Malakand Field Force Prep, p.3: spray primer

Lots of 1:1 Army work has slowed down my time spent on the project, but a bit of early spring weather made it possible to do more of the priming and spray work. I've tried heating up the garage a bit using a space heater, and that does work - in a couple hours on a sunny day I can usually get it in the 50 range, but I prefer the outdoors to spray in.

Below, I glued all the figs to cardboard so that the spraying wouldn't knock them over [these are not as heavy as metals, of course!] and I didn't like spraying them laying on their side. Altho that does get better coverage, one has to wait a while to flip them over and spray the other side without getting some of the paint pulled off the elbows and such. I'm planning go touch up with brush primer, anyway.

Below. Results of the white priming with the Rustoleum featured in the previous post. They look pretty good I think.

EDIT: sorry, meant to say that the chap on the top, 2nd from left, poised on the ball of his left foot, did crack the primer coats at the foot - not surprising, considering the leverage of the figure against that one little point. Care should be taken to handle the figs carefully, preferably by the base, during this stage.

Notice that the white cavalryman has less shading. Ergo, I wouldn't pick white for the color of any of the plastics. Generally, I think the darker tones are best.

Below. More priming with Army Painter Skeleton Bone Primer on the Soldiers. It was the last of the can nearly, and a bit old, so it has a rough surface. I've heard of this happening with AP products, but I'm not overly concerned - I'm going to hit them with a khaki brush coat, and then "The Miracle Dip". Camel is AP Brown Leather Primer and horse is AP Rat Fur Primer. There was no problem with the texture on either of these.

The constant question with all my unit painting - prime dark and work up in shade, or prime white / light and work down - as I'm planning to Miracle Dip, which tends to darken, I'm trying the latter first. As I've several units in the works, I'm not worried about opportunities to try various techniques.

Below. Everything so far - painting tests with black, grey and white primer, ten Bone primed soldiers, two riders, horse and camel. I clearly have to put some time in on these!

Testing. Figs prepared using cheap black spray paint, Rustoleum grey, and white primers. We'll see how they take paint this week, and how both coating and coloring are affected by the primer. Sorry the Frenchie is hard to see in the lighting.

Pathan Horde! They need to be cleaned up, and the mold lines etc removed. I think the darker color will prime better at this point. Six sword/shield, two officers with flintlock pistol, sword and binoculars [binoculars??], and 12 shooters. 

Also, a nice frontal view of the camel - "Hey! You staring at ME??" 

Finally, I sprayed all 50 of the 1.5" MDF bases by VP Sales, featured HERE using a favorite color, "Make It Suede" that happens to be close to my favorite base cloth color [and has a wild smell as well!]. These were layed out on the same cardboard, and the initial coat get them a bit stuck on, but not in a troubling way. I did two opposite edges [which hits the top also], flipped them over and turned 90 degrees, then sprayed the other two edges [hitting the bottom side as well of course]. This results in total coverage at minimum paint outlay.

It's important to remember that MDF board will crumble when exposed to moisture, so I spray paint the entire base altho I'm mainly concerned with the edges which is nearly all you can see after I flock. Remember, there's always spilled beverages, water leaks, etc, that threaten your bases! I look forward to getting the figs on these for handling safety as well as the fact that I've incorporated the bases into the rules.

That's everything at this point: Four figs to test paint as individuals, ten to paint up as a squad, and twenty Pathans to clean up for priming. Overall, this should be an exciting week of discovery both for craftiness and artistry. 

Another thing that's needed - some more playtesting of the skirmish rules, which are going really really well, and I'm quite excited about them! That should be a post very soon.