 Hello everybody and welcome to another hobby cheating video and today we're going to talk about a bunch of fun Hobby tools that are a little bit of a break from the norm But that I use quite regularly and maybe just maybe might help you in your hobby as well Let's get into it. Let's strict techno man sir. That is Vinci V. Let us get to the technique So I already have a video talking about things like brushes and you know your water cup your wet palette all the basics and Recently we covered lighting as well However, there's a bunch of other hobby tools the sort of weird hobby tools that They don't necessarily cost a lot of money But they end up being super valuable and I use them quite often in this video We're going to talk about 10 of those particular hobby tools that I end up using pretty regularly And just maybe they'll find a use at your desk as well These things sort of run the gamut From very simple to maybe a little more complicated, but all of them have some kind of use So let's talk about it. All right number one Small dry palettes now. This is gonna sound weird, but let me explain I actually really like having a bunch of these small dry palettes. You can buy them in big stacks From Amazon and things like that by the way, everything I talk about is going to be linked down below But these little small dry palettes in the packs they come in I find them very useful for doing working with metallics or inks or doing unusual mixes with metallics or something like something like that The reason is because generally metallics don't belong on your wet palette. I'm a wet palette guy But pure inks can get runny and soak through your paper Metallics can get all messy and they they tend to be quite hydrophobic and so you don't want them absorbing water These small dry palettes are great You can use them and have and just do quick particular mixes on them And if they get too dirty or too hard to clean you can just toss it because you buy them in packs of 50 for just Really a few dollars So all in all I end up using these quite a bit especially any time I'm using heavy metallics inks and or mixes of those two number two Putty or silly putty really now. I'm gonna show you some AK interactive putty as well here in a second But you can just use traditional silly putty. That's right like the stuff that comes in the egg Now, what do I use this for you might ask Vince? What the heck are you using silly putty for? Well, the answer is airbrushing Oftentimes when I airbrush, I need to quickly mask an area But I don't want to use tape that's expensive and then you have to throw away afterward or anything like that Instead, I just use this putty now this particular stuff is this AK camo putty It's meant to give you an easy way to sort of do camo around the model But I've never used it for that purpose. Uh, I simply use it Basically to mask off areas and then spray with confidence. So you're not getting any kind of overspray It's easy you pull it out You shape it around the particular figure where you want it and then spray and when it's done Even if it has a little paint on it doesn't matter. You just want it back up to a ball Put it back in its little tin and it will over time just flatten back out into this perfect little hockey puck shape Because it acts a little like a liquid. So it but it's a very very very very very very very slow liquid So I find this really useful because oftentimes you need to use your airbrush And you don't want to get out any kind of heavy duty masking. I hate liquid masking and silly putty What you buy in the egg or even this stuff is great. It doesn't pull paint It's never going to hurt or damage your model. Uh, and it's just quick and easy to apply number three sanding sticks These are so essential Now you can use your exacto blade for a lot of things I'm sure most of us clean up things like mold lines and a lot of different stuff with our exacto blade So do I However, there's oftentimes burrs or other small things that your exacto blade just isn't really perfect at getting at And these different sanding sticks are really really useful Now I you can get them in the bigger size more like a traditional nail file and buy them in big packs And I use those sometimes especially on larger projects Terrain and things like that that have like really heavy mold lines But also the little thin ones are great because they can bend they can shape you can twist them and everything And get them really around the figure to work in the areas that you want to work in and make sure that you Are cleaning up all of those lines or small burrs or defects in the model Especially useful when it comes to things like Getting rid of the little joints for your sprue or of course We're working with resin where you oftentimes have a lot of burrs and leftovers from the casting process Just remember when you're using resin to also wear some kind of mask But these sanding sticks are a lifesaver. They're great. They come in different grits So you can start with sort of a medium one and then go very high grit Get everything super smooth and ready to paint number four Number four is unusual, but it is nail pads nail pads for wiping nails Now I've got to give full credit to my wife as she's the one who thought I might find some use for these And boy was she right? I really enjoy uh these nail pads now What the heck are they? So they're these small little white pads, but the interesting thing about them They're I guess they're used for like cleaning acrylic nails or something I don't really know. She just had packs of them and gave me them But the important part about them is they're not very absorbent and I know that sounds