"Primer paint, is it really different?" Topic

I paint in acrylic I was wondering if there was any real differnce between primer paint and regular hobby type acrylic paint?

Most primers are solvent-based, and establish (or attempt to establish) a chemical bond with the surface they are applied to. Hobby acrylics are water based, polymerize internally to form a shell, and thus only form mechanical bonds with the underlying surface. If that surface has a lot of tiny nooks, hooks, and bumps then the acrylic paint will adhere nicely. The nooks, hooks, and bumps are what primer exists to create. The technical term is "tooth". Primers have it, many non-primers do not.

GC nailed it.

This thread will not end well.

Amicalement,

Allen

Yes there is. See bit.ly/j5MEX4 for a "primer on priming" [sic].

There are some excellent water based primers for lead and tin. I've used this one for years – bit.ly/liKN3U

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The Gypsy's got it but there'll be a slew of anecdotes coming soon stating it doesn't matter and that paint has never come off their figures after decades even though they don't wash the minis before hand or use primer.

The earth is flat, night is day, black is white, etc etc …

Some car spray primers also have a 'filler' element and people talk about this reducing sharp detail – can't say I have noticed that much, but it does have different characteristics to ordinary (non primer spray) and is my preferred option.

Acrylic users can also use Gesso as a primer, as it naturally adheres and provides the said 'tooth' for acrylic (or oil) paint to follow. Though I always feel that it needs more than 1 coat to get proper coverage. Artists canvases generally have 3 coats of Gesso on them.

Acrylics were originally developed to colour fabric, they are designed to penetrate fibres at the microscopic level and that is why it will never wash off you best pants and will permanently add interesting patterns you your carpet when you knock the bottle over :-( but is also the reason why they adhere better to an undercoat than to a plastic / metal surface.

Acrylic can go straight onto the figure, but you will quickly notice that even while painting, the highlights of the figure will become exposed due to the normal rubbing effect when handling a to paint figure. If you can avoid that and get a varnish protection on them, then they seem to stand up OK, but so much effort goes into these things, it seems counter-productive to miss out the step of undercoating.

. . . there'll be a slew of anecdotes coming soon stating it doesn't matter and that paint has never come off their figures after decades even though they don't wash the minis before hand or use primer.

Hah, no kidding! "Immediately after removing my minis from the blisterpack, I dip them in 10W-40 motor oil, followed by a light dusting of graphite powder. After painting with the cheapest tempera poster paints I can find, I apply a clear topcoat of Aqua-Net hair spray. I have minis that I painted like this just after Dubya-Dubya-Two that still look as good as the day I finished them. Oh, and did I mention I've won numerous Golden Demons with these minis? It's true!"

Some car spray primers also have a 'filler' element and people talk about this reducing sharp detail

Some primers sold specifically for automotive use are this way. Very thick, and bind some of the propellant within the liquid until the shock of application forces it out. These primers bubble if applied thickly enough, as the trapped gasses escape. They are much too thick for miniature use, and also, in my experience, don't provide an acrylic-friendly level of tooth.

General purpose primers, such as those brands found in hardware stores, work just fine and are often the same manufacturers that are re-branded for sale by GW and the likes at five times the price.

heh…. Allen's nailed it.

HWIW, I've been using flat white spray paint from WalMart for more than 20 years now as a base coat with no loss of detail or damage. It's .99 cents a can and lats quite awhile. Other's mileage will, of course, vary, but I like this stiff and am not changing.

Every TIme I see these threads I cringe.

To answer the OP question yes there are water based acrylic primers the function as a primer should.

A bigger question is do you really need a true primer to paint a miniature. The answer is one we each have to answer for ourselves!!

FYI I fall into the I prime with Wally world 99 cent spray. so no primer for me.

I require nothing of anybody on this matter -nor could I hope for it. This is just the usual course this topic runs.

Though I'll add: people assume the only variable is in figure prep and don't take into account all the other factors that confuse the issue. How frequently are your miniatures handled? Are hands clean or greased with pizza? Are figures jumbled in a box or lovingly replaced in a personalized foam cubby? Do you solo game, move all your own troops or are your figures regularly handled by strangers at cons? Do you game with them once a year, every weekend, or somewhere in between? Do you pick them up by the bases or the bayonet? Do you pick up figures in clusters or move them singly or on movement trays?

If all things are equal you should expect to see shell type covering perform less well than chemical fusion type covers. That people come up with anecdotes to the contrary doesn't, to me, demonstrate loss of sanity but simply a willingness to disallow other possibilities.

