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Primer Which Ccolour?


FrankJ

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What colour of primer would be better for Airfix 1/72 Lancaster BII bomber that I'm about to start, Vallejo grey surface primer or Vallejo black surface primer. I've found Vallejo primer clogs the H&S Ultra airbrush quite often even though thinning it with Liquitex medium.

 

I'll be using airbrush mostly.

 

I'm open to any better brand suggestions

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My preferred primers are Stynylrez as it comes or Mr Surfacer 1500 thinned 1 to 1 with levelling thinners. Both self levelling, robust, have some micro filler qualities and sand well.

 

I usually go for black as I like to build up my finish in thin mottled layers to give some depth to the final colour finish.

 

 

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4 hours ago, dromia said:

My preferred primers are Stynylrez as it comes or Mr Surfacer 1500 thinned 1 to 1 with levelling thinners. Both self levelling, robust, have some micro filler qualities and sand well.

^^ with the above. 

Mind, Stynylrez equivalents are also sold under UMP and MiG one-shot labeling, and both are available in greys as well.

Mr.Surfacer 1500 and self-levelling thinner is more pungent, should that be of interest/worry. 

 

Is the Vallejo primer that Polyurethane stuff? Unless you let it completely harden out, it will peel when sanding.

Not a fan, basically, as it means I have to switch nozzles to 0.4 to get it to flow well enough.

One of those 'seemed a good idea at the time' buys. 

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My current go-to primers are Zero-Paints or Alclad II, though both are lacquer based, so stinky, nasty chemistry you really don't want to breath -a good respirator, away from other people/pets in a well ventilated environment with an extractor) - my garage is my spray den (just always hoping the cobwebs don't drop down :) ).

 

The Vallejo primer is the polyurethane stuff - oddly I've had better success spraying that than their paint, it's not hard enough to sand though and I liked to leave it days before applying more paint (sniff test - if you can still smell paint a day later, it's not fully cured yet). I quite like the Vallejo primers/air paints for brush painting these days.

 

As for primer colours it depends what you're aiming at - I like to pre-shade my models at the moment, so paint black then shoot a grey 'mist' overall (other than the recessed areas) then a light grey / white highlight from above, again even more misted), usually cos I'm lazy and I can do this without cleaning my airbrush in-between colours :) Some folk like to pre-shade the panel lines, etc. before colour coats, I don't have the patience and directionally shooting lighter colours in the primer you can get some of that highlighting of corners / recessed areas, etc.

 

You can use coloured primer coats too - e.g. for a desert based vehicle I'd do the above but start with a brownish primer mixed with black as the initial deep layer then move to it straight for the middle coat then a final top/directional coat with brown mixed with white.

 

It also depends on what colours you're going to be painting the final coats too - e.g. yellows and reds can be more transparent, so for a bright yellow you'd want to have a white primer under it. For bright reds (e.g. sports car) - use a white or pink primer, black would make it duller but look deeper (and need more coats potentially).

 

What nozzle size are you using - I find a larger one worked better for me with water based Vallejo primer (0.4mm in my H&S Ultra) - you probably want a larger one anyhow since that's a lot of aircraft to cover!

 

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I use Vallejo's primers straight from the bottle in an H&S Ultra with a 0.2 nozzle all the times and never had any problem. After some time spraying paint may dry on the tip but to sort this I simply keep a bottle of airbrush cleaner from the same company close by and if needed I clean the tip with a small brush dipped in the cleaner. In my experience these primers are pretty good, although for some reason the black one works much better than the others (I also have white and grey).

 

The best colour as others have said will depend mainly on what colour you'll be painting on top and what kind of paint. If you're using a light colour, particularly of a brand that covers little, best to go with white, if you'll be using dark colours then you can use black with no problems while with metallics a black base is often the best.

Said that, grey is the colour that best shows if there are imperfections that need more work, while black can sometime hide these. Ideally the best colour to show imperfections would be silver but I don't know of silver coloured primers

 

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