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Hello everyone!

I thought I'd grab a pot of Imperial Primer (the brand new hand undercoat, from the technical range of GW's new paint line up) and chuck it in my airbrush.

My setup for today was:

Badger Renegade Krome airbrush
Clarke Ranger Air compressor
Imperial Primer
Tamiya thinner
Diet Coke



Tentatively I load up my brush with a mix of Imperial Primer and thinner - to the usual consitancy I get good results with. I'm thinking to myself - "coule this be the new best thing in the world? Being able to undercoat inside the house, wasting next to nothing?"

I grab a few different models - one plastic Sentinel, one FW Librarian and a metal Axeman of Lossanarch.

Everything is going great, as I spray at around 22psi. Nice even coat, no real spitting or clumping. "This is going on great" - I think to myself.


Here are the results my apologies for the terrible photos, it's late here and I have no natural light-

The plastic Sentinel looks great - nice flat coat on those open panels, no thick clumping around the details:



The resin Librarian looks just as good:



And wahey! So does the metal Axeman:




Excellent! The sprayed coats look just like chaos black, dry almost instantly and are so much less hassle than spray cans. I'm a genius! I'm never buying a can of CB ever again!


But wait. It's time to do the scratch test.

I grab a penny and run it down one of the panels on the Sentinel. A coat of Chaos Black spray would laugh at this minor assault, rolling a 3+ armour save and carrying on with whatever the hell it was doing to begin with.

This is the real test. This is what makes a primer coat work.

>_>

<_<

Onoes.




The paint is rubbing off on my fingers, let alone the penny test. I give it half an hour - just in case the paint needs to 'cook off'.

Same problem - no adhesion. At all.

Same on the resin, same on the metal.

Ahhhh well. Worth a try.

I suppose that's what you get when you ask a product to do something it's not designed to do. No biggie.

Has anyone tried using Imperial Primer with a brush?

I thought tamiya thinner is slightly alcohol based and made for their paints? For example I can store tamiya paint thinned with their stuff for ages. But in the past when I tried to store tamiyas mixed with acrylic airbrush medium it wrecked the paint. I wonder if the difference in the thinner properties might affect your test?

AG. wrote:Has anyone tried using Imperial Primer with a brush?

I have. Here - > http://taleofpainters.blogspot.co.uk/2012/04/review-garfy-jo-give-warhammer-40000.html

I do not speak from a huge amount of experience, but I think it's just because you are spraying it out of an airbrush. The coats are thin. I prime with gw chaos black spray can and I can rub the airbrush coats on top of it off with a damp paper towel if I am not careful. The primer certainly doesn't come off, but I didn't send it through the airbrush either. A lot of people who spray primer through their airbrush swear by the vallejo polyurethane primer though. I'd give that a go. I think the real trick here is varnish to be honest.

~Casey

Primers aren't ment to be thinned to a point where you could airbrush them. If you want to run primer through your airbrush grab a primmer made specifically for an airbrush and you won't have any problems.

Honestly why not just get some primer made for airbrushing? As mentioned before Vallejo makes amazing primers that go straight to airbrush without thinning ( the model air and polyurethane primers are both excellent). From what I just read online, the Tamiya thinner is alcohol based so I'm guessing that may be some of the problem. It doesn't look like you got very good coverage on it but maybe thinning it with water or even acrylic airbrush medium/thinner instead and giving it a good overnight to dry might help?

From my own experience the Vallejo primers are awesome

heavybolter wrote:Honestly why not just get some primer made for airbrushing? As mentioned before Vallejo makes amazing primers that go straight to airbrush without thinning ( the model air and polyurethane primers are both excellent). From what I just read online, the Tamiya thinner is alcohol based so I'm guessing that may be some of the problem. It doesn't look like you got very good coverage on it but maybe thinning it with water or even acrylic airbrush medium/thinner instead and giving it a good overnight to dry might help?

From my own experience the Vallejo primers are awesome

my 2p - From my experience the Vallejo primer is NOT awesome.....the dry time is far in excess of twenty four hours, even then it can be scratched off......I prime with Tamiya Spray Primer now and use the Air-Brush only for application of paints.

The reason I didn't use a Vallejo or Tamiya primer is that they are well established products, designed to be sprayed.

I was testing whether or not Imperial Primer would work through an airbrush.

I wasn't expecting it to, or not to, work - I just wanted to try it.

Lovepug13 wrote:

heavybolter wrote:Honestly why not just get some primer made for airbrushing? As mentioned before Vallejo makes amazing primers that go straight to airbrush without thinning ( the model air and polyurethane primers are both excellent). From what I just read online, the Tamiya thinner is alcohol based so I'm guessing that may be some of the problem. It doesn't look like you got very good coverage on it but maybe thinning it with water or even acrylic airbrush medium/thinner instead and giving it a good overnight to dry might help?

From my own experience the Vallejo primers are awesome

my 2p - From my experience the Vallejo primer is NOT awesome.....the dry time is far in excess of twenty four hours, even then it can be scratched off......I prime with Tamiya Spray Primer now and use the Air-Brush only for application of paints.

Over 24 hour drying time and it still scraped off? Wow there is definitely something wrong there. I've used about 8 different bottles of the Vallejo primer and never had to wait that long for it to dry to the point that it wouldn't scrape off. At the most for me was 6 hours. Not sure why it would take that long for you.

Back to the OP, understood that you were just testing it out. I think you should retest it without the tamiya thinner and post your results again. I'd still be curious as to what you find.

Thanks.

I mix the Imperal Primer with Chaos Black in a ratio of 1:1. This works very nice, because the primer flows into the deepest points of the figure like Badab Black. But priming only with Imperial Primer will not really work. For darkening other colours it is although great, too.

Orangecoke wrote:I thought tamiya thinner is slightly alcohol based and made for their paints? For example I can store tamiya paint thinned with their stuff for ages. But in the past when I tried to store tamiyas mixed with acrylic airbrush medium it wrecked the paint. I wonder if the difference in the thinner properties might affect your test?

Tamiya thinner is almost all alcohol i thought, one of the reasons i don't use it.

Vallejo Polyurethane Primers are certainly NOT 24 hour cures. Mine dry in all of about 1 minute and they don't scratch off easily. All done with an airbrush. Spray cans are a thing of the past IMO. Airbrushing primer just needs to be done right if you are going to do it at all. I've not had a single problem airbrushing the Vallejo PU primers.

I agree with Aerethan here, the Vallejo PU primer is extremely good and is not far off instant dry.
As to the imperial primer, i would be tempted to try it with a proper Acrylic Thinner, like the one Vallejo does, i use this with the citadel foundation paints and it works flawlessly!

The Vallejo PU primer is excellent for me too.

Another thumbs up for Vallejo primer in airbrush. I've even thinned it down quite a bit and it was still strong enough to play with and not have it rub off (prior to adding other paints even I mean).

Vallejo poly primer ITEM 70601 nuff said

honestly for airbrush priming this stuff is the best dont need to thin it or anything few drops strait in the pot and go spraying i spray at ~35 psi with it and have fantastic results super smooth nice and hard after about 15 minutes they say wait like 2 hours but i usualy just give it 15 -30 min to set unless its a particularly special thing like resins or metals its smooth lump free doesnt clog up details doesnt rub off and its cheap 200ml is like 13-14 last i bought and theres no waste cleans out of your brush with a 1/4 pot of cleaner.

by far my favorite primer id give it a try and you dont waste by having to use a dripper and getting some left in the dripper