impression where the foot board had been on the carpet. I swapped them out. No one was ever the wiser. I think even after we moved everyone was too busy to notice.
Fast forward about eight years:
Staff Sergeant Peoples, one of our Airborne Tacs in 43rd Company, Airborne School, Fort Benning:
“Any one of ya’ll can draw? Speak up! Who think they an art-eest out heah?” (He pronounced his name Peebles by the way)
It was zero week. I already knew what the day’s activities would involve - picking pine needles out of gravel by hand, raking said gravel, and other character building tasks under the August Georgia sun.
“I can, Sergeant Airbonre!” I yelled.
“Good, then grab two o’ yo buddies, and report to the mess hall.”
There we spent the next several days, indoors, painting murals, unit crests and what not on the walls of the mess hall. And eating all the soft ice cream we wanted. There was one bigger than life mural I did on one wall I copied possibly from a Time magazine cover - it showed three Airborne soldiers, all with different weapons - an M60, an M16, and an M203. I changed it to make their berets green, maroon, and black. But I was not good at doing eyes, so I put large black sunglasses on all three of them. That did not go over well with SSG Peebles, at least outwardly. Ultimately the sunglasses stayed. But that black paint somehow got tipped over on the dark red carpet. whichever one of us did it righted the can soon enough to prevent a total career ending catastgrophe, but there was still a nice big spot of black paint on the carpet over a foot in diameter.
Thinking back to my youth, I quickly devised a plan to save our collective asses and keep the soft ice cream flowing: We moved a table that had a large square base, and you guessed it - we cut out a large square of carpet, and transferred it to where the spill was and cut that piece out. One slight problem - the grain in the piece we stuck into the square we cut out (it was not a perfect square) was running 90 degrees to the original carpet. We were running out of time as they were about to serve chow, so we went with it. We never got caught.
I wonder if that mural or any of those crests has survived. Funny how these days no cool guy mural would be complete without large Oakleys on everyone.
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My son made me a Tamiya glue bottle holder out of Legos years ago and I still use it.
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Top notch creative problem solving!
In Russia it is smekalka (смекалка)
Explained in this video:
Spilling stuff? Been there, done that, got the tie-dyed T-shirt…
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