Prime Time

Model Railroader General Discussion (Model Railroader)
1

ok i’ve striped my Loco’s of all there old paint now I’m ready to throw on the 1st layer of Gold paint on my 3 AC’s, My questions are…

  1. Do I Need To Prime Them?

  2. What is the point of Primer?

  3. What would happen if I didn’t prime them?

2

Is the shell gray in color? If so, I wouldn’t prime it. Just adds another layer of paint to cover up the detail. IMHO. Peter

3

no the shell is black with white spots (the paint i couldn’t get off) it looks like a jungle cat

4

Then you should prime it. One of the purposes of primer is even out the color of the surface, so that new paint will go on evenly and imperfections (the white blotches) won’t show through the paint. The shade of the primer will also affect the finished tone of the color, ie. use a light shade of grey for yellows and reds, white primer will generally give even brighter yellows and reds. Medium to lite greys work well with blues and greens. Experiment.

5

Another purpose of primer is to give the paint something to “bite into”. This is especially important on smooth surfaces.

Case in point. We have an AC duct in our lab that the University painted the same color as our walls, to make them less conspicuous. It wasn’t long (a year or two) before the paint started to peal badly and you could see large sections of galvanized metal underneath.

Now, this could have been due to the temperature and moisture changes the duct was going through. My suspicion is that the painters didn’t bother to prime the surface of the duct so the latex paint had nothing to hold onto.

Tom