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Hey all,

I have been recommended the Halfords Grey primer as a cheap but decent alternative to the GW Primers.

Having seen his results I have no reason to think he is in the wrong here!

My question is this - There seem to be two grey primers at the store - A Grey Primer and a Grey Plastic Primer. Speaking to the store assistant, the Plastic primer apparently has a higher pigment concentration and the other one comes out "Thinner" (her words not mine).

Does anyone have any experience of using these, and has any spotted a difference?

Thanks for your time,

Rich

There's 3 primers, red, grey and white. All awesome. I'll send pics later of which I use

They're all I use and are great!

I've not seen the two different grey primers in there before so could not tell you the difference if any - I use the generic automotive grey primer and have had zero issues with it.

I also use the white primer and that is also good, though you may find it best applied over the grey primer for some plastics (like PVC).

Hi mate!

I use the Grey Primer and thats all i have used...... it is top notch and i have had no adverse effects on either card, plastic, foam board or balsa wood.... gives a really nice coverage and pigment! Thats the regular primer... not the plastic one....

Check through my gallery images to see images of the pigment...... on a couple of the models "Claymore Assault Carrier" I have used the grey primer as the actual finished tank colour and IMHO.... it looks pretty good!

Hope that helps a little!

Cheers,

Halfords primers are pretty good quality, and I've used them almost exclusively for all my modelling and painting work. The bigger cans (500ml) are better value than the smaller ones.

I was taught that the grey or red plastic primer is designed for preparing automotive plastics, such as trims and dashboards, where a greater 'key' is required for the paint to stick, whereas the regular primers are suitable for most materials that don't need an acid etch like aluminium or zinc.

Unless you are painting PVC or ABS plastics you don't need the plastic primers, just the regular ones, and the colour is entirely up to you.
Mini's wearing light colours look better with a white undercoat, while black undercoats can remove the need for pre-shading and shadow painting, but you will know what you need.

AFAIK the 'plastic primer' contains a plasticiser. Which gives the finished paint film a bit of flex.

Whn you paint plastic panels for a car, or motor cycle etc, this is desirable, the normal 2k polyurethane paint, or 1k cellulose paints dry quite hard and would crack with the panels natural flex.
This is important with motorcycles where the panels are entirely plastic and can flex just by travelling at speed.

The standard 'primer' is what you want here. Also worth a look is the Matt Black paint (read; not primer, paint) is every bit as good as a primer coat for figures as the chaos black citadel spray is.

They also do a series of camouflage paints, khaki, green, brown and black in 400ml cans - its aimed at doing british army camo on things... but the khaki one has become one of my favourite colours to work from as an alternative to grey.

Good trick to remember is to heat the can up under the hot tap as you are shaking it up prior to use. This helps you get the most out of the can by upping the pressure inside it, decreasing the temp difference between the paint and the atmosphere during de-pressurisation, and lowers the viscosity of the paint a little.
95% of the 'what went wrong with my priming' threads could have been avoided with this trick.
Other than that, dont leave them outside to dry, you ideally want to spray in a still environment (no wind) that is warm.
... best we can usually hope for is to step outside, spray and immediately step back in.
Remembering those two things will have your halfords primer out performing the citadel stuff on cost and performance
I do get jealous of the Americans saying they get krylon for a dollar! wheres our under £1 spray paints?! grrr

I have used the grey primer on most things, i.e. metal, polystyrene and resin.

If I am doing a polythene or other soft "greasy" plastic I use plastic primer.

Looks like you have all the answers you need but for my two cents the Standard grey is all I use now light enough to take bright colours but dosen't stand out like white can do if you miss a spot.