silly Don't you want something absorbent? Well, no not always And so when I'm like wiping my brush to get it into a tip Or when I'm trying to wipe off paint from a dry brush These little pads Are excellent at that because they absorb some of the liquid but not too much of it They still leave a healthy amount of uh liquid in your brush So whenever you want your mixture to be a more wet layer or something like that If you're worried about the paint drying too quickly if you live in a rather dry environment These are great And in fact as you can see that from the the you know what I shared here I use it tons throughout the project for all my different paints basically Dragging my brush along it and making it into a smooth sharp tip I don't find it absorbs too much extra paint It just sort of gets out truly the excess and then leaves me still with a belly full of very nice Wet paint that I can then apply to the model and get to work cleanly These things have become just part of my routine and the awesome thing about them is again They're super cheap and you get these huge packs of them. So basically for our purposes one pack just lasts a lifetime Uh, so I've really come to love them. I didn't think any I've never seen anybody else use these Full credit to my wife who's awesome and was completely right. They're they're great number five Double-sided tape especially double-sided spongy tape So this is useful for the age old question of how do I stick this model to a thing to paint it? Double-sided tape is incredibly great. And this it's this spongy variety Again, everything's linked below that I prefer I often just will put it on top of a pill bottle like this like an old pill bottle or something And then I can just stick the model's feet right to it. They're not going anywhere It's especially great if the model is on like a tactical rock or something So you've got a little more surface area to stick to it But I've used this for all sorts of projects. This is also the same thing I will put on painting sticks on the long wooden sticks whenever I'm doing a very large project You also would have seen me use this double-sided tape during the speed metals test as this is what I use to affix all of the different shields To a piece of plastic card to then proceed with that test It's easy. It's quick again You get big rolls for cheap and it holds your model really strongly If your model is just up on a little toe Admittedly it won't but for most things we paint as long as they've got a good solid connection to the ground Small piece of this onto a pill bottle stick the model on you're good to go to get that model painted without it Wibbling wobbling or really going anywhere and falling off so A great thing I use real often number six 99 isopropyl alcohol Okay, so this one might seem a little strange and unfortunately this became really hard to get during the pandemic Fortunately, I had a reserve a store. I had bought or I bought multiples of these at any rate 99 ice propyl alcohol is great as a cleaning solution Now specifically where I tend to use it is with my airbrush And it will I use it sort of to do a deep cleaning at the end of a session Where I will put some drops into it backfill it swish it around and then Dump it and blow a little whatever's remaining in the cup through I find it to be the thing that will sort of destroy the rest of the acrylic paint that might want to hide in there And really just helps to break all that down and keep your airbrush flowing smooth and clean and I never have any problem with clogs 99 isopropyl alcohol can also be used to clean things like synthetic brushes So if you've got synthetic brushes you want to get the most use out of In the same way it will clean your airbrush out. It will also clean your synthetic brushes word of warning I wouldn't use it on your nice sables In that case it will sort of destroy some of the natural oils of those sable brushes And so we'll make them kind of harder and make them fray and break down quicker But for synthetics or your airbrush, this is an essential cleaning tool that again, you don't need much of One good size bottle of this will last you a really long time And in fact, I usually decant it into the smaller bottle as you saw So that that way I can more easily just put a couple drops into the airbrush. Don't try to pour it out of that larger Container decanted into something smaller so that that way you can control the number of drops you use Number seven my paint shaker. Oh boy I love this thing. So this is obviously a lab mixer is what it actually is. It's for mixing like um Test tubes or whatever. I guess. I don't know. Uh, I'm not neither a chemist nor have I ever worked in a lab Uh, and but that's what I assume these are and these are probably this is the most expensive thing on the list Like this is a bit of an investment. No doubt However, I use this thing every freaking day. I love it got an old paint It's been sitting on the shelf for too long and is clearly separated a good solid minute on the paint mixer And it will be back and restored like normal as long as the liquid hasn't Like evaporated out or something as was tend to happen with very old paints from years and years ago This will get it back into shape fast Generally before I put any paint on my palette I give it about 20 30 seconds on the paint mixer and find that I get excellent Then just like right out of there. Obviously if you've got a clogged tip, you got to clear that that still happens with many paints But I never get like that squirt of just ketchup juice out the front. Uh, oh boy, is that awful Uh, and so this is an absolute lifesaver helps you get the most out