Tamiya rattle can paints

[m408]

I read somewhere in one of the tips, that Tamiya paints require no priming. True? If so, what prep is recommended? Not true? If not, what is the recommended primer?

[MrObsessive]

It's a good idea to put on a primer coat because you want the body (particularly) not to have an opaque "see thru" look. In other words, you want the body to look as solid as possible. I've been to shows as a judge and a casual observer where someone did a good job painting, but the light shined right through it, giving it a toy like appearance. Also depending on the color of the plastic (red comes to mind! ) you want a color that's not to difficult to cover.

Most paints don't have tight enough pigments (Krylon might be the exception) to leave out primer coats.

To be honest, I'm not a big fan of Tamiya color sprays--------while they are good in their own right, they're just too "soft" for my tastes as I do a lot of rubbing out with wax later. Not to mention for what they cost............I can get some automotive paint and have some left over for future projects.

Tamiya does make a very good primer paint though-----it comes in gray and white. They make two versions, a regular and a "Super fine". They dry very quickly, and spray well out of the can.

[crispy]

I have to agree with Bill here.

If I am going to use Tamiya paints and depending on the plastic being built determines primer or not for me. I will say this though, I use primer almost all of the time unless I'm doing a quick out of rut build.

I've built Tamiya's old Lamborghini Countach kit and sprayed Italian red right over the red body:

I did the same with the Firefighter body as it too was red:

I also painted my White bodied Mercedes with Tamiya black, no primer:

The only prep I did on these was soap and water cleaned the bodies and cleaning any mold lines up. Had I needed any putty or what not I would have then sprayed primer.

Chris

[Zoom Zoom]

Most of the time I do use primer for Tamiya paints, because of the aforementioned properties. It's a bit thin, it doesn't cover anything (Testors lacquers are another story, not as smooth but much more opaque). But on the odd occasion it can be sprayed over unprimed plasic, it comes out amazingly smooth. Tamiya primer is amazingly smooth, but if you want your top coats to be really glossy, either your plastic or primer has to be glossy. Even wetsanding Tamiya primer doesn't leave the base surface smooth enough for the topcoat to come out as perfect as it would be over bare plastic. I'll shoot white over white plastic, or black over any color. But it's rare that I can do that. Tamiya paints don't dry as hard as auto paints, but they do dry harder than Testors enamels, and do dry rapidly. If you decant them to an airbrush they go a lot further. I love shooting auto lacquers, but for base colors that Tamiya does in a spray can, you can't get a better/easier kind of finish w/a minimum of hassle.