I have been painting my US weapons with Humbrol 101 - natural wood. However, this gives them a 'muddy' look, not the reddish-brown that I saw Garands and Thompsons have on Google images. Which Humbrol enamal is best for this affect? What do you guys use?
Any tips would be much appreciated.
Harry

i use tamiya red brown

I paint wood parts by first painting them with an enamel sand color then adding raw umber oil paint over the sand until I get the color I want. I then use the brush to create a wood grain effect.

Raider

Terry's method is pretty much spot on for me as well. I apply a base acrylic coat followed by a wash of raw umber and then dry brushed with a combination of red brown and some khaki to get those faint strips.

I always use an acrylic coat of flesh, and then you can stroke raw umber oil paint straight on since it's dry in about 2 minutes! A dab at one end, let the oil paint dry for 10 minutes or so, and then use a cotton swab dipped in thinners to drag the oil paint along and a clean 'oo' brush to put the stripes in.

Vinnie

Humbrol 160 is a flat meduim brown that is useful as a rust colour for tank tracks and as a reddish brown for gunstock parts. It can be streaked with a delicate touch of something like Humbrol 62 ( flat leather ) to represent grain but military riflestocks do not generally display much in the way of contrasting grain, being mass produced products.

Erin, very little of wht we represent looks realistsic. We are creating in miniature, therefore a certain amount of artistic license is required. :-) :-) :-)

Vinnie

I am of the artistic licence bent myself Vinnie and would paint my miltary rifle stocks up like zebra wood or even bright green but am terrified of getting a kicking from some lurking rivet counter.

In answer to the posters request I have had plenty of experience in handling various military weapons from the WW2 era as a gun, and optics reviewer for a couple of magazine publishers.
I have yet to see any military wooden stocked rifle. (Springfield , Lee Enfield, K98 Mauser, Mosin Nagant ,etc, to have anything other than a stable plain grained stock of timber such as beech, birch, coachwood or similar.
Of course a laminated stock could exhibit longitudinal colour contrasts.

To me kitset modelling is something that I do to relax and have some fun plus exercise a little disipline in getting a tidy build plus a reasonably realistic paint and weathering job..
I'm not the competitive type of builder so am not too worried if the kitmaker has committed a couple of accuray errors, after all it is just a bit of plastic. Nothing worth getting worked up over.


I

Thanks guys! Everything fully apreciated - great help!