Priming with leadbelcher rattle can

[Jarl of Wulfen]

I picked up a rattle can of the GW leadbelcher primer spray to prime my ZM tiles from forge world. I shook the can pretty well but it seems like the spray is "watery" and is just heading up on the tile. Any suggestions? I was thinking I may have to prime with black them go back with leadbelcher.

[Stoic Raptor]

Could there be some kind of mold release on the tiles?  Also, environmental conditions make a lot of difference.  

[sockwithaticket]

1) Have you cleaned the tiles thoroughly enough?
2) Leadbelcher spray is paint, not primer. Use an actual primer, an auto one form your local hardware store is fine and go back with the Leadbelcher later.
 

[Jarl of Wulfen]

Yes, tiles were scrubbed well. I was thinking it was primer. Delaware weather is quite nice right now ;-)

[Arkhanist]

Leadbelcher spray is described as only a basecoat.

"Leadbelcher Spray is designed for basecoating all Citadel miniatures. When sprayed over an undercoat, it's a fast way to get a uniform base of colour onto your models."

 

Chaos black spray is described as an undercoat and primer, though I found it more like a basecoat myself in the distant past. Car/auto primers (plastic preferably) are generally cheaper and better. Halfords, Hycote and Krylon primers all have good reputations. Forgeworld themselves used to recommend car primer, as GW sprays didn't work that well for resin. Don't know if they still do.

 

Army Painter do several decent metallic spray basecoats if it turns out your leadbelcher can is also a bit poop. Gun metal is close to leadbelcher.

 

Primer technically is doing a different job to basecoating; it needs to grip well onto the underlying material and provide a good surface for the next layer of paint to grip to. Basecoats are just the main colour you want to work from. While priming and basecoating can often be done in one step on plastic, resin usually benefits from an undercoat primer step.

 

That all said, resin mold release can be a bugger to get completely off. It needs at minimum a seriously good scrub in warm water and washing up liquid with an old toothbrush (electric even better!) - the scrubbing will also help very slightly abrade the surface to help primer adhere. Alcohol-based cleaners can soften or damage the resin, so definitely test first (and don't leave it on) if you go that route. Harsh cleaners like oven cleaner are a bad idea.

Edited August 29, 2017 by Arkhanist

[Tyberos the Red Wake]

Here are the possible issues I could think of, given the diagnosis of "beading up paint".

 

1) Even though you washed the resin, it's still not clean. They are very large pieces, after all, it's possible you didn't use enough soap or scrub hard enough or thoroughly enough.

 

2) Hopefully this isn't the issue, but you may have gotten a bad batch of resin. Sometimes the resin absorbs the mold release agent into itself when curing, which results in "sweating" resin. This means no matter how much you clean it, after a while, more mold release will leak back out through the pores, and the resin will "sweat" oil again, ruining any chances of paint sticking to it. The only solution to this is to have FW replace it (and they will) or if you think you're lucky, wait for the resin to sweat itself completely dry of oil.

 

3) You got a bad batch of primer.

 

4) This is probably not the issue, but Leadbelcher isn't a "real" primer. This may be why it's not sticking to the resin. But even if it's not a primer, it's still a spraypaint, and spraypaint should stick to clean resin and not bead up.

 

Hope that helps, and hope you get it sorted out, the ZM tiles are great and I would be very disheartened if I got some and they ended up unpaintable due to something like resin sweating.

[Stoic Raptor]

2) Leadbelcher spray is paint, not primer. Use an actual primer, an auto one form your local hardware store is fine and go back with the Leadbelcher later.

 

 

I believe that Duncan Rhodes would disagree with you.  There have been videos where he's started with a miniature that was just sprayed in Leadbelcher, or Retributor Armor, or any of the other colors, and not with a black or white primer first.  But that's styrene they're using there.

 

The issue is, none of the GW sprays are "etching" primer, and that's what you need for the sort of material these tiles are made of.  It does what it says - gently etches the surface to improve the adhesion of the undercoat. 

[Tyberos the Red Wake]

 

2) Leadbelcher spray is paint, not primer. Use an actual primer, an auto one form your local hardware store is fine and go back with the Leadbelcher later.

