Basics: Preping and Priming Questions...

[russ c]

Hey everyone,

I\'m new to the community and new to painting miniatures. I\'ve just recently begun collecting a 1000pt. Ork army for Warhammer 40k. Since I purchased the entire army at once, I have a lot of minis to prep and paint!

I have a few questions regarding preparing, priming, and then painting...

I\'ve begun preparing a single unit of Ork Boyz, man it takes a long time to clean off all the mold lines! Now that I have them cleaned up from the sprue I\'ve glued the base, legs, torso and heads, but haven\'t done the arms. This is where I\'ve begun over-thinking everything. I\'m afraid if I glue the arms it will make it difficult to get in and paint some details. So, should I just glue a single arm on and paint the entire miniature and then prime the other arm separate and attach it last?

The reason I put priming on the list of questions is because if I prime the mini with one arm off I\'ll definitely end up covering the spot the second arm glues to. I\'m using testors plastic cement glue...can I just glue right over the primed area or should I scrap the primer off and then glue the arm on? If I leave the second arm off, do you recommend painting it seperatly or just priming it and then gluing it to the finish mini and painting it?

What do you guys do when you prime/paint parts seperatly? Is there any tricks I should know about before priming my Boyz? Should I even leave an arm off?!

Thanks for any advice on this workflow,

Russell

 

[freakinacage]

depends on the final quality you want. if its for gamin i would just glue them on and then paint. if you cant get a brush to it, you wont be able to see it too well!

if you want higher quality, you can leave the arm off. depends on how easily it attaches (ie gaps that need filling)

if you do leave it off, i would paint it separately , then glue it on. if you are using poly cement, you will need to scrape the paint off though

 

[Sauce Devil]

If you\'re worried about goofing up then you\'re already well prepared; I think the main cause of bad paint jobs is when people (kids mostly) rush into the process and do everything as quickly as they can.

Scrape the surfaces to be glued (or \"bonded\" to use the correct term) or you\'ll get an icky mess of melted paint.

You\'ll probably find when you start painting that you\'ve missed mould-lines even after you\'ve spent all that time carefully checking each and every mini; don\'t worry about it, either scrape & respray or hide it.

 

[airhead]

To the question on if to glue the arms on or not.

Are the arms connected \"flesh to flesh?\" or \"flesh to armor?\"

Flesh to flesh, I\'d glue them on first. You\'ll blend across that joint much better than trying to paint each part separately and then glue it together.

As to the area that you cannot get to after you\'ve glued them... generally nobody can see those spots so a dark (near black) base color is usually all you need. (dark green for orc armpits, etc..

Also depends on if you are painting a play army or a Games Day paint contest entry....

 

[Valander]

Sometimes the only real choice is to leave some assembly until after painting. Regardless of what glue or material (plastic or metal) you\'re working with, though, always scrape/file off any paint from the areas that will join. This is especially true when using plastic cement, but even if using super glue you won\'t get a good bond unless it\'s bare metal/plastic.