Well, it is winter here and quite cool at nights, so paints and especially ink/washes take a looong time to dry. I was feeling impatient while painting my stegadon priest, and remembered lots of GW people use hair dryers to speed things up. Only having an air blowing heater at my disposal in my lair, I unleashed a blast of that onto the model with the resolve that when my hand got warm I would withdraw him. You can see where this is going. Within 15 seconds or so, his staff very quickly bent in two places and his knife half melted. Nuts. On the plus side, the wash did dry. Luckily I have two stegadons and only 1 engine, so I am raiding the bits from the other one to make a new priest now. Medium setback in my work, since he was slightly converted, but I am sure I can make another. And must remember to use only very short blasts from the heater in the future. :S
I know what you mean. Up here the hobby needs an unprecedented amount of patience when it comes to waiting for washes to dry. What I do a lot, since I usually paint late at night, is let the washes sit overnight to dry. That way, I know 100% for sure that they're dry by morning. If I do get a bit impatient, I've got an old reading lamp that has one of those old-school incandescent bulbs in it. That gives off enough heat to speed up the drying without melting thinner stuff. As an added bonus, it provides excellent light to read the latest Warhammer novel by too (go figure)!
Down here its not so much the cold that's the problem, but rather humidity. What I usually do to speed up the drying is either use a hairdryer and set it to minimum heat and minimum speed and keep it about a foot away from the model. Sometimes I use a small electric heater instead. I simply place the models on the floor a foot or so away and it is dry in a couple of minutes.
When the weather is cold I paint between 10-30 Models at once doing each coat and highlight on all the models one at a time so by the time the first coat on the first is dryed I am on my last model and then moving back to the last one for the second application of paint or Ink. Also has the nifty effect of making sure everything is cohesive. Bad luck with the melting model I hate mishaps... I paint on commission and remember this one project a sylvanian army I was doing for a guy down in sydney and I was on a ight deadline I had just finished the last unit had the whole army on a board (this was late about 1 am) I picked up the Matt Varnish and shook and sprayed.... after about 7 seconds of application I noticed the Varnish was Black... I had picked up the Black Undercoat instead of the Varnish.... My heart hit my toes and I almost cried I was that broken LOL I always lock up my Undercoat now as it is to easy to make that mistake when our in auto mode.
That happened about 8 Years ago and I laugh about it now but back then I was crushed. Luckily the customer was very understanding.
... Your friend was trying to dry his keyboard's paint and it melted? Or was trying to add varnish and used paint instead? I have a short attention span and painting isn't my favourite aspect of the hobby so by the time I get to the 5th model or so I am sick of it. Much prefer painting characters and choosing/mixing paint between coats or taking a short break. Except when waiting for washes to dry. I have heard of a few other people blasting the chaos black instead of the varnish at the end. That would truely suck when you realised.
he dropped some yoghurt and it went down between the buttons but it wouldnt go away and when he pushed 1 of the buttons he got some button on his fingers (melted button)