 

 

I believe that Duncan Rhodes would disagree with you.  There have been videos where he's started with a miniature that was just sprayed in Leadbelcher, or Retributor Armor, or any of the other colors, and not with a black or white primer first.  But that's styrene they're using there.

 

The issue is, none of the GW sprays are "etching" primer, and that's what you need for the sort of material these tiles are made of.  It does what it says - gently etches the surface to improve the adhesion of the undercoat. 

 

 

I like Duncan, but he's not always right.

 

 

 

Leadbelcher Spray is designed for basecoating all Citadel miniatures. When sprayed over an undercoat, it's a fast way to get a uniform base of colour onto your models.

 

https://www.games-workshop.com/en-FI/Citadel-Basecoat-Spray-Leadbelcher

[Cryptix]

You see this is a problem I've dealt with that lead to me just using Army Painter primer sprays, I don't actually know if the GW sprays prime. It would be nice if they did, but their description is too vague.

[Arkhanist]

 

2) Hopefully this isn't the issue, but you may have gotten a bad batch of resin. Sometimes the resin absorbs the mold release agent into itself when curing, which results in "sweating" resin. This means no matter how much you clean it, after a while, more mold release will leak back out through the pores, and the resin will "sweat" oil again, ruining any chances of paint sticking to it. The only solution to this is to have FW replace it (and they will) or if you think you're lucky, wait for the resin to sweat itself completely dry of oil.

 

 

That's a good point, I forgot about sweating. The cause can also be the resin itself not being quite a balanced mix so it hasn't cured properly. If it stays shiny despite cleaning then it's probably a bad cast that's not at easy to work round. In both cases, forgeworld will replace it.

 

It'd be worth checking all the tiles if you haven't yet - it might be just a bad cast on the first one!

[CrimsonReign]

i always find gw and army painter metalic sprays work best over a black primer

[sockwithaticket]

 

2) Leadbelcher spray is paint, not primer. Use an actual primer, an auto one form your local hardware store is fine and go back with the Leadbelcher later.

 

 

I believe that Duncan Rhodes would disagree with you.  There have been videos where he's started with a miniature that was just sprayed in Leadbelcher, or Retributor Armor, or any of the other colors, and not with a black or white primer first.  But that's styrene they're using there.

Plastic will survive not using dedicated primer, but just because you can doesn't mean you should. With resin, an actual primer is a must.

 

Besides, Duncan is a GW employee, he's in the business of shifting their products, howeve obliquely, not imparting best hobby practice. I suspect they're aware of other companies that do make coloured and metallic primers and are demonstrating their own paint sprays being used in a similar manner to try and mitigate against customers purchasing elsewhere.

 

When looking at how to do things, I'd tend towards following hobbyists whose work is of high quality or top end commission painters like winterdyne or the Massive Voodoo studio, rather than GW's youtube channel.

[Ciler]

Then again, would it be in GW's best interest to advertise a sub-optimal and occasionally (as illustrated in this thread) downright inefficient use of their product ?

[sockwithaticket]

Then again, would it be in GW's best interest to advertise a sub-optimal and occasionally (as illustrated in this thread) downright inefficient use of their product ?

When the average hobbyist won't notice/care? Sure. Especially when many have what I call 'GW blinkers'; i.e the people who don't look beyond GW for any of their hobby needs for whatever reason (convenience, lack of knowledge about alternatives, etc)

 

Those of us that frequent forums are a subset of hobbyists, usually the more motivated and informed I'd say. Yet even with that, my experience here and on dakka suggests there's still a lot of people in the subset who don't necessarily care much about the painting aspect of the hobby or are still at an early stage of their learning process, so won't know the difference between primer and spray paint. 

[Spiky Norman]

For what little it is worth I have recently primed my whole new army (all plastic) with Leadbelcher rattle can with a perfect results.

My experiences with the black and white primer from GW have been good too, in contrast to my experiences with Army Painter which I've stopped using.

What I am most paranoid about is the weather/humidity and it's effect on the result, so I only prime on sunny days :-)

[Kastor Krieg]

GW stopped making PRIMER when they changed packaging. All of the rattle cans are BASECOATS.