What is the best paint color to use for bare steel such as the edges of road wheels, drive sprockets and such. I have been using graphite powder, but want a good paint color.

Hi;

You can Buy A wide range of Steel color paints; Model Master, Testors, Tamiya, and there are other's ! For my own use depending on how much weathering that I want to depict, I will even use Grey's ! Also try using Aluminum Colors, they work also; esp; on Russian Vehicles they use A lot of Aluminum !!

CHEERS; MIKE.

Ken:

Hi! With certain apology up front, I'm going to turn your question around a bit...

You apparently want to move away from using graphite - which is a pretty decent and super-easy to apply "rubbed steel color" for things like sprocket teeth, all-metal idler bearing-faces, track spuds, and other "wear-polished" metal surfaces (but NOT as realistic for machine-polished hydraulic pistons and such...!) IMHO - to using paint. There are various "steel" and "gun-metal" and similar colors in different lines, and a host of "metallizer paints" available. But there are lots of different colors of real "steel" (bearing mind that most tracks and many other metal-looking parts on vehicles are made of various alloys and rarely of straight "steel"). My point here is that is no one color for real "steel", and thus no one "best" paint to seek.

So, my question to you (rhetorically, perhaps) is; WHAT color are you looking for?

My own answer to this question has been to look at scads of color photos of real "parts of interest" and real vehicles to get ideas as to what I want to depict on a given build. I often default to #2 pencil - because graphite is a nice generic metallic grey color which adds a dull luster that looks good when depicting some worn metal surfaces. But some things look "other", and then I head to my paints and mix - "aluminum" plus "gunmetal", etc., to get approximately what I think something looks like.

You have a "zillion" options in the paint world. There is no one "best" out there which will work well for most things.

Just as a sort of case in point; take a good look at color photos of the 50 cal M2 machine-gun... Note that there are actually several different colors of metal present - not one uniform color for the whole gun.

I suggest keeping with pencil "lead" for many "common" things, and if you are doing something which may merit consideration of other color, look that item up and go mix some paints as desired.

Just, of course, my opinion and suggestions! Other's mileage may differ.

Cheers! Bob

Personally I use Vallejo oily steel 70.865 for the edges of roadwheels and sprocket teeth. It brush paints really well with a very small amount of thinning.

Thanks Max that's what I was looking for.

I second every word.