Can I buy a dowel?

I've been spending quite a bit of December checking out the WS&S Youtube tutorials by Christy Beall in preparation for the 28mm's I will need to paint this year, and one of these videos was about painting equipment. >>

I've been painting for about 10 years now, on and off, and I never really watched others paint, I just learned it on the fly and by reading the occasional tutorial. Having recently discovered Youtube (Hey, better late then never!) I've learned a lot of new things. For instance, I've always used old CD's as my palet. Since I started doing that when I was working in IT I never had a shortage of old CD's to do so. But when I grabbed the box a few months back I found I only had a few left, and since all I do these days is on USB sticks and portable harddiscs this would be a source not easily replenished. A wet palet I tried but all I managed to create after a while was a nice colony of fungus. Maybe I'm doing something wrong, I don't know. It never occured to me that the paper palet my gf used to use for canvas painting would be useful for miniature painting. Must have hit a blind spot, but it is a big piece of paper and I tend to think smaller is better for some reason.

Paintbrushes is another thing. I've been using these dirt cheap crap nylon brushes in size 0 and 00 for as long as I can remember. Well, 1 euro a piece. Before I left Tilburg to live with my gf I bought about a dozen, but in the 3 years since I've only got 2 left, their tips split after a few months and no matter how much I clean them I can't fix that. The pot next to me is stuffed with about 40 brushes, all used and abused. I heard about better brushes online in the occasional post, but the prices always scared me. Christy changed that for me as she explained the benefits of a good brush that keeps a good tip for a long time, if properly cared for, and that you really only need 2, a nr. 1 and a nr. 0 so the expense isn't nearly as high as I thought. Reality hit me as well. I have no qualms buying new paint if I want more colours at 2.25 a pot (Vallejo) or a set of models for 20 Pounds or more, so why would 10 euros scare me? If they last for years, it is a small expense to pay, like tires for your car. And what the heck, a bar of paintbrush soap was 2,50 euro so why not. Maintenance.

So, can I buy a dowel? :)

Christy glues her based 28mm's on pieces of dowel that looked suspiciously like a 10cm piece of broomhandle, Jasper glues them to thicker but smaller pieces. As I've never been happy sticking my 20mm's to bottlecaps (the locally available bluetack is pretty inferior and tended to loose grip at the most unofortunate moment and I tended to cramp up after a while) I thought why not. The broomhandle set me back 3 euros thanks to a discount coupon at the local DIY and they cut it into 10 cm pieces for me for free (after they gave me the odd look or two). Since I will be suing these for my 20mm as well as 28mm, I decided to glue magnets to the first set for the sole reason that glueing them on one by one is a bit of a waste of time as their bases are magnetic so glueing a magnet on makes sense. Well, to me anyway.

As it turned out, a added bonus of using a healthy dose of glue is that the magnet is snugly embedded in the glue, which is still a little bit elastic so it grips the coins a bit so they don't slide around on the magnet.

To make a long story short, Christy Beall cost me money :)