If you're just getting into painting you may not know when to
change clean or maintain your paint thinner or odorless spirits and it's
an important process for your colors and your paintings so in this video right here
i'm going to show you everything you need to know to do just that and a little more let's go
yeah that's definitely bad thinner what is up all my awesome painters out there wow
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for you when we talk about the maintenance of your paint thinners and odorless spirits
really talking about changing and keeping it clean so that way it doesn't contaminate
your painting or your paints and i want to show you the easiest and safest ways to do just that
when it comes to maintaining your thinner we need a little bit of supplies and equipment preferably
you want two buckets a couple of ziploc bags and i like to be extra safe so some safety equipment
would include some gloves to protect your hands and forearms something to protect your eyes which
would be goggles or glasses and something to protect your mouth so you're not breathing in
all the vapor a mask a respirator a ventilator whatever you want to call it something protect
your face because for someone like me this is the money maker my friends
the money maker equipment out of the way so how do you know when it's time to change
the thinner that's in your bucket i mean you don't just stick your hand in there
yeah it tastes a little old a little stale
not a good vintage trust me don't do that please don't do that at home there's two easy ways
to tell when to change and maintain your paint thinner the first one is visual look inside your
bucket and if it's cloudy and very hard to see through it's time for a change because that means
you're most likely going to contaminate your paint and your canvas every time you try to clean your
paint brush in your thinner the second way to know if your paint thinner is going a little bad is
you can kind of waft a smell that smells skunky or a little stale and when that happens it's time to
change and that's generally for people that paint once in a great while once every month or every
couple of months something like that that leave it in here when it gets skunky and it smells time for
a change so now you know what you need to maintain your thinner and you know when to maintain your
thinner so let's go over how you maintain your thinner step number one is remove your cleaning
screen or grid from your bucket set this aside and we'll come back to this sucker in just a moment
step number two is allow your ziplock bag within your bucket to sit for 24 to 48 hours
this will allow the pigment and thinner to separate allowing our next steps to be much
much easier for our next step we're going to take our dirty thinner that's in our ziploc bag
slowly remove it from that bucket and take it to our brand new bucket with our clean ziploc bag and
pour into the best of our ability all the clean thinner that's at the top that has separated out
please take your time here and be safe because as you're pouring thinner it can splash which is why
you want to wear the safety equipment remember how we took our cleaning screen and set it aside
take it and put it in the brand new bucket that we put that top layer thinner in your cleaning screen
is most likely gunky and got a ton of pigment on it so we need to get that off take a spare
paint brush and start working the top the sides wherever you can get and then remove this and it
should be pretty clean we want to allow all that pigment we just worked off our cleaning screen
to sit to the bottom again and separate out i would recommend a good 24 to 48 hours with
the lid on if you can but if you're short on time an hour or two should be just good enough to get
that separation once we're here we're going to go back to our old bucket that has a brand new
clean ziploc bag in it we're hoping to do the same steps just pour the top layer of thinner
that is most likely pretty clean into our brand new bucket the zip lock back for most of you right
here is good enough to stop because your thinner should be pretty clean but if it's still really
dirty or skunky or anything like that all you need to do is repeat the processes
allow the thinner and pigment to separate and pour it into a new bucket keep doing this until your
thinner gets cleaner and cleaner or less cloudy and cloudy now just to let you know your thinner
is never going to go back to being crystal clear in like water it's going to have a little bit of
cloudiness to it so don't try to work it to death once you get your thinner as clean as you like it
and you're satisfied with it all you need to do is take your cleaning screen put it in your
clean bucket with a clean ziploc bag now and you'll probably notice that the thinner is
shy of reaching the top of your cleaning screen all you have to do is take your favorite thinner
or odorless spirits and pour some more into where it covers just the top of the cleaning screen
i recommend anywhere between 1/8 of an inch to a 1/4 of an inch and that'll be perfect
for all of your paint brush needs now that i showed you the easiest and safest way to
maintain your thinner you're probably asking how often should i do it and to be honest
there's no real answer i'm going to revert you back to the beginning of this video when you
should look at it visually and if you start to smell that skunky staley kind of smell to your
thinner that would be the correct time to do it god i'm thirsty it gets more that thinner
forget pimp cups i just seen a bob ross bucket now before you leave and stop watching this video one
question i always get asked is what do you do with the paint sludge or pigment that's still in my
bucket or my old ziploc bags and that's an awesome question that every painter needs
to know i'm actually going to do a full video on this because i want to make sure
you learn to recycle or dispose of your paint so that way you're safe the environment is safe and
you're doing it the best way possible and yeah that requires its own video which i will put
over here for when it's ready or if it's already ready go ahead and watch it it helps support my
channel you can also use the links down below which help me out their affiliate links that
cost you nothing Wild wishing you the best of luck keep those paint brushes wet you're
thinner and clean and i will see you all in the next video take care and of course peace