El cheapo paint brushes

As a fellow member of the "el cheapo brush" camp, that's well worth knowing, thanks.

Thats £2.35 per paint job. I put it down to laziness in not wanting to clean a good brush. :-(

Since you go to Aldi why havn't you bought a stock of their paint brushes? pkt of three for £1.45 and decent quality at that.

GBP2.35 pays for just under 2 minutes of my time. If you can clean a paintbrush properly in under 2 minutes, you're a better man than I am, Gunga Din.

Pound Shop. Set of 7. Bristles still intact after the first job!

The other thing to bear in mind is the disposal of the cleaning materials. I have a septic tank, and I don't want to put White Spirit or Brush Restorer into it - even diluted. It seems to eat dilute emulsion OK though - at least in brush/roller cleaning quantities.

As it is, I have lots of old milk bottles (Sainsbury's plastic) with used white spirit settling - then I recover the white spirit and bin the bottle with the residue. (Yes, I know that it's going to landfill, thanks, but only after serving for six months on the front-line)

I just use premium brushes for gloss topcoat and varnish.

R.

Probably cost you 39.5 pence to post this message then. If someone in China makes a brush for 10 pence, do you feel justified in throwing it away? Where does it all end? Should I throw away Ikea plates because it's not economic to wash them up?

That's the difference between recreation and "work". This is recreation. I don't clean paint brushes for fun.

Yep.

Why not? Don't try and dump your middle class guilt onto me.

Takes me 30 seconds tops

Good to have a box full of clean paint brushes too.

cheers, Pete.

Two minutes is a long time ya know.

Just cleaned 2 brushes in 1m 59.59secs The trick is not to overload the paint brush in the first place.

Real painters (in which camp I count myself) don't often bother cleaning brushes, unless you're talking about wall brushes. When I did it professionally, paint brushes (used for gloss, eggshell or other oil-based paints) were simply kept in a paint kettle, stored in water. When you needed one, you took it out, shook out the water, wiped it with a rag, and just started painting. Most glossing or eggshell finishes were white or variants thereof, so small colour variations were invisible to the naked eye. Obviously if someone wanted a coloured finish, that needed a clean brush. Most of my brushes were never cleaned - I binned them when they wore out.

The other thing (which is probably not an issue if you're not doing high-spec jobs, though I'm sure your clients would sooner you did a good job rather than a bad job) is that all brushes work better once they're slightly worn - especially for cutting in. Also, new cheap brushes shed hair like a long-haired dog in summer, but if your clients don't mind....

Edward

I got soem decent brushes from Homebase recently, made by Harris with synthetic bristles. The name escapes me, something about not losing bristles (no loss?). They also cost less than three quid (for four) and I bought them to use with varnish. Excellent finish and I didn't have to go back picking up stray bristles from the finished surface.

Why not?

Plus the cost of white spirit/brush cleaner - and its £2.35 for 5 brushes - £0.47 per paint job.

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No, you should throw away Ikea plates because they're horrible.

John

I don't know why not. Even if they were as cheap as paper plates and delivered to my door free of charge, I still wouldn't throw them away. I guess that's making decisions based on something other than bottom line economics.

Dunno, I've never used one. In what way do they fall short of sir's expectations.

"Clever things with computers", according to an introduction someone made to a third party yesterday.

It's only average for what I do and where I do it.

Have you ever tried to shop in IKEA?

It's horrendous from start to finish.