How does 20mm soft plastic differ in terms of painting, gluing and converting compared with the hard plastic used in 28mm? An issues to contend with?
Thanks in advance for your comments
Rossman
Painting 20mm plastic
(14 posts) (9 voices)-
Posted 1 year ago #
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Ah, now this is a real topic...
Paint on 1/72 figures is not as durable as on metal or hard plastic, but nowhere near as bad as many people think. Glueing can be a real problem, but there are specialist glues to work well.
I mainly use 1/72 plastic figures (although I have made a foray into the new 28mm plastics as well - quite like the look and cost of the Hat 28mm figures). The key for me is the figure's pose and how they are handled.
1/72 plastics tend to come in a wide range of poses. And the pose matters in how much trouble you will have with keeping paint on. The silly "swinging their rifle while pivoting on 1 leg" pose is a struggle to keep paint on no matter what you do. At some point some stress will go on and the paint will crack (and potentially crack). But the more sedate poses are generally no problem.
Your handling will also make a difference. Treat the figures roughly and cracks will emerge. But I did recently take an 1/72 army on a plane to a Lasalle tournie and just put the figures packed in shredded newspaper into my suitcase in the hold and had no problems.
Definite rules are a bit difficult because 1/72 plastic manufacturers have done so much experimenting with the plastic they use. You get a big variety between soft rubbery plastic through to quite hard brittle plastic. Some take paint and/or glue well, some don't.
My technique is:
1) Clean figures with soapy water.
2) Prime. I use Rustoleum Plastic Primer, but have recently switched to Future Floor Polish (with a bit of black paint added) since this makes painting easier by picking out details (and is much easier to find since it is sold in the local supermarket).
3) Paint.
4) Varnish. I use Future Floor Polish with some black paint as a wash to bring out details. I then give a couple more thin coats of Future Floor Polish. To tone down the glossy finish of Finish, I add a Tamiya paint additive that I have entirely forgotten the name of.
For gluing I use a specialist 2-part plastic glue designed for PEP plastic. It works, but you have to be pretty careful - the glue is brilliantly designed to glue the plastic lid on, and quite fantastic at gluing your figures together (I now make sure I know where the wife's nail polish remover is when I use this glue).
I can happily recommend 1/72 plastics.
Cam
Posted 1 year ago # -
Hi
I have just taken the plunge into the 1/72 plastic pool and finished my first Sapanish unit using HaT 1806 Prussians with a few 1805 French thrown in.
I washed and used Rustoleum White primer as well. This is now available in the UK from B+Q. I used a light grey Johnsons Floor wash (the UK version of Future) and used Acrylic inks for much of the equipment and unit facings. This is so easy to use as it is a flows and stains the colour on. If using Inks dont use any more Future as this will and lifts the ink and runs all over the figure. I just used Rowney Acrylic matt varnish to finish.
In all I painted 38 figures in about 5 hours - which is way quicker than my nornal painting time.
The biggest issue you will find is that many wargamers look down on plastic figures as some sort of inferior product. In my group 2 reject the idea of plastic out of hand where as along with 2 others we are now embarking on a doing the WSS using Zvezda GNW figures.
Mark
Posted 1 year ago # -
hi
http://www.plasticsoldierreview.com/Index.aspx
Here is a very good site. If you go to the napoleonic period it shows all 1/72 out there and even what the sprues look like.""The biggest issue you will find is that many wargamers look down on plastic figures as some sort of inferior product""
This is what I have found too. no one at my club does 1/72.
But for price and range of product you can't beat it.
I have a redundant Prussian army and ACW that i never get to use now. because the person I played with has moved on. He has artist training and showed me how to make them look really realistic and more detailed than alot of the other scales. And modify them. And I would always use that scale but serious gamers don't seem to use it so what can you do.
After cleaning them I prime with a oil based spray paint. (tamiya)
and never had anymore issues with flaking than hard plastics and metals.Anyway if you can get the oponents go for it you can make large armies as they are cheap to buy and theres a huge napoleonic range.
cheers.Posted 1 year ago # -
Hey,
I've been a wargamer for a long time but I'm just getting into gaming with miniatures. After a lot of research I settled on 1/72 figures for a number of reasons.
1. Price - in most cases I can buy 3-4 boxes of 1/72 figures for the cost 1 box of 28mm.
2. My son enjoys playing with the ones I'm not ready to paint.
3. The range of figures available is really impressive.
4. Because they're inexpensive, if I screw some up experimenting with conversions I don't care.
5. The size provides the look I like on the gaming table...15mm is too small and 28mm looks to big (for my aesthetics).
6. Did I mention price.Here's a couple of things I have discovered so far along the way.
Glue - I recently completed a bunch of head swaps on Hat 8186 Peninsular War British converting them to Waterloo British. I used ZAP medium CA+ glue and it has worked very well. These figures are of a rubbery plastic but still got a nice tight solid bond.
