EVERY Winsor&Newton oil tube I have leaks oil

[MattOKC]

Anyone else have this issue? Literally EVERY tube of W&N oil paint I have has leaked clear oil all down its side. I store them horizontally (because I have a drawer with dividers in it), but down the length of the tube a mass of yellowish dry oil has formed a crust. None of my Gamblin or Holbein tubes have ever done this.

http://www.mattatkinsonart.com - Native American (Ojibway) painter

[Anonymous]

Never happened to me. And I go through many tubes of WN paints. Is it artist quality you use?

[forsooth]

To add to the last post, I, too, have only had good luck with WN’s tubes of paint. In fact, a “leaking” tube is rare for me regardless of brand.

Are they leaking from the cap? The bottom? Or, perhaps, developing holes?

[karenlee]

The poor company has been sold so many times it doesn’t know who it is any more. In 2012, our local Utrecht store started getting W&N manufactured in France; quality may have, um, altered. The name is the same, but…

[stapeliad Moderator, NYC]

I have a whole bunch of WN tubes and I haven’t noticed this issue any more or less than other brands.

Lady Mars Orange Marmalade Stapleford
Moderator: OIls, Pastels, Plein Air
Be yourself. Everyone else is already taken. -Oscar Wilde

[Gigalot]

I huge amount of aluminum stearate (or wax) can stop any oil separation into paint tube, but paint with wax also has “waxy” consistency. Try Chinese paints and look how waxy they are!
However, “Creamy” paint without wax additives has tendency to oil separation.

[Lana537]

Dear Matt,

So sorry to hear you are having such troubles. Do you go through a lot of paint and find yourself ordering/buying tubes frequently, and maybe you got all of your tubes recently from one unsatisfactory source?

I am the opposite: I have a hundred tubes of W&N Artists’ Oils, some new last month all the way to some over ten years old. Almost none of them leak oil from the bottom or the top. If I have a messy/oily/leaky tube, it’s because I didn’t tighten the cap all the way and maybe the tube was sitting in a warm place for a year or so…..

My Daniel Smith paints, which I love, do seem to leak and be a mess, so I’ve learned to gently overcompensate with the caps and to gently put one more turn in the bottom of the tube-crimp.

All sort of questions make me wonder though. As other posters have said maybe the W&N paint you have has been made differently or come from someplace strange. I hope not. I imagine you are talking about a LOT of paint here. Call them or write them at least. Reference Wet Canvas and that you might have a bad lot.

Good luck.

Your paintings are beautiful.

Lana

[SSB]

For seepage:
Out of Blue Ridge, WN, Grumbacher, W’ Burg, Schminke, Blockx, Gamlin and a couple of others, the worst offender is Grumbacher, next WN. I will say in their defense, those, along with my first round of Blue Ridge are my oldest paints and have taken the most abuse…But- the Blue Ridge tubes are much thicker with Blockx style caps, as a matter of fact Blockx is the only other paint packaged as well as Blue Ridge, IMO.
Sometimes a preemptive taping of the tube as well as the threads can help you prevent the caps from balking.
A tip, if you wait too long to clean the threads you will wipe away a “crust” that is the only thing keeping the paint airtight, the only way is to keep them clean from the start.
Finally, I have found if one waits until almost the end of the tube before really wrinkling it much to get out paint or using a wringer, it makes better sense. At first I was rolling it up as I went along, like toothpaste. I had breaks in several Grum and WN tubes until I figured it out. Now, I am super gentle, unworried about rolling it up. I just press until the whole thing is “flat”, then I roll in a wringer and usually have 20% leftover. If the tube is looking beat up, I pretape it before I roll. Saves big messes!

[Psypomp]

SSB gives some VERY good advice. As far as I know, the leaking is simply caused by the separation of pigment and oil. I don’t know how to prevent that, but there are some steps you can take to prevent disappointment later on, which SSB provided above.

v Art & Process Blog v

[MattOKC]

They’re the Artist grade, and most of them come from Hobby Lobby and Cheapjoes.com. The muck seems to form down the back side as they lay sideways, and around the cap. It seems to be squeezing out either at the cap or along the tube seam, not sure. But since my other brands don’t do this at all, I don’t think it’s the way I’m storing or capping them. Hmm, may just be a mystery.

http://www.mattatkinsonart.com - Native American (Ojibway) painter

[stapeliad Moderator, NYC]

Try keeping them in a colder place. A lot of my tubes are a little leaky, and it’s not brand-specific. None is excessive though, except 1 which I keep in a ziplock bag. (it’s a Maimeri italian earth) Also try capping them tighter, maybe I should do this too.

Lady Mars Orange Marmalade Stapleford
Moderator: OIls, Pastels, Plein Air
Be yourself. Everyone else is already taken. -Oscar Wilde

[lovin art]

I’m shocked at reading this I don’t have this prob ….but then I don’t seem to be painting at the moment , …. I must get them out and look at them , smell them ….:D don’t ya just love the smell of paint …. Ok they say don’t sniff it right …..

I’d bag em if it was me …that’s what I normally do then I forget about them and end up throwing em out ….I figure fresh paint is way better then none at all …I don’t cap them to tightly or I can’t seem to get them open sometimes …

[dirtysteev]

I had some leaky tubes a while back, don’t remember the brand. I tried storing them cap-down, thinking the pigment and oil would separate, oil floating to the top (crimped end). It worked.

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