 Hi there, it's DJB, and in this video I'm going to be teaching you how to prep and prime a model horse for painting. So many collectors go through a phase where they say, hey, I know I can paint my model horse, but they don't know how to go about it. And one of the most important steps in creating a custom model horse is the prepping and priming phase. Briar models come in a variety of different molds and colors. Although these models are quite nice to look at, it's often fun to repaint to the horse of your dreams. However, in the way that Briars are manufactured, they come with a lot of flaws that require some sanding and touching up before they're ready for paint. You want a nicely sanded, flawless mold so that your paint job will shine through and the flaws of the original molded horse won't show through. So a common misconception is that you need to sand or strip the original finished paint off of the model. This is not true. You only need to sand down the seams and flaws that come with the molding phase. You can often find these flaws just by examining the model. They come on all the different scales. You will find seam lines, seam splits, holes, bumps, off-molded parts. This is often worse in some of the older mold models. So I would recommend for your first couple of customs use a newer mold. Some of the older molds will actually be quite lumpy in their texture. This can be eliminated with a lot of sanding, but it is a lot of work to get that to a smooth texture. You're also going to want to make sure that the model stands properly. Some models end up with crooked legs. You're going to want to bend the legs back into position before you paint the models. Now traditional briar models come with an air hole and they put this air hole in either the side of the mouth or in the nostril. I find this really important that we fill this in the prepping phase. Traditional and classic briars are hollow so the plastic is two pieces stuck together and the air hole is so that the model doesn't expand when it gets heated because the plastic is very malleable and when it is exposed to heat it morphs quite a bit. We do need an air hole, but I choose to remove it from the face and put it somewhere more discreet. Stable mates are different. They do not have any air holes. They're actually a solid piece of plastic, but all briar models come with the briar logo, whether that's on the leg or on the belly, you can find it somewhere. Traditional briars and also Peter Stone models, their logos are engraved into their leg so instead of sanding these out, we're going to need to fill these out. So once you have a model chosen that you would like to start the prepping process on, I use a fine-based sandpaper, 220 works well. The higher the number, the finer the sandpaper, so 200 is about a good grit to get things removed from the model but not too heavy so you're going to end up with weird scratches. I recommend getting a multi-purpose sandpaper rather than a wood sandpaper because we are sanding plastic, not wood. This particular sandpaper seems to work a lot better and lasts a lot longer. And you're just going to want to eliminate that logo on the belly. You're going to want to find all of those weird seams and bumps that show up. I also like to use these sanding files, which can come in a variety of different shapes and they work really well for hard-to-reach places and they also work a little bit faster for logo removal. Here you can see this is an older model and her texture is very bumpy on her surface so when you sand over top of it, you're going to get that paint sitting in those low grooves still so she needs to be sanded a lot to get her down to a smooth consistency and that just is something that comes with some of the older models. That's why I would recommend using a newer model for your first few customs. So we're going to re-drill that air hole and I choose to put it in the groin area of the model. I'm using a small drill bit in my Mastercraft rotary tool. Dremel would work. A drill would also work, although it would be tricky to get it in the right position but I have successfully done this with a hammer and a nail if you don't have a drill. Now when I did this on the Smarty Jones model, I accidentally caused a hole in his leg from the Dremel so we're just going to want to sand that out, make that smooth because we don't want any flaws in the finished model. I'm taking this file to sand down his logo. I find on the traditional models they're a little bit more raised so just using the nail file makes things go a little bit quicker. Then I'm also going to take some sandpaper and just sand that down to a nice smooth surface. For the air hole on his face, I'm just going to sand out some of the areas so that it's nice and clean. Then I'm just going to take some epoxy sculpt, which I have a full tutorial on my channel. I will put that on the screen here. You're just going to want to take a tiny bit of epoxy sculpt and you're just going to want to sculpt it in there so that that hole is concealed and filled. You want to make sure you do this after you drill the hole so that the model doesn't have a chance to expand. I'm also going to patch up that hole because it's a little bit too deep to just sand out in his groin area. For the Peter Stone, same thing, just going to fill that logo with some epoxy and then once it dries, you're just going to want to sand it out to be smooth. I recommend after you've finished sanding your entire model, it's a good idea just to run it under some water so that you don't end up with any sanding bits, clumps, lumps that are going to show up in the primer and then drying them with some paper towel but you want to leave them to air dry for a few hours just to make sure they are completely dry and ready for the primer. The primer that I use is by Rust-Oleum and you can get this at most major hardware stores. I've seen it in Walmart so it's really easy to find and get your hands on. It's not too expensive, about $7 a bottle. It's a specific primer that works really, really well and it bonds to plastic. It's important that whatever primer you choose, it bonds to plastic. It's dry in about an hour to the touch but it's not completely dry for 24 hours. So I do recommend when you're working with priming projects, have a couple of projects on the go because the priming and pumping process takes a few days, a long time. I usually use white but you can use gray or a brown tone if necessary. There's paint and primer combos that come with this brand depending on what color you're going to paint your horse. You're also going to want to