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Hey everyone,

I'm getting back into 40k with Necrons as my newest army, and I have a dilemma. I'm looking at purchasing most of my Necron warriors and destroyers used (which both use standard green guass rods).
Since I'm going for a classic paint scheme, I want to keep the clear green plastic look of the rods, but repaint the rest of each model.
Spray priming the entire model would cover the green rod and attempting to basecoat each model by hand would be time consuming to avoid the rod.

Is there any way of doing this without attempting to disassemble the model? My idea was to place some sort of tape over the rods and then re-prime them, does anyone have a better solution?

Tape the rod.

Don't assemble that part til after primer or after all paint?

Removing the rods is pretty simple, unless they hella-glued them in. Assuming a typical dot of super glue, you should be able to just pry them out.

Otherwise, yes, green painter's tape is probably your best bet but removal is a sure thing and will make painting easier.

You could also pick up some green acrylic rod in case you do end up needing to replace their rods.

no other way but masking tape as you dont know how well the rod is glued in place.

I have a tip as a alternate to masking tape!

Looks for some stuff called poster putty, you can find a small box of the stuff just about anywhere they sell office supplies, and the stuff is a good multipurpose tool.
It's a putty that is fairly sticky, and you can shape it however you want, can be used to help dryfit parts together, stick minis to makeshift painter handles, or what I like to uses it as, a paint barrier.
All ya gotta do is get a good enough wad of it, and cover the rod, without covering the rest of the model, and you can prime or paint your model without the paint touching the rod, till your done. Afterwards, you can peel off the putty, and your rods should be nice and clean still after re-painting the necron.

Let us know how everything goes!

Or you can use a paint-on masking solution like "Maskol".

It's a flexible rubbery mask that paints on and is allowed to dry, then you paint everything else and when you peel the mask back, that bit remains the original colour.

Totally easier to bust out the green rod, and reglue.

I did that with 5 models, no problem, for Kill Team purposes.

Turns out the green rods came out super easily from the models!

I didn't even have to worry about covering them, but thanks for the tips guys!