of your paints and Reduces the waste of those paints because you just squeeze get a drop or two of good solid usable paint out after a solid After a mixing and you're ready to go next up course texture medium And of course maybe some rocks But specifically I wanted to direct everybody to this because this might be something that folks have missed Course texture medium is used in acrylic painting on canvas to create Well texture. It's a texture medium. It's effectively a very very heavy gritty paste Now in acrylic painting on canvas, it's used to again create some kind of effect But for us it becomes a basing material and that's super awesome It's really easy to sort of squeeze this out onto a base Spread it around and you've instantly got dirt or sand or you know, martian Wasteland, however color you end up painting it, but it just has a really naturally great in scale size To it for sort of a rough rocky Wasteland-y ground or sandy ground anything of that nature Um, it's cheap. You can get these big bottles again linked below And I just find it to be really really useful It's how I do quick bases or just how I start even more complicated ones It's great for grit filling for putting it over cork and then hiding that it's cork It's great for you know filling in spaces and creating little areas of mud rock or sand And you can layer other stuff on top of that dropping other rocks other size grit putting down Um, you know anything you might want other elements that make the base more complicated And in fact if you stick all that stuff in there while it's still wet as it dries It will lock it in place as sure as any glue So it's really nice. You can kind of build with it use it as both a basing texture and an adhesive all in one number nine Related to the previous one is this one. It's silicone shapers So these are little silicone tools that you use to spread Uh, I don't know what their actual purpose is, but I use them to spread basing goop and anything like that around It's great for spreading things like the coarse texture medium But there also can be useful for things like shaping green stuff or smoothing green stuff or anything like that generally anytime you're working with a putty or a medium or Some kind of grit that you want to spread around and get even These end up being an excellent tool to do so and the reason that I find them so valuable is because they're silicone Ultimately, you can just wipe them clean and even if you get a little bit of detritus on there You can just actually rinse it it'll peel right off the silicone being incredibly low friction non-stick Means that uh, all these other things don't actually end up, you know Causing a problem long term like they will in brush hairs So I just find this to be a much more useful thing than basically destroying brushes even old brushes Uh, and so I use this for things like uh, martian iron earth and stuff like that If you're going to spread around any of those basing paste from dw or anything of that nature These are a go-to and super valuable for getting All of that grit into the spaces that you want and not having to either make your fingers all messy or ruin brushes Finally number 10 It's one that I've done a whole video on but I do love it Plastic glue and the associated sprue goo you can make out of it I keep a bottle of each on hand at all times the plastic glue of course is self-explanatory It's my go-to for assembling plastic models not resin plastic the sprue goo However, and I'll link the video here at the end So you've got something to watch right after this one if you want But the sprue goo and the making of it I make it now directly in the bottle that it comes in I just dump a bunch of chopped up sprue in there and I use this to spill small gaps to assemble models All that sort of thing to smooth out space Whatever you need to to smooth out like a rough spot or a hole or a pockmark or anything like that on a miniature This is my go-to you take it you dip your little the little brush in you apply it You let it dry you're good to go The best part is it doesn't really take long to adhere and dry And so oftentimes for models that might have weaker connections This is a great way to just drop some of that sprue goo in there It'll solidify into basically plastic and become hard as a rock and make your model fixed and ready to go All of my big sort of models that I assemble I end up using sprue goo and find it to be an invaluable tool to get there And of course, you can smooth out that sprue goo with the plastic goo So the regular plastic glue. I'm sorry once you apply the sprue goo itself Just take some of the normal plastic glue wipe it over the top It will flatten and smooth and spread out the whole thing So it becomes a nice even hard plastic surface for you to then prime and work over So there you go. There's 10 hobby items. Maybe you are using maybe you weren't I hope this was useful If you thought so, hey, give it a like subscribe for additional hobby cheating We have new videos here every Saturday If you want to support the channel all those links down below are amazon links. There are affiliate links It doesn't cost you anything extra, but it helps give a kick back to the channel So check any of that out. There's all the stuff I talked about and everything from my basic video down there as well There's also affiliate links if you're picking up any other hobby products like paints or things like that So hit those up and of course there's our patreon Our patreon is focused on review and feedback and taking your next step on your hobby journey As always though, I thank you so much for watching this one and we'll see you next time