use a glove. I just buy these rubber gloves from the dollar store because primer is very, very messy and it does not come off with. Another rule of thumb is that you never should spray indoors. I know some people try and get away with it using a bathroom fan or going in a garage but I don't recommend. You definitely want to be outside. Now I live in a climate that is often very rainy and humid so you have to be careful depending on the temperature outside, the temperature inside because in those winter months, in those rainy months, you can end up with some issues. My living situation allows me to, even when it's raining, prime outside because I have an overhang that I can spray under. I try to prime on the days where it's nice and sunny but I can get away with it in my little door foyer area. I don't recommend spraying models when it is super windy outside, noticeably windy in all directions but if there is a faint wind you can get away with doing it by facing your back towards the direction that it's going so that the wind will work with you and not against you. Here I'm going to show you a demonstration of how I prime a model. Now I highly recommend using the glove and often I will just hold the model by the tail but sometimes the model will have a little too much an extra leg and the tail so I recommend using a piece of paper towel just to hold up the model and this actually works a lot better and a bit less sticky primer. So you make sure your can is shaken really really well and then I just like to spray in short spurts. You don't have to cover the whole model right away. You can do it in several layers and especially if it's a nice hot sunny day you can leave it outside and just do a new layer every 10, 15 minutes or so but you're going to want to do a main base layer and then you're going to take it inside and examine it. You're going to sand down the extra flaws that you missed because the flaws are going to pop up when you prime the model in white. This process is going to be a couple times of spraying the model. It's not going to be one thick coat of primer and you're done. It's a couple coats to get the best results. If your model doesn't have a tail that's easy to hold on to I recommend just doing half of the model at a time. So spraying the front half of the model while you hold the rear end and spraying the rear end while you hold the front end but letting each layer dry in between. You don't want to do the first layer of primer really thick because you can end up with issues where the primer will drip down the model and not dry properly and end up with cracking weird effects. So you want to keep the layers thin so the primer has time to dry and cure and work up to a finished layer of primer that covers the entire model 100%. So here's an example of one that has kind of a first coat. You can see that it's not completely white. There's still some color showing through, but it shows me the flaws that I've missed so that I'm able to sand them down and reprime. I like to set my models down on some paper inside generally after I've sprayed them so that they can dry somewhere undisturbed and just setting them up on a piece of cardboard or a piece of paper so that their hooves don't stick to the surface. Here's another example of me spraying this Collect A Briar. There's some people who have had success in priming by just laying the model on its side and spraying each side. This method would also work just putting a piece of cardboard down and spraying both sides instead of holding the model. I've seen some artists who like to hang their models to dry by strings. There's lots of different techniques and it's really a learning curve. The prepping phase of customizing really takes a lot of trial and error and a lot of patience. So I just recommend going slow using several layers of primer, sanding in between each layer of primer, even washing between each layer of primer, really making sure that the horse is fully dried, working really slowly so that you can get the best canvas for your paintwork. So if you do have a model that you're unable to prime rubber based models often, I would recommend using a paint on Liquitex Gesso. This stuff is awesome even for bits that you've missed. So here we have a one layer of primer on this stable mate and his Apollosa spots were actually showing through. So sometimes the edges on markings will show through. It's a good idea to sand them down just to avoid that. But after one layer of primer, it's quite thin so some of those lines are going to show through. So you're just going to want to sand it down to make it as smooth as possible. There's no real method to it. It's just whatever flaws you find. And there's a standard for each artist. I recommend really getting rid of those obvious flaws, but there's a point where you have to say the model is ready for paint and those flaws aren't going to be as obvious when you have the color on the model. And then you're just going to want to respray, reprime and you do that until you have several layers of primer. When you have the finished model, I recommend not touching it with your fingers so that it gives fingerprints and it gives marks, especially if you're working with pastel. But before you paint, a fun tip and trick I've learned is to take a white sock and you're going to buff the model with the sock. So you're just going to put the sock on your hand, hold the model and rub that sock all over it. It's going to get rid of those little pimples that show up, little bumps that you get in the surface and it's going to smooth down those uneven areas working with the friction and the warmth of your hand inside of the sock. And there you have it, a finished primed model ready for paint. Primer is good until the can is completely empty. So here's a sound bit of a full can of primer and an empty can of primer just so you know how far you can use the can. Then I recommend just exing off the lids when your can is empty so that you know that you can take the can to said recycling depot. There you have it. That's how I prime and prep my model horses. It's a long process and when you're doing a drastic custom, it's a great idea to throw on a coat of primer to see how the model is looking. It's a slow process, it's an annoying process, but it's a necessary process. So I hope you learned something today. If you have any other questions, feel free to send me a message or leave a comment. All of the tools used in this video are in the description below. Check out my other tutorials and subscribe for weekly uploads. So thank you so much for watching and happy prepping.