Primer

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redchips

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What kind of primer is good for a plastic revel car model that I will paint with acrylic paint?
 
Any of the " lacquer acrylic " rattle-can primers you can get at the big-box stores or auto parts stores . ( look for spray paints recommended for plastics )
Also the modified alkyd primers like Rustoleum's 2X , Painter's Touch series .
Tamiya's rattle-can primer , their Surface Primer , is great but it went from expensive to super expensive lately .
The above contain solvents that create a stronger bond to the polystyrene . ( butyl acetate , butanone , acetone etc )

For airbrush application I would avoid the true water base acrylics for primer due to low adhesion .
Badger's Stynylrez Primer is a polyurethane and performs well on plastic . I believe Vallejo also has a polyurethane primer for airbrush application .
Vallejo also has a rattle-can , solvent based acrylic primer similar to the Tamiya formula that is cheaper by volume .
 
I use Tamiya's Fine Surface Primer. It is more expensive than some other products, but I find it covers well, so that a little goes farther. I use it on styrene, resin, and white metal.
I used to use Rustoleum, but they changed the nozzle design, and the last couple of cans I got clogged inside the aperture at the top of the can. Same goes for Walmart's house brand of automotive primer. They were also a little more coarsely grained than Tamiya's and other primers made for scale modeling. So for a case such as yours, painting a car model, those primers benefitted from a little smoothing with fine sandpaper, or as I've done, coffee filter paper. Just to knock the roughness back a little.
 
Tamiya Fine rattle can is the best, but I am finding great results....and moving to exclusively...Stynylrez from Badger.
 
the Baron said:
I use Tamiya's Fine Surface Primer. It is more expensive than some other products, but I find it covers well, so that a little goes farther. I use it on styrene, resin, and white metal.
I used to use Rustoleum, but they changed the nozzle design, and the last couple of cans I got clogged inside the aperture at the top of the can. Same goes for Walmart's house brand of automotive primer. They were also a little more coarsely grained than Tamiya's and other primers made for scale modeling. So for a case such as yours, painting a car model, those primers benefitted from a little smoothing with fine sandpaper, or as I've done, coffee filter paper. Just to knock the roughness back a little.
Click to expand...
I am using rust-oleum enamel primer, but instead of spraying from the can, i decant it into a paint jar for my airbrush, I just drill a hole into the cans nozzle and insert a brass tube, i do this with all spray cans, this make them go further on quanity
per model by using airbrush.
 
That's too much effort for me. They changed their can design; it shouldn't clog. The product isn't worth it to me to apply a workaround for the faulty nozzle.
 
You're nuts , Baron .
Those large caps are the chit .
I told you , pull them off and clean them with turpentine after spraying .
That big spray cap makes it easy to invert and fill with solvent - then just wick it thru the nozzle with a paper towel until all the paint is gone .
Jiggle the cap to slosh the solvent from those 4 little compartments adjacent the center to keep feeding solvent into the nozzle throat until it's all thru .
I've been doing it that way for years and NEVER have a clogged tip since it's impossible to clog if there is no paint left in there .
 
urumomo said:
You're nuts , Baron .
Those large caps are the chit .
I told you , pull them off and clean them with turpentine after spraying .
That big spray cap makes it easy to invert and fill with solvent - then just wick it thru the nozzle with a paper towel until all the paint is gone .
Jiggle the cap to slosh the solvent from those 4 little compartments adjacent the center to keep feeding solvent into the nozzle throat until it's all thru .
I've been doing it that way for years and NEVER have a clogged tip since it's impossible to clog if there is no paint left in there .
Click to expand...
I've tried cleaning them with thinner, but they clog immediately the next time they're used. I had seen another workaround, of drilling out the aperture to widen it, and tried that. That didn't fix the problem, either.
Like I said, the various remedies aren't worth it to me, just to use Rustoleum and Walmart primers. Tamiya's primer works fine for me.
 
Not thinner .
I found turpentine to work the best .
Yeah , drilling out the nozzle will destroy proper atomization .
I save the spray caps from spent cans in case someone left one uncleaned , but since I don't have any employees anymore that's not an issue these days . ;)

I love the Tamiya Surface Primer too but I decided that 500 dollars a can was ridiculous ... It ain't worth the price it has risen to .
Plus , I like using an alkyd primer a lot of the time so I can easily remove the acrylic color coats and not worry about affecting the primer .
 

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