I used to spray my squads with surface primer, but because the texture was too rough for my taste I want to switch to paint the next wave with surface primer. It has been said to always water down the colors when painting squads. Does this also hold true for the surface primer?

After using Vallejo primer on my first set of squads, and not liking how much it covered up due to its thickness, I now water down the primer for squads, so yes. I think I only used 1 thin primer coat on my last few batches of squads.

I'm trying a batch w/o primer and so far, so good. I washed them with the purple stuff called superclean then rinsed them really well. After that, Vallejo flat black on the solar panels and cockpits. Then, Luftwaffe Uniform Grey (a blue grey) for fuselage and wing frames and once complete with that, a black wash followed by dry brush w/ light grey then details and a lacquer coating. So, all that to say that these things are so tiny that primer may not be necessary. With that said, and to add more confusion, all the others (except 2, a YV and Firespray I did recently) I've done have had a primer coat (usually black, sometimes grey) and I've had no problem with them. I have had some paints, esp. Krylon camouflage (ultra flat, high coverage) rattle can produce a lumpy appearance when you get up close. You can see that effect on the green corvette I did under my thread "My Go at Timy Spaceships". I kept it for that model because I was going for a monster theme and it worked in my favor, but I would have redone it if I was going for something else. I've also found that if you use metallics that weren't intended for miniatures (e.g. craft store metallic acrylics) that the metallic flecks in those paints are large enough to make lumps on your subject so stick to Vallejo or GW metallics. Vallejo has a metallic medium that can make any color a metallic. So, I'm done rambling.

After using Vallejo primer on my first set of squads, and not liking how much it covered up due to its thickness, I now water down the primer for squads, so yes. I think I only used 1 thin primer coat on my last few batches of squads.

Thank you. That was the information I was looking for!

I tend to use the 'surface primer' from Vallejo which is very thin (I believe intended for air brushes) and put it on mighty thin. works well enough. Came is nice big bottles to boot.

Primer - regardless of what brand or type - should always be applied as thin as possible.

Primer exists for one purpose - to prepare the surface (either through chemical change or additive bonding) to accept paint.

It should never be used to provide a base colour. You should always have a base colour go over the primer.

Tamiya fine surface grey primer...then follow it up with whatever you want. I use deck tan on my rebel ships.