The first thing that you want on your model after you open the package up is primer. Priming well has a potent effect on the finished piece, from getting a good smooth coat that your paint will stick to all the way to preshading, zenithal lighting, and all manner of other fancy tricks. But even before that the surface has to take primer.

You see, primer establishes a bond with the plastic (or metal, resin, or any given other material) and gives you a surface with a slight amount of tooth to it, onto which your paint can neatly flow. Painting onto flat, untreated plastic is an outright disaster because as a rule paints will not stick. The slightest bit of friction will chip away your lovingly-crafted colors and leave you with a cracked, miscolored mess, and no one wants that.

But what was that about letting it take primer? Isn’t the whole point of primer that it’ll stick to anything? Not so much, actually. It’ll stick to a lot of surfaces quite well, but in some cases that’s not what you’re actually applying it to. When plastic is poured into the cast used to create the figure or other model, it tends to stick. To avoid that and reduce wear on the molds, it’s common to treat them with a mold-release solution that then may or may not be fully gone from the model by the time it reaches your hands. When primer hits that, it adheres – but the solution doesn’t adhere to the model. So even after the primer fully cures, you can still have surprisingly severe chipping problems when the solution comes off and takes your primer and paint with it.

So what do we do about that? Well, the mold-release is actually pretty easy to get rid of. Just put a bit of dish soap and warm water into a cup or bowl, and scrub it lightly across the piece using a soft-bristled toothbrush that you don’t plan to use for anything else. Give the model a rinse, let it dry, and you’re ready to prime!

The supplies I use to do that are as follows:

• A toothbrush and some soapy water – I use a new toothbrush that I set aside for this purpose rather than an old one, though as long as the bristles are soft there shouldn’t be an issue either way. My water cup is an old Dasani water bottle with the neck cut away (literally any water vessel you can dip a toothbrush into will work for this), and I occasionally also use a Solo cup to dip models in to rinse when I’m doing a larger batch, since that’s a bit easier to wrangle than getting them all rinsed in the sink one at a time.
• I started off using Krylon ColorMax ultra-flat primers, specifically black, gray, and white. The white especially has worked well for me pretty consistently, and the gray is usually pretty good as well. The black primer leaves a perfectly usable surface, but for some reason it sometimes doesn’t seem to want to fully cure. It’s easy to see this on a cured piece since it never quite stops being shiny. The result is a slightly sticky surface, which is frustrating and a bit gross, but not actually problematic when applying paint. Overall, this is my favored brand of rattlecan primers and an excellent place to start since it’s fairly easy to get hold of even if there isn’t a hobby store nearby.
• At one point I ran out of white primer and the store I usually got it from happened to be out of Krylon, so I had to pick up a can of Rustoleum Universal Premium Flat instead. I’ve seen numerous recommendations of Rustoleum sprays over Krylon, but so far that hasn’t matched my experience at all. The Universal Premium’s packaging states that it’s a paint-and-primer-in-one product, and should leave an ultra-flat coat, but I ended up with a sticky, shiny mess even after giving it plenty of time to cure. It’s a product I could see myself using for other applications, but for models and miniatures I’d probably not use it again.
• For a specific project (an HO-scale Deutsch Afrika Korps set – I’ll publish a write-up on this when it’s done) I picked up a can of Army Painter’s Desert Yellow spray primer to comply with a painting guide. As a primer I suppose there’s nothing particularly wrong with it, but I have had issues with that ongoing project because of poor surface preparation. Because I didn’t check that the models were clear of any chemicals before priming I’ve had a lot of flaking as the project goes on. That said, the actual surface it created has been perfectly serviceable and the fact that it goes on with fully opaque color has been very convenient for that project. If I ever need to do desert colors again this primer is a pretty good place to start.
• Lately I’ve done most of my priming with Vallejo’s polyurethane primers – specifically the black, gray, and white. I haven’t tried the colored primers in this line yet, though I may eventually invest in those on a piecemeal basis if I need a specific color. These go on thin and are ready to spray straight out of the bottle. The black tends to clump a little compared to the white and gray, and the white is a little more susceptible to drying onto the airbrush needle, but these issues are nothing compared to problems I’ve had with other primers in the past. So far these are my primers of choice, but they do work far better with an airbrush than a paintbrush – they’ll still work, but they’re too thin out of the bottle and tend to come out a bit blobby when applied that way.

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