What do you guys use to paint wooden tools on your tanks
TIA
John
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Whatever Vallejo wood color I am looking for. The last ones I did I used AK Real Color pens.
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If you mean the colour I use a mix of Humbrol 71 and add a touch of Revell SM 382 - both enamels:
and use a mix of silver and dark grey or black for the metal components. Of course, some tools are painted the base colour of the vehicle but that perhaps is self-evident and an easy enough fix.
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I usually start with a base of Vallejo Iraqi Sand, add some random lines of “grain” and then give the wood parts a wash of burnt sienna artist oil paints. This is a kind of starting point for me, and I’ll vary the colors and overall technique to add variety or achieve some specific “look” on occasion.
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What I assume the a pick axe handle, the grain is superb!
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An ancillary question is how often are the tools just sprayed with the rest of the vehicle? Is this mainly when done in the field, which armies do or did which. I like the look of the wooden handles and the wooden jack blocks, but on German WWII vehicles was that common or were they often painted the base color? Particularly in N. Africa, where early on vehicles were painted after arrival, was it more common to remove tools or just spray everything? Curious to know.
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Most tools are indeed painted the vehicle base color IRL. However, bare wooden handles with some woodgrain adds a pleasing visual interest, a contrasting color, and makes them pop.
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I agree completely. I suppose replacement tools might not be painted, and used one’s might lose some of their paint.
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Been using Vallejo Panzer Aces Old Wood
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It depends… Sometimes i use linoleum brown (Tamiya XF-79) or Wooden Deck Tan (Tamiya XF-78); but with the new AK Interactive paint markers, i use the wood base marker. It also depends on what color the vehicle is; I tend to use brown on tanks i paint OD or CARC Green, with the exception of German or Soviet/Russian vehicles.
Brown on this Tamiya Sherman Early production.
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This! I learned how to make tools this same way after talking with SdAufKla and seeing work from other Master Modelers! Adding those faint lines and subsequently covering them with transparent oils gives them a very relistic touch!
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Thanks! WWI aircraft modelers have established a very deep codex of how-to paint wood grain effects. The techniques I use are really nothing new.
If there’s any “trick” to it, I’d say that you need to keep the contrast between the base color and the grain color(s) very high and to leave space so that the graining doesn’t all visually blend together. Again, though, nothing new with any of that either.
You can use the same basic techniques on the wooden parts of weapons, too. This is an oop Hornet Italian Alpini in the 1/35.
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Yes, I remember seeing him. Incredible work.
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Mike, thanks for showing that your diorama. I remember it and have always considered one of the best dioramas I’ve seen.
Fred
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Pens. Are very helpful.
As for color, I try to find a BII (basic issue items) layout:
Abrams
Interestingly, during my tenure (1970-1997), the BII was often painted wood, either whatever green was being used, or black. The metal was nearly always black, but sometime green. Only recently have I begun to see light woods, and in some cases what appear to be commercial shovels and pickaxes in “civilian” colors/stain.
In most cases, crews won’t re-stain wood because its’s a PITA to do. A rattle can solves nearly everything.
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ALso, consider that newer replacement tools have fiberglass handles, so they’re molded either black or yellow.
Those most likely those are not part of a vehicle’s BII, but rather part of the mechanic’s tool shed.
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Sappers gonna sapper, no matter what color it is!
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