Fall is here in Colorado and minis painters know that can only mean one thing: Winter is coming. More importantly, spray paint-killing cold weather is coming. So like most minis painters that don’t have an indoor vent box, I’m doing my fall priming to get models ready for painting during the longer winter months.
Before I can even prime models though, I have to clean them. I’m working on getting through my current Dropzone Commander backlog so today I’m working on Hawk Wargames miniatures. Hawk produces some pretty clean models and I’ve only encountered one set out of all my purchases that had enough flash on the sprues to make life difficult. Seeing how I’ve bought at least 20 different little model sets from them, I’d say that is pretty good.
flash and moldlines/vents are common on all minis
all clean now. well except the resin chips leftover.
Now that my models are prepped, it’s on to priming. I typically use Krylon flat spray paints made for plastic to prime my models and I vary back and forth from black to white to grey depending on what is available and if I already have a color scheme picked out.
To spray, I have a cardboard open wall box that I made and I put newspaper down as the spray surface. To make sure I get all the angles, I rotate the paper after each spray pass. If the models are particularly small, I will sometimes use blu-tack to make sure they don’t go flying around with the pressure of the spray paint.
For infantry or individual figures, I take some large shop nails and either glue or blu-tack the model on the nail head.
For small figures like 10mm infantry that already come on a sprue, I rigged up a minis holder. I attached clothespins to each nail and have them grip the sprue. The holder itself is a simple 2×4 with holes drilled in it.
This allows me to shoot the models in one pass and let them dry without a spray box. It can also be useful to paint the model as you’ll have a nice handle and stand already available.
So it took most of the afternoon but the models are all primed and ready to “cure” overnight. I have another Dropzone get-together coming up so I’ll need to start getting these painted up right away.
I have my work cut out for me.