Finest Professional Watercolours Quality Control Process

Finest Professional Watercolours Quality Control Process

The fineness of Grind - We test this using a Hegman Gauge, this instrument tests the fineness of grind after Milling by putting a small blob of paint onto a precision-engineered trench and drawing down the trench by hand, the readings on the side show how fine the particles are in microns

Density - We use a density cup to test the density of each paint ensuring it is the same or as close to the previous batch as possible

 

Painting out - We test every batch by swatching the colour onto different watercolour papers, washing the colour down with different ratios of water to show each tone of the colour, this is all done by the eye of our skilled chemist against previous swatches to ensure quality and consistency against batches

Drying test - Every batch is tested by taking a small amount of paint and placing it on watercolour paper to dry, we leave this 2 weeks in a humidity controlled room, this test shows us if any unwanted cracking appears in the paint, how the paint re-wets and how it paints out against wet paint, we test all this to ensure consistency in the range and against previous batches and a high quality paint that works exactly as a watercolour should

Manufacturing process - we keep the same consistent manufacturing process every time, as we know from experience that changing any element of the whole process can slightly affect the watercolour in an adverse way, from wetting out the pigment, to keeping notes on the tightness of the rollers on the mill and how many runs, to our skilled chemist knowing how the paint should feel when mixed and understanding each pigments individual personality’s

 

Opening a tube - from every batch a tube is selected at random and opened, this is to test how the paint reacts when the membrane of the tube is pierced, the paint should not spurt out but should glisten and flow smoothly out the tube when slight pressure is exerted on the sealed end of the tube (even though we aim to have all tubes not spitting out when opened we can’t guarantee this 100% due to elements outside of our control like pressurisation in aircrafts when shipped abroad or a slight bit of air trapped in the tube causing pressure)