Acrylic Color BARREL GREY

A gun barrel gray without metallic sparkle

BARREL GREY answers the situation where metallic paint looks out of place. Gun barrels, breech blocks, muzzles, chains, pulleys and machine parts rarely shine like a mirror in reality. This dark neutral gray suggests steel by being dark and flat, and the shine is then added only in the few places where the metal is really rubbed bare.

Neutrality is the key property here. The shade has no blue or brown pull, so it does not clash with the colors around it and can be used on a model in any camouflage. For the same reason it works as a universal tone for small details where you do not want to open another bottle.

• Dark gray with no color cast
• For gun barrels, breech blocks, chains and mechanical parts
• Seventeen milliliters, dries flat
• Thinned with water; once thinned it suits the airbrush nozzle
• Compatible with pigments and with a graphite sheen

The quickest route to convincing steel runs through three steps. The surface is painted with this gray, a dark glaze is let into the shadows and finally the edges are gone over with a pencil or with a dry brush loaded with a metallic shade. The metallic look is then created by contrast rather than by overall shine, and the model keeps its scale.

With wear, the rule is that the paint rubs off only where the crew's hand reaches, where parts touch each other or where the loaded ammunition passes. Random highlights scattered across the whole surface destroy the effect instead, because the eye recognizes at once that such a pattern cannot arise in normal service.