Paint - I tried a couple of different paints but settled on Vallejo. The acrylic-urethane primer's work very well and retain some flexibility when dry.
Plastic - Many of the more recent sets coming out are made with a harder plastic, so I would not worry about the plastic consistency to much.
The only drawback I have found so far is trying to find buildings that fit this scale. The majority of gaming buildings available seem to either be 15mm or 25/28mm. If anyone out there knows of a good source for 1/72 scale buildings please let me know.
I hope my ramblings were helpful.
Good Gaming!
Posted 1 year ago # -
I would have a look at HO/OO model railway buidings for 1/72 scale.
Posted 1 year ago # -
I believe the Tamiya product Cam is referring to is X-21 Flat Base. A lot of people add it to Future for a final flat coat.
Posted 1 year ago # -
Hi guys,
Thanks for the comments. A lot of great info. Now I just have to figure the army to put together. No historical prefrence, something that would be fun to paint and with nice variety.Posted 1 year ago # -
For those who can't find Rustoleum's excellent spray on plastic primer or those who prefer brush on priming (weather can be a factor), I'd highly recommend gesso. Gesso is used by artists to prepare canvas to receive paint and works excellently as a brush on miniature primer. It goes on thick, but shrinks to wrap around the plastic miniature. It's best not to water it down, even if you're tempted the first time you brush it on.
Here's an article on priming with gesso:
http://thescreamingalpha.com/2009/05/05/priming-your-minis-with-acrylic-gesso/
For a sealer, I prefer Krylon low odor matte spray. It stays semi-flexible when dry and I've had thin things like spears bent by clumsy gamers and have lost no paint. Once again, for those who don't want to spray, I'd recommend any artist's matte varnish. Even cheap craft varnish like Delta Ceramcoat matte will work well.
Plasti-dip clear spray is a top notch choice if you can find it (and are interested in a spray on product). It's a slightly satin clear rubber coating. The only down side is that when you touch the figures, they obviously feel a bit rubbery. Plasti-dip and Rustoleum's primer together with some acrylic paints is nigh indestructible. I had a zulu wars british officer that I had painted with those products and sprayed a thicker than usual coat of plasti-dip on. I used to step on it and grind it underfoot to show the local plastic nay-sayers that paint doesn't have to come off.
Probably the most important thing is washing the figures with soap and water. I scrub each one with an old toothbrush that I have for around-the-house cleaning. You need to get the mould release off. If you have a layer of mould release compound between the figure and whatever you prime with, how is it supposed to stick?
Posted 1 year ago # -
From experience the best "varnish" to use is a thin wash of watered down pva. It stays very flexible and everyone I know whos done it has never had any problems with chipping/flaking. You should also consider it for the undercoat.
Trev
Posted 1 year ago # -
Yep, PVA is a classic method of priming and sealing 1/72 plastics. Works well. I don't find it as nice as gesso, but it does work. I also find that there's a big difference between cheap PVA and good PVA. Elmers is alright, but Weldbond is pretty fantastic. Another great solution is a 50/50 mix of artist's fluid matte medium and water.
Gesso wins out for me because of how it sucks itself onto the figure, so if I go quickly and get a bit heavy in a spot, it doesn't obscure detail.
PVA definitely wins the simple and economical category though. And it's much, much easier to get than a lot of the products I mentioned.
Posted 1 year ago # -
I have a friend who is an absolute fanatic about plastic 1:72 stuff.
He swears (after washing of course) by pre-undercoating the figure in 50 / 50 water and PVA. says that this stiffens the figure nicely to make it less bendable (and flakable), and allows something for the undercoat to key into, which in turn ensures the actual colour stays stuck to something and hardly ever flakes.
he is mostly ww2 based, but getting into Napoleonics now, as you can see.
http://servicerationdistributionhobby.blogspot.com/
Also, if he knows he is going to use a colour a lot, he goes for a Liquitex artists tube rather than the more usual hobby size pot - as its so well made it almost doesn't need to be varnished.
(I can confirm that tubes of this for the gamer have a lifetime measured in decades, not years, so do't let the higher outlay costs scare you off, its much more cost effective if you need that colour a lot - such as uniform coat blues and greens and reds, you just need to keep a small stick and old CD pallete handy to mix about half n half water with the paint before applying to make it paint-like again.)
Posted 1 year ago # -
Liquitex's paints are top notch. Excellent paint. Any higher grade artist acrylic will dry tough and flexible, but I'd probably still varnish.
Thanks for the link to his blog. His stuff looks awesome. He has a real mass effect going on.
Posted 1 year ago # -
the mass effect inpart comes from the sand table being 32 feet long - and fully utillised!
Posted 1 year ago #
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