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I bought some Reaper minis as standins for Kroot Hounds to save $, plus 20 of 2 models is boring to me, Tau are supposed to be multi-species, metal Kroot Hounds are expensive and a bit of a pain to track down, I dont buy finecast, etc.

Anyways, I inadvertantly bought a product called Bones, which I just assumed was normal plastic, but it is instead a more pliant plastic, the thinner the part on the model, the more pliant.

If you get these models, do NOT use spray primer on them, as the accelerant in the spray does not react well to this kind of plastic and will make them sticky and difficult to paint.

Scrub these models down with dish detergent like Dawn and a toothbrush. After a good scrubbing, rinsing, and air dry, the models were fine to paint on, and indeed did not need primer as advertised, though a brush on primer worked fine and did not harm the model at all.

I have had good luck with using Isopropyl Alcohol for cleaning them (just dip a toothbrush in the bottle, and scrub the figure, then rinse with warm water), and then using Armypainter Spray. I tried Vallejo brush-on primer and really didn't like it, and tried throwing one of the original white really pliable Bones figures into the lineup with some normal plastic figures to be sprayed, knowing that some sprays really react badly.

Not only did the Armypainter dry normally without a bit of tacky-ness, it actually stiffened up the figure some. I expect Bones Black to take primer really well as they are a harder plastic.

I also had good luck using the same Armypainter on the soft Star Wars Legion plastics.

It actually depends entirely on the primer/spray you're using. Krylon for me becomes tacky, whereas Army Painter sprays go on without an issue at all. I know when Bones first started shipping, forums were coming up with whole lists of which paints work and which ones don't.

sadly i primed my Reaper Cthulhu, painted him up all nice and a year later it is still gummy from the primer bonez reaction I guess, not sure how to fix it either.

Yeah, I believe you all when you say you've had OK experience with Army Painter Primer, but straight from the horse's mouth you should not be using spray primer on these models as they themselves say their plastic does not react well to the accelerant. I called customer service, spoke to a human being about it, and as you can guess, they are well familiar with receiving this particular complaint.

Honestly, they advertise that Bones doesn't need to be primed, and it really doesnt if you clean the model well first.

The package back literally says “Please note: spray primers are NOT recommended for Bones Miniatures.”, among other things. So this isn’t really ‘news’ for the masses.

What allows Armypainter sprays to work versus mainstream primers is that the accelerants used are completely different. It's why Armypainter sprays dry so fast and can junk up the nozzle (and then the entire can when paint backs up into the top) if they aren't thoroughly cleaned after using. They don't use the same chemical that reacts with Bones plastic.

So far I have never had a bare Reaper Bones take paint (any brand) nearly as well as any properly primed metal or plastic model. It always scrapes or or flakes at the most flexible spots. Even my attempt at Vallejo brush-on primer is still quite easy to scrape right off the model, although it's still better than a bare model.

I can scrape off brush-on primer, but I can only scrape off the Armypainter primer on the sole model I have tested it on with quite a bit of effort. Between it's stability on Bones plastic and Star Wars Legion soft plastic, it was enough to get me to buy several colors of it even though I absolutely hate how much work it is to keep an Armypainter can working correctly.

I have had to trash about 5 cans over the past few years, and only just in the last month came up with a solution that seems to be 100% effective, which involves flushing the nozzle after every use with Isopropyl Alcohol shot through a tiny customized syringe.

Does the paint chip even with a varnish? I had the same issue of gummy primer on my Cthulhu (at the time I thought it was the issue with the primer itself), but after the first coat of paint got on it was stable enough until I had the chance to varnish it. I just used a standard Matte varnish from Michael's and about three years later it's still secure.

I equate learning to varnish my figures with coming into my own as a more mature painter. Suddenly my metal figurines weren't full of spots and that made me want to put more effort into them, and so on.

The only other Reaper Bones model I got was their giant Kraken model, which had the same gummy primer issues. Again, a good coat of varnish and all that paint stayed put.

I used matte varnish, still sticky but paint does not come off I guess, so there is that

I don't do this anymore, but I used to paint on a layer of gloss varnish and then do a spray of matte varnish. Probably overkill, but maybe it would be something to try for these guys.

Ach. Damn. I completely forgot about this as I primed a Bones miniature earlier this week. I didnt think it went particularly sticky or anything, so it's possible I got off fine this time. It's a good thing this didn't happen with the big dragon that's on my "to-paint" shelf, just with a random 7 euro monster I picked up last weekend.

 Murphy1979 wrote:
Yeah, I believe you all when you say you've had OK experience with Army Painter Primer, but straight from the horse's mouth you should not be using spray primer on these models as they themselves say their plastic does not react well to the accelerant. I called customer service, spoke to a human being about it, and as you can guess, they are well familiar with receiving this particular complaint.

Honestly, they advertise that Bones doesn't need to be primed, and it really doesnt if you clean the model well first.

What you just said is contradictory. I've not had "OK" experiences with Army Painter, it's been absolutely perfect, zero issue. You should amend your statement to "You shouldn't use most spray primers on Bones", because in this instance you're saying something that is incorrect.

Bones are more than cheap enough to buy a small pack of gribblies...test your preferred primer, and go from there. Painting without primer will yield sub-par results. To some casual painters that's not a big deal, but to many people it is. As I stated before, when Bones first came out, numerous forums had big discussions on what primers work and do not work on Bones - so you should be able to look some of them up if you're that concerned about it.

I primed my bones 1 dragon with zero issues. No tackiness, no stickiness, nothing but a good surface to adhere other paint to. It's been going well for a few years now.

I did have to reshape one of the wings (due to packaging, it was bent in a downwards curve, and I wanted a more upward sweep to match the other one (also, since I was using it for my WHFB at the time, the wings swept up cleared the tops of most other models likely to end up in cc with it). But reshaping this wing was mostly a matter of a short burst of warm from my heatgun (waved it past it from about 45-50cm away until the curve flattened out).

I've used spray primer on tons on Reaper Bones minis and they turned out fine.

The only stickiness some of them got was when they got hit with some varnish or Nurgle's Rot. Both were remedied with a quick spray of Dullcote. The same should apply to your minis OP.

I wonder if Bones Black has the same primer issues as original bones? Its hard enough I can "almost" scrape mould lines as if it were HiPS. Its as much an improvement over the grey Bones as the grey was an improvement over the original white.