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It's been absolutely miserable weather here, rain, cold, moisture etc. i haven't been able to prime my miniatures 'at all' which leaves me unable to do anything with what I have at the moment. I've thought about manual priming / painting a base layer on by brush but I can't bring myself to do it for anything beyond small little pieces as the inconsistency is just too bad for large areas (especially ones which are going to be painted a metallic.

So here is the situation basically, I have access to a garage and thats about it when it comes to spray priming, but I can't use any of the spray primer because weather conditions are just so bad... I'm really not sure what to do, buying one of those GW spray things and trying to airbrush it maybe?

I'd bite the bullet and buy an airbrush kit along with some of the Vallejo PU primers. Far, far more forgiving and much more efficient than rattle cans. For the sake of £150 outlay (for a decent kit and all the cleaning stuff) it's the most efficient thing to do. Plenty of threads regarding which airbrushes to get, but I'd stick with a cheap chinese one (usually AB-130A or similar part coding) to learn the ropes.

Edit: Do NOT buy the GW spraygun. It's godawful - inefficient, cheaply made tat.

Okay xD No GW thing, I'm just thinking because the only thing I'm going to be using it for us priming miniatures that it might have been okay xD

To echo winterdyne, the GW is very poor. Get a decent one and you may find yourself using it for a lot more than undercoating. I know that's how it worked for me.

Anything from badger is good, and vallejo model air are great paints, cheaper and more efficient that GW. Although I still use a lot of citadel colours as they have a great selection of bright, cartoony type paints. Which I like.

Hope it helps

If you just want a setup for priming, get a cheap basic chinese airbrush from ebay, and if you are going to be working in a garage get a basic hardware compressor, hose, water trap, couplings, can run you as low as $70.

Plus with the GW thing you'll be stuck with the same issues - ie trying to get a pressurised can to work in the cold & damp.
You need to be able to prime indoors at the moment & that means either airbrush or brush-on primer.

Yup as others have mentioned, I purchased this and it was a great introductory piece to airbrushing. This product here!!

It pretty much has everything you will need to get started with airbrushing, from single action to dual action airbrushes. The really nice thing about this product is that it is virtually maintenance free. Other than plugging the compressor into an outlet and turning it on, there is not much else that needs to be done to it, works right out of the box.

Hope this helps!

You can still prime in crappy weather. I have lived in Northern Ohio (cold, wet and humid) and Central Florida (hot, humid and crappy) . The trick to priming in less than ideal conditions is to minimize the time the models are exposed to the crappy conditions.

Store both the models and the primer INDOORS where it is warmer. Prepare everything for priming inside, including shaking the bejeebus out of the can and then go directly outside and prime your models. Then immediately bring everything back indoors to dry. If need be, you can set them near a window with a fan blowing outward if the fumes are too much for your living situation.

That's it! Over 15 years of priming this way in a variety of temperatures, humidities and weather patterns and I have never had a problem with spray priming.

Two things:

1 - Airbrush - (the gw spray gun is actually an airbrush, just a very bad one). If you decide to get one, get a real one - there are DOZENS of threads here on what to buy - but almost anything will be better than the gw one - really.
(if you don't want to do a search, just get a badger patriot 105 from amazon).

2 - Priming in bad weather - I had to prime in some bad weather this weekend in my garage. As Todosi and others had suggested, just limit the time you are spraying - keep the models and the can indoors to get a good temp.
Do a test piece first, to make sure there are no problems.

To deal with not wanting clouds of primer in my garage, what I did was open the garage door about 3 feet, and put a fan blowing out of the garage. I then sprayed my models in the direction of the fan....so the vapors when outside instead of staying inside the garage.

Have you already experienced poor results or are you just assuming that things will go wrong? Like Todosi, I've successfully used aerosols in hot (90+ F), cold (20 F), and relatively humid (okay, I didn't actually check the barometer... that I don't own) conditions - you just have to account for the weather. Sure, you don't want to prime outside while it's raining, but more often than not, it's the state of the can that causes more problems than the ambient conditions.

Make sure the can is warm and THOROUGHLY mix the contents. When spraying, move a little closer to the models than you normally would - the less time between the paint leaving the nozzle and hitting the model, the less that can go wrong. Of course, you'll need to move quickly, as the base of the spray cone is much more concentrated and you don't want drips and runs.

Do some test sprays on scrap and see how they turn out - you may not need to bother with an airbrush, at all (not that it's a bad idea, it's just not a necessity). There are also specifically designed hand-priming options that mitigate visible brush strokes. Vallejo's PU primers are billed as self-leveling and my early tests support this - laid on moderately thick, straight out of the bottle, it did indeed dry smooth and level, without obscuring any detail. Acrylic gesso is another relatively popular alternative that shrinks as it dries (plenty of articles/blog posts on that floating around, if you want detailed testimonials with pics), meaning you can slop it on pretty roughly and still end up with a good surface to paint.

Yeah like Todosi said, you can prime in pretty much any conditions if you take the right steps. Being in Central Florida myself during the humid season I prime in the garage provided the door has been closed for a bit to cut down on ambient humidity, then open the door and blow out the fumes. In the winter if it gets cold enough I boil up some water and stick the spray can in it for about a minute or two then get to shaking and priming.

I've already experienced bad results, thankfully only on a test piece but bad none the less. I think I'll have to take the advice here and grab an air brush. That starting product that was linked looked ideal I just need to find one in EU xD