Army Painter

I've just finished dipping three battalions of french infantry using the medium shade from Army Painter.  Overall, I really like the results, but like any new endeavor, I made some mistakes along the way.  Here are some things you might want the keep in mind:

(1) Have a wick handy to sop up any concentrations of dip that may still be around post shaking.  I found on areas where there a long straight lines (muskets, flag poles) that the dip will still pool post shaking and cause a "rust streak effect" during the drying process.  Not a major disaster, but it will need some touch up.

(2) Wear rubber gloves and have an old plastic spork on hand.  Why?  Because sometimes figures slip out and go swimming in the dip (reminds me of some of my Katrina disaster recovery activities - the viscosity of the dip matches the water in NOLA, ughhh).  A spork is a great way to fish them out because the plastic is less likely to chip your paint job.  I think I had one swimmer per each 36 man battalion.  Even with gloves don't go fishing around with your fingers - remember Archimedes eureka moment.

(3) Give the dip sufficient time to dry - drying times are really impacted by ambient temperature.  I was working in an unheated garage and had a few space heaters going.  I let the figures dry for 48 hours just to make sure.  Note: be very careful with space heaters as the dip is very flammable (one of the ingredients in Naphtha) - always create a cross breeze to disperse the fumes.

(4) Do this outside (I had the both garage door and the opposite window open) - the fumes are very powerful.

(5) Enjoy learning how to do something new.  There will be mistakes but everything can be corrected and these are just toy soldiers.  One of my battalions really came out over dipped but now that I've affectionately renamed them "les bastrads sales" they are becoming my favorite unit.  My apologies if my french is a bit off - I used the Yahoo translation service.

(6) I used about a third of a can of dip on the 115 figures I dipped so my guess is each can cover about 300-350 28mm figures (likely less if they are cavalry).

I really like the product and recommend it highly.