PAINT MARKERS - What's good?

Jan 31, 2020 4 Replies

PAINT MARKERS - What's good? Not Milwaukee.



Many years ago in my contracting office I put up a 4x8 sheet of bathroom board as a write board. I used it to write down contract jobs, and service tickets so we would keep track of them and get them done.



It worked great, but in order to keep things straight we needed to put lines on it. I asked one of my guys and long time friend about it and he suggested a paint marker. We picked one up at a local (now closed) education supply store and it worked fantastic. It worked great and lasted for years. In fact it only quit working after it got dropped on the floor and stepped on. I bought a few more and they were ok, but not as good.



Recently I was thrilled when I walked into my local industrial bolt vendor and saw they had Milwaukee brand paint markers hanging on the wall. I figured i Milwaukee put their name on it they had to be decent. I bought several of them. They may still have paint in them, but after marking only a few pieces of metal they quit working. They are in my opinion total garbage.



I'm looking for a quality paint marker like that first one I bought many years ago. I use them for marking steel, coloring feather tips on fishing lures, and of course I need to mark some lines on a white board.


Diagraph GP-X Classic with xylene. I've tried several easier-to-find brands (Dykem, Testors, Markal), but these are hands down the best. The biggest difference is they don't dry out if you don't use them regularly. They're making a less toxic version with the same name and appearance, except the good ones say "xylene" on the label in small print.

I bought a box here some time ago after inquiring about the xylene. I'd ask again before buying.

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The orange seems to be more color fast than yellow, if you want a bright color.

I should have mentioned that if you _do_ leave one unused long enough that the nib gets clogged and isn't making an opaque mark, pull the nib out and soak it in xylene for a little bit. With the xylene markers that'll make a big improvement; doesn't do much good for the non-xylene markers.

First test looks good so far. It feels a lot better than those worthless Milwaukee markers already.

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