I’ve been out of primer for a while now and after a recent purchase felt the urgent need for a new spray can. In the past I’ve used GW’s Skull White so I wandered into a local GW store in Auckland city and asked them how much a 280g can of Skull White primer costs these days. Apparently it now costs $30 NZD, after learning that I simply walked out of the store again. GW’s prices have been ridiculous for years now, and $30 for a 280g spray can is not acceptable to me. From memory the last can I bought cost me around $22 NZD and this is when the NZ/GBP exchange rate was considerably worse than it is today.

So I asked on our forum if anybody had a decent replacement option and Dustan chipped in with a suggestion. He’s using an automotive primer for his figures these days: 3M’s ‘Etch Primer’ which comes in a 400g can (see the photo). I nipped down to the local Super Cheap Auto and picked up a can for the low price of $19 NZD.

I’ve just finished priming my first batch of figures with it and it works just fine. I’ve finally primed my pewter 15mm Corvus Belli Romans as well as a box of resin Covenant of Antarctica ships for Dystopian Wars. I’ve noticed the spray coverage isn’t as fine as the Skull White can, but I’m only dusting figures and models with the primer, rather than trying to get solid coverage. A dusting of 3M’s etch primer doesn’t obscure any detail that I noticed and adheres well to plastic and pewter. It does adhere to resin, but not quite as strongly (you can scrape it off with a fingernail), but that’s fine as I’ll be over-painting it with several coats of acrylic paints. The primer has no negative effect on plastic or resin that I can detect and Vallejo and GW paints go over the primer coat just fine as well.

So if you’re sick of paying a ‘GW’ tax on their Skull White primer, try this product instead. It is just over a third cheaper, and you get more than an extra third of paint in the can as well. Thanks for the tip Dustan!

Dustan has started work on a new gaming table for the Wyrd Games Malifaux system. Malifaux is set in a decayed, urban Steampunk setting and he was looking for a quick way to create a set of cobblestone roads for the table, so he built himself a textured cobblestone roller! This is something I briefly considered trying back when I started work on my own Mordheim table, but instead I opted for casting what felt like a million Hirst Art tile pieces. However seeing Dustan’s results I wish I had actually tried it myself.

First he built a master tile from a set of cast Linka mold pieces, filling the joins with a heat cured modeling clay called Duk-it (a cheap local equivalent to Fimo) that he fired with a hot air gun.

Then, taking a small painter’s roller he applied another layer of heat cured clay onto the roller and carefully rolled that over his tile to transfer the texture. It took him a couple of cracks to get a satisfactory result, mainly because of slight problems with the different thicknesses of the cast pieces in his master tile creating voids on the roller.

Once he’d transferred the texture successfully he carefully cured the roller with the heat gun again. I’ve avoided heat cured clay in the past because I’ve always been afraid of shrinkage causing warps if you simply baked it in the oven. For some reason it never occurred to me to cure the clay with a hot air gun like this. It may take a little longer, but it seems like an excellent way to control the cure to avoid warping issues.

His resulting texture roller seems to work pretty well for what’s essentially an experiment. Here’s some more Duk-it clay textured with the roller. He can cover a lot of ground very quickly with his homebrew roller and it easily generates enough texture for nice drybrushing effects. Personally I’m looking forward to seeing some of this clay painted up! His whole roller experiment is documented on our forums here if you’re interested. The progress on his Malifaux table is on the forum too in a different thread.

As a hobbyist you always hear Dremel tools recommended. Unfortunately in New Zealand the Dremel brand seems to attract quite large premium, so I’ve avoided them until now and made do with a $40 knock off ‘hobby drill’.

That was fine until I borrowed Chris’s Dremel 300 and he pointed out Test’n'Tools sell Dremel in New Zealand for sane prices.

After using a Dremel tool first hand I can understand why people recommend them and I’ve picked up the basic Dremel 300 kit for $99nzd and added a keyless chuck so I can re-use my motley collection of bits.

For any hobbyists in New Zealand I’d heartily recommend Test’n'Tools for their reasonable prices, wide selection and excellent customer service. My order was dispatched the day after I placed it and arrived a day later in my PO Box. It’s always nice to find a local site that fast!