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Have burned through 5 cans of Chaos Black spray in the last three months, between commissions and my own work. That's $75 w/o tax that could have been spent on miniatures.

Is there a good-quality spray primer that's cheaper than GW's? What do you use?

lol ouch.

I use krylon flat black, or the generic walmart 'colorplace' flat black(its like 1.20 a can).

Both work just as well, if not better, than the GW stuff.

I use Krylon Flat Black as well. I just picked up a can of Rustoleum Flat Black and that turned out pretty good as well.

Krylon ftw!

Duplicolor for me. Yes, it's autoprimer, but it works wonderfully on miniatures too.

http://www.squadron.com/ItemDetails.asp?item=TM87042 This and the "Fine Surface" version are what I exclusively use.

It covers so deliciously nicely.

Rustoleum Primer, comes in White/Black/Grey/Brown

Thanks everyone!

Will have to try some Krylon...good god, $1.20 a can....I could get more than ten of those for the price of one can of Chaos Black....*mega mega mega facepalm*

If you only need black/grey/white the cheapo walmart stuff at 1.20 a can works as good as the krylon.

A freind of mine swore the GW stuff was better, higher quality, blah blah redshirt sales BS blah blah.

So I switched some of his primed figs with identical ones of mine that were base coated with the walmart stuff vs his GW black. He couldnt tell the difference until he realized the first 5 had a thicker coat on them(he had a heavy hand with the spray) and the ones I primed had a lighter coat.

He then bought the walmart stuff, and the price difference covered the pizza while we sat around painting all night.

Summary:
Chaos Black spray can-15$ = meh.

generic spray thats jsut as good-1.20$ + pizza= Win

Anyone know of any spray paint that can paint foam?

Mewiththeface wrote:Anyone know of any spray paint that can paint foam?

The Rustoleum primer I use doesn't harm Blue Foam.

Alternatively paint a watered-down cloat of PVA over the foam before spraying...I've heard this protects it and stops it from melting

Ifurita wrote:I use Krylon Flat Black as well. I just picked up a can of Rustoleum Flat Black and that turned out pretty good as well.

I agree on this
I have also used Rustoleum Automotive primer with alot of sucess but it is kinda a dark grey not black.
I find that the automotive primer gives a nice smooth finish.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Mewiththeface wrote:Anyone know of any spray paint that can paint foam?

if you do white foam coat it with a 1:1 mixture of White Glue and water first then paint with whatever you want.
the blue foam rustoleum and krylon work fine to my knowledge as said above.

Colorplace 1.29/can.

I use Armory spray primer. About 6 bucks a can, and good stuff. A really badass commission painter I know uses it, and if it's good enough for him it's good enough for me.

I second Krylon primer. Rustoleum self-etching primer is good too. Auto levels so it's near impossible to get runs in it.

I tried Armory and it was gakky.

For painting over plastic without priming try the Krylon Fusion or the Rust-o-leum Camoflauge flat colors.

Not a flatter black on earth than the rustoleum kamo flat black.

I alternate between rustoleum auto primer and the cheap valspar spray paint from Lowe's. The auto primer I picked mostly because I wanted to use it as a final color for my monolith - it was very dark grey, not quite black but close. I wound up using it elsewhere because it's got great "tooth" and sticks to weird stuff I'm using in conversions well. It's a little thicker then the Valspar, so I still use that for actual figurines or fine detail.

I also tried some spray paint from a office supply store, and that one sucked, it flaked right off.

I can't find a place around here that sells Krylon, which is far and away my first choice, remembered fondly from hours of community vandalism during my youth.

Fateweaver wrote:
I tried Armory and it was gakky.

Did you shake the can? I've never had a single problem with Armory.

Yeah, trust me it's not my skills. Been priming for 20 years.

$6 is still too much money for primer (Duplicolor gets close to that but still normally less than $5 per can).

I just know that with the exception of cans I forgot to bring in on cold winter nights (pro tip: primer/paint cans do not like to freeze) I've never had a can of Krylon or Rustoleum or Duplicolor fail. Not at -30F, not in 100% humidity.

I wouldn't be shocked if Krylon worked underwater. LOL.

If you ever want to be able to strip those figs- I wouldnt recomend any self etching primer, nor krylon fusion(and its a gloss only I believe). That stuff never comes off and Ive seen alot of figs ruined by it since they arent very forgiving to work with.

Trust me on that. Fusion is near impossible to get all way off.

I've never had problems with self-etching primer. Sure if I feth up the primer job it'd be nasty to work around but thankfully those primers are fairly forgiving in their application.

I've been using armory and i like how it turns out more than any other primer I've used to date. and its still a lot cheaper than GW's primer.

I can't believe that people use GW spraypaint - it is SO expensive! But apparently it sells well enough else it wouldn't be on the shelves, right?

I imagine that people who are new to the hobby either don't realize that there are cheaper alternatives out there or else they're afraid that nothing's better than GW for their intended application (spraying models).

Thank goodness for boards like these!

My recent fave - Rustoleum 2x. You get twice as much in the can and the nozzle is of a much better design. I must have seven cans on the shelf at home with clogged nozzles - nothing worse than having this happen when the can is still 1/2 full. Anyway, I am done mucking about with pins in the nozzle, special solvents, swapping nozzles, and so on. It's 2x for me, baby!

As most of the posters on this thread are of an American nature can anyone reccomend a British alternative, as Krylon is hard to come by. would a standard automotive primer don the job?

Any automotive primer.

I've heard Halfords is good.

Auto primer is designed to take the beating that cars take. I'm sure it'll do just fine on 40k/Fantasy minis.

I use the Army Painter stuff, base coat and primer in one that has a really nice finish is a win for me.

Mistress of minis wrote:lol ouch.

I use krylon flat black, or the generic walmart 'colorplace' flat black(its like 1.20 a can).

Both work just as well, if not better, than the GW stuff.

the walmart colorplace is the best spray primer for minis and that is coming from a person who has used hundreds of cans of different primers.

Never tried.

I loves me my Krylon too much.

I just thought I would give a little feedback, I bought and used Halfords plastic primer (in red) and it is a really good primer. It gave a nice even smooth coat.

Edit: The price was very good as well £3.99 for a 300ml can and £5.99 for a 500ml can

I use Rustoleums Grey Primer. It works wonders!