Old Paints - Young Painter - Advice Needed

[Mary Maggio]

Hello Everyone! I am new to painting, and new to this Forum, so my apologies if I am in the wrong discussion area, but I am looking for some help with "resurrecting" some old, half dried, bent and leaking tubes of oil paint. I got them at a yard sale, together with a gorgeous easel, and I am hoping I can "save" the paints because there are about 50 of them - all different manufacturers: Grumbacher; Shiva Signature; Maimeri; Liquitex, etc., but the tubes are crumpled, dirty and the caps are only half sealing them. Most are still "mushy", but a few are cracked, and leaking. Some I can't get the caps off! Do you know, is there a way to save them? Can I squeeze them out and put them into another container? There are lots of pretty colors and aside from these the only other colors I have are the primaries and white. Oh, also, at the yard sale I also got a big tube of Weber Permalba White (it doesn't say "titanium" white, so I not sure it is going to behave like my Titanium wihite, but I want to try it out, if I can). But it is gluey and stringey. Do you know if there something I should mix with it? Like Linseed Oil to resurrect it before using it on a canvas? Any help you can give is very much appreciated. Thank you!

[kate252]

iwould a sloit out of the top- where it has caked over the opening and squeeze new paint of it- and then cover with cling film. i would give them a go- unless they have all dried up comp[letely- they will be fine- you dont need much of it- and mxed with linseed oil- it will go a long way- crack em open and get going is what i say!

[WFMartin]

Permalba White should have the consistency of room-temperature butter, and it should not be stringy or sticky. Perhaps the addition of Linseed Oil might make it useable. Permalba White is a mixture of Titanium White, and Zinc White, in a Safflower Oil binder.

You should be able to use those other paints as long as you are able to squeeze useable paint out of the tubes in some fashion. Try to avoid getting flaked, semi-dried, or totally-dried paint in your fresh paint when you squeeze it out onto your palette. Even paint squeezed out through a crack in a tube is fine, as long as what comes out does not become contaminated with chunks of dried paint.

You will not want chunks of dried paint in your work, and when the effort to pick out the chunks of paint becomes more effort, and expense than buying a fresh tube of paint, it is then time to buy a fresh tube, and to discard the old paint tube.

[karenlee]

It's a lot of work, but the best thing for those messy tubes is to clean up the paint dried in the caps and remove any dried paint obstructing the necks of the tubes. Once the tubes are cleaned up, you can cap them tightly to save the remaining good paint. Dents and wrinkles in the tube won't matter as long as the tube is intact and tightly closed when not in use. If a tube is punctured, you'll need to seal the puncture with a heavy tape like duct tape.
Have fun!

[Mary Maggio]

You guys are great. Thanks so much. I already used some of your advice, and tried to clean the caps up. 'Tis true, it is a pain. And, I am thinking of wrapping the tubes in saran wrap, so they arent' so sticky and yucky. Thank you so much!

[Journeyman]

To deal with the ones you are having difficulty getting the caps off, first scrape off the dried paint around the joint were the cap and tube meet, then dip the cap in boiling water. The heat will soften the paint and it should open.

Dave

[Judy Manuche]

Yes, boiling water works, also holding a flame under the cap works, too. Tilt the tube to horizontal and hold the flame about 1 inch under the cap, only for a few seconds, rotating the tube around to heat the whole cap, it should come off after that.

[boomerbeach]

Still can't get the caps off after all that heat?... Try some cold too .. Place tubes in your freezer for 10-30min, try the caps again..

[Grizabella]

Michaels sells packages of different sized tightly capped plastic cups for $5 for about 12 or more in a package and I think it would work to salvage the paint out of tubes that are split or that you can't get the caps off of. I wish they'd had them about 20 years ago when I gave a ton of my paints away to a neighbor that I thought I probably couldn't salvage. I hadn't been able to use the paints for a long time because of work and raising grandchildren so I thought I probably couldn't save any of them but she thought she could. If I had had something like these containers, I'd have cut open the tubes and just put the paints in the cups.

Oh well, they're gone now, but there was a few hundred dollars in paint there that I never got to finish using. I just hope she did salvage them.