To the OP, it should be made clear, that primer -if it's the only consideration, should perform better than paint. For the others, participate in this hobby however you want.

Thanks all, although as I am in Canada I might have a hard time finding International Paints Special Metals Primer, despite the name I've not found any stockists here.

Yes as you would expect, hobby primer makes a better primer coat than hobby paint.

EDIT: GypsyComet explains it well and succinctly above.

Primer has an additive specifically for tooth so that acrylic paint will bond with it.

However some hobbyists feel that acrylic paint bonds sufficiently well with other acrylic paint, and thus tooth is not helpful, or at least overrated, and thus unnecessary. These hobbyists prime with matte or satin acrylic paint.

Anybody have an idea how I can get Fortress Special Metals Primer or International Special Metals Primer in the U.S.?

I have bought Hammerite Special Metals Primer on Ebay and have been extremely satisfied with it, but I want to try a white primer, such as the above. Hammerite supposedly comes in white but I haven't been able to find it.

After reading this thread and Vexillia's blog, I did an experiment with Krylon flat, Rustoleum Special Metals Primer, self-etching primer, gesso and several others, including Hammerite. Nothing came close to Hammerite – I just about couldn't scrape it off even with firm pressure from a fingernail.

I use Tamiya Surface Primer Gray. I have also used Krylon spray primer Gray. Both do a good job for me. I always use primer for priming and paint for painting. But that's just me.

Yes, but Krylon has been combining the two for a while now.

link

My thoughts on this go back and forth. I do not doubt that actual primers have additives that enable them to function with true adhesion qualities.

However I wonder how much better they actually work than using a spray paint as the undercoat.

I recently tested side by side two plastic models, one sprayed with Black spray primer, Testors White spray and one with GW Macragge Blue model spray. All seemed to scrape off equally as easy. There wasn't any drastic difference where I had to like scrape extra hard to get the primer off. There wasn't any moment where I had a drastic, "well THIS one just adheres so much better than THAT one."

I also tried this with Army Painter "colored primers". Army Painter is interesting because they are sold as being specially formulated colored primers. Amd they do indeed seem a bit harder to scrape off a model than a GW spray paint.

Now with acrylic paint brush-on applied over these various products, I have to say that I was able to scrape paint off equally as easy with the primers as I was the spray paints as an undercoat.

So in the end I don't know!

I can say however that enamel primers like Testors Model Master Gray, or anything enamel-based seems to adhere somewhat more strongly to the plastic than the acrylic-based primers seem to. So I'm thinking that an enamel-based spray paint can work and function as a primer in much the same way as a true primer does.

Hence why so many report successfully using like .99 cent Walmart white enamel spray paint as a primer.

In the end I would say that as long as you use SOME kind of spray paint that's designed to stick to plastic or metal where appropriate, that that's always much BETTER than using NOTHING for an undercoat. There's much heated debate among the GW community for example if their colored sprays can be used as BOTH the undercoat AND the base coat color at the same time. Some insist no, that you need to spray a primer on the model first, and some say yes with no problems.

I've used GW's blue and green spray paints as the undercoat and the base color of the model. And I can tell you first-hand that I can vigorously drybrush over those spray products and rub them and they do not budge. They can however be scraped off fairly easy with an Xacto blade. But that goes for everything I've used. No primer I've seen can actually defy a blade scrape, don't care what the brand is.

And with several coats of brush-on varnish I find that GW "spray paints" work just fine as an undercoat and base color.

And still more curious with the GW example is their Chaos Black and Corax White (previously Skull White). Those two products are SOLD and sold openly by GW as being meant to be used as undercoats. They are universally implied and intended to be undercoats. They have both been considered to be primers for as long as GW has sold their spray products for the past twenty-five+ years. Yet, if you look at what those products actually are? They are both model PAINTS. Doesn't say anything ANYwhere on the cans that even remotely describes them as being a "primer".

Which makes me suspiciously believe that that .99 cent Walmart white spray paint is EXACTLY the same ingredients as that $17.00 USD can of GW spray. Just with different labels, lol.

Interesting thread. Only today I decided to remove GW spray undercoat from a large batch of metal minis as it just rubbed off as soon as I handled any of the figures. I dropped an undercoated figure into a jar of acetone and it fizzed up like a soda water and after a few seconds all the paint was off the figure!

I used to prime using Humbrol black enamel, but am thinking of using their grey primer. I am not using spray cans again either.