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I may get a chance to borrow a friend's airbrush, and get a nice basecoat on this giant model in Bones plastic, Sophie's Revenge



I'm worried about how the airbrushing will take to the somewhat hydrophobic Bones material.

To those of you who may have airbrush experience with this type of plastic, what do you do to ensure your airbrush paint will "stick" and not bead up on the Bones (or similar) material? Am I overthinking this? What brands of airbrush paint have you used to do up your Bones? I'm very new at this airbrushing thing (i.e., never done it before), and am rather clueless on what type of paint to get. Thanks!

Are you using a primer before airbrushing? If not then you should be and that will solve your problem unless there’s something I don’t know about reaper bones minis

Reaper Bones is PVC, right? Once you prime it (I use Vallejo) and the primer bonds, you are no longer painting on the PVC, you are painting on the primer. One thing though - do use a thicker than usual coat of primer, especially on the tips of thin parts etc, wash your minis before priming and wait the full amount of time for primer to cure. But once cured it will take acrylics, enamels and oils (and all the rubbing with white spirit or even IPA techniques involved) pretty much normally.

Best way to be sure is prime using a vinyl safe spraypaint. Bones normally doesn't play well with spraypaints, but there's special vinyl paints that work amazing. Look for anything marked "Vinyl, Leather and Plastic", or sometimes marked as vinyl and carpet/fabric dye. Rustoleum makes a really nice (and cheap) Sand colored vinyl dye that I use as a basecost for a lot of my boardgame pieces, 100% safe on Bones and Bones Black plastic, great light nuetral brown color to go over with washes or Contrast paints for wood, or airbrush like you would any other primed model.

Guide I made on the Reaper forum with a few diferent brands listed

mrFickle wrote:
Are you using a primer before airbrushing? If not then you should be and that will solve your problem unless there’s something I don’t know about reaper bones minis

No primer! rattle-can primer reacts with reaper bones (white plastic) and leaves it sticky.
Similar to old rubber that gets sticky over time.

 pancakeonions wrote:
I may get a chance to borrow a friend's airbrush, and get a nice basecoat on this giant model in Bones plastic, Sophie's Revenge
I'm worried about how the airbrushing will take to the somewhat hydrophobic Bones material.

To those of you who may have airbrush experience with this type of plastic, what do you do to ensure your airbrush paint will "stick" and not bead up on the Bones (or similar) material? Am I overthinking this? What brands of airbrush paint have you used to do up your Bones? I'm very new at this airbrushing thing (i.e., never done it before), and am rather clueless on what type of paint to get. Thanks!

If you will use Airbrush, it is safe to assume that you will use water-based paints (acrylics).
Water based paints and water based primers go on reaper bones and reaper-black without any problems.

That ship looks to me reaper-black?
Reaper-black shouldn't react to rattle-can primers like reaper-bones does, but I have not tested this. Even if it does not, it is already paint ready so no need to prime it.
This might be of help.
https://forum.reapermini.com/index.php?/topic/48669-bones-the-first-coat-is-the-difference/
Also, check the model you got, it might already be paint ready.
Some have primer warning and others don't, like reaper-black


I have airbrushed reaper (Ghost of King Durnan) https://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/90/780044.page
All models from the (Crypt of the Dwarf King Boxed Set) I airbrushed with Gamecolor white paint as a base-coat before painting, no priming.

Sidenote: just make sure to seal the paint job with Matt varnish when all is done.

Use MolotoW ink refills as primer and youll have no problems. Just be ready to clean it out of your airbrush immediately as it can and will be a pain to get out if you let it dry cuz it'll stick to anything.

Stynylrez primer works just fine on Bones. After that, airbrush normally.

 Mothsniper wrote:

mrFickle wrote:
Are you using a primer before airbrushing? If not then you should be and that will solve your problem unless there’s something I don’t know about reaper bones minis

No primer! rattle-can primer reacts with reaper bones (white plastic) and leaves it sticky.
Similar to old rubber that gets sticky over time.

I’ll second what others have said, you can get primers that are applied with your airbrush and therefore I assume you can get one that’s safe although this is all news to me as I’ve never used reaper bones minis before. I have applied green stuff world primers via airbrush and hairy brush and I really like them but no idea if they are safe for reaper bones

Thanks for all the replies, this is great. I'm leaning towards Vallejo Airbrush Primers - folks seem to like them, and they have two colors that I think would look good on the ship (German red brown for most of the ship, and either Desert Tan or Skeleton Bone for the main deck).

But then I saw your post about using the vinyl rattlecans... So much easier! And less nervewracking for me, a noob to airbrushing.

I plan to blog my building and painting of Sophie's Revenge, TBD!