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As I've recently started painting again, I was wondering, is priming the sprue and then painting then assembling better than assembling then painting? I used to paint then assemble but people told me not to, so I stopped and now I assemble then paint, which is the more correct way of doing it?

Thanks

It depends on the model. A lot of the time it's best to assemble partially while leaving off parts that obstruct access to the surface underneath. Like Space Marines and boltguns.

The short of it is that there is no right or wrong, what ever suits you is right for you...

BUT, imho...

I prefer to assemble as far as I can and still easily reach all parts of the model. If there are parts that I feel will be in the way I make subassemblys and then paint them separate then assemble completely, and lastly I will varnish as a whole model.



The biggest problem for me with painting on the sprue is that there are too many parts that need patching afterwards since the attachment points are visible on most models.

It depends mostly on how something is connected to the sprue. If the connection point is something no one will see once you assemble the model then it'd probably be ok to paint and then remove, but if it's highly visible then once you clip it off the sprue you'll have the paint punctuated by bare plastic.

Personally I cut everything off the sprue, make sure every single hint of mould line is removed and then prime them as bits and paint them as bits before assembling when everything's done. Just what I find works best.

What I was told was that my minis woukd fall apart because the plastic glue won't bond the paint. Do you sand the paint off? Or do you use super glue?

For me it depends on the situation, but primarily I use superglue. I also pin EVERYTHING, including plastic

You can score the paint off, that will work. If you use superglue you should do this as well, unless you pin, as you are gluing paint to paint.

Sheerjasper wrote:
What I was told was that my minis woukd fall apart because the plastic glue won't bond the paint. Do you sand the paint off? Or do you use super glue?

Plastic glue will bond the paint, just not as well as if it were a plastic to plastic bond (it will slightly melt the paint). Superglue doesn't bond the paint well at all (as it only bonds to the surface of the paint).

However I usually clean a bit of the paint off before gluing together either way. The area doesn't need to be perfectly clean, I usually just scratch a bit of paint off with my knife.

As for your first question; spraying on sprues. It's rare that I'll spray something while still on the sprue because you want to clean the mould lines and any prominent attachment points before priming and it's usually hard to do that when they're still connected to the sprue. The only models I have bothered painting on the sprue were the old Battle for Skull Pass Night Goblin models, because they were easy enough to clean up without removing them from the sprue (they had 2 attachment points under the feet, so I clipped off any other attachment points and just left those 2).

Generally though, I think it's better to remove models from sprues and then make sub-assemblies before priming.

Cleaning off mold lines while on the sprue is definitely the biggest negative of painting on the sprue.

In a few rare cases, I do it, though. When I'm doing tracks for tanks, for instance, I'll keep all the pieces attached to the side that will be the INSIDE (ie not visible unless you hold the tank upside down and look at it's bottom), and paint everything but the weathering while on the sprue. Mostly, I do this because there can be a lot of pieces, and it's easy to get them confused or worry about losing one if you snip all the links off.

When I cut them off from the sprue, then I use a little black acrylic gesso, and lightly drybrush it to cover the scar. It's not perfect, but the side should not be visible anyhow.

Other examples are heads -- I will usually leave the bottom of the head attached to the sprue, because that's easier than pinning it to paint.

i use a dental pick to pin the heads for painting
once the tip breaks its useless tho