priming before assembly?

[PhoenixFire]

Just wondering what everyones thoughts on the subject were, I'm in the process of assembling my grey knight army and I've been priming while still on the sprue which seems to eliminate pooling but the downside is I seem to be missing certain spots

The other issue is I've been primimg grey with a mix of white because I'm going for a lighter colored look, grey obviously makes it harder to prime grey sprues

Should I switch to black with a white mix?

Thanks in advance, jason

[Rurouni Benshin]

1.  If you're going to prime before gluing the pieces together, my suggestion is to clip them off the sprues first and file down the edges before doing so.  Even if you file down what's "file-able" on the sprue, you're going to miss the spots where they actually need to be clipped.  So my suggestion would be to clip and file them first.

2.  True, grey primer can be hard to tell apart when the sprues themselves are already grey.  I'd say use either Black or White, depending on the color scheme you're going with.  If the majority of the model is a dark shade of color, go with black, and if not, then use white.  Otherwise, you can't really go wrong either way.

Good luck!

[Dissimulation]

Noooooo!!! I already did this with a couple of models, the primer makes the plastic glue USELESS. The bond isn't there whatsoever. It probably doesn't help superglue either. The models are soo fragile as a result.

[Benjamin]

Noooooo!!! I already did this with a couple of models, the primer makes the plastic glue USELESS. The bond isn't there whatsoever. It probably doesn't help superglue either. The models are soo fragile as a result.

This. The glue will tend to bond with the primer, and not the plastic/metal.

Marine models have a bad habit of carrying things across their torsos, meaning a fully assembled model may have spots that are difficult/impossible to paint. You can assemble the torso, paint that and then attach the arms. For the best contact, you can scrape off the primer where you'd glue the arms.

[Warpedfuzz]

I figured out something that works well for me when I assemble my marines.Build your mini w/o the arms, since arms are where it tends to get in the way the most for painting anyways. Prime up your model and the arms seperate.Use a small x-acto knife and take the primer off the ends of the arms where they attach and where they connect.Then just glue them together after you paint both. Then touch-up the paint where needed.It's alittle bit slower of a process, but some of my marines came out really well doing it this way.Maybe worth trying for you.



~Doug

[Seth]

i put them all together then paint it black water down if needed then the hard to get to areas create natural looking highlights. but then again it really matters how you paint and what techniques you perfer when painting

[Grand Master Steve]

The only real time to prime unassembled is if you wish to get detail that is covered once assembled. A good example is the interrior of a land raider or a rhino.