Just bought on E Bay. Instructions are in Japanese. Does anyone know any links as to which paints to use preferrably Tamiya paints. Any assistance is great appreciated.
Even if they’re in japanese, there should be a little hexagonal tag or English lettering with X or XF followed by a numeral. Those refer to Tamiya colors.
That said, since you’ll likely be hand brushing these items, you may want to look into more brush friendly brands of paint.
Actually you’d probably do best to see what the weapon looked like in real life and paint it accordingly, not all rifles are chestnut brown with bright silver metal like most are usually painted. Mix in a little blue with some gunmetal rather than use straight gunmetal, and try different tans/browns for the stocks. If you want to paint grain, I usually start with a light sand color, then apply a glaze of Vallejo medium brown and immediately begin “scratching” lines in this glaze with an old paintbrush. Works better than trying to paint individual lines.
I use a very similar technique to that which Hermes described. I start by painting the stocks a light sand color too, but instead of the Vallejo brown, I use a rather thick wash of Burnt Sienna oil paint, then scratching the grain lines in with a small, stiff brush. The results are exceptionally good, by far the best looking wood grain effect I have seen to date.
You might try using Google Image Search to find color photos of real examples of each weapon, as Hermes suggested, that way you’ll know exactly what they should look like when finished.
And finding “in real life” examples can be tough on a person. Most of the KAR-98Ks I’ve seen had stocks with six decades of “dark” on them; they’d run from a milk chocolate to a bitterweet chocolate color, once a person scaled them down. I’ve seen them from dead flat to full glossy, too. Most were “blued” to a semi-gloss black, with “in the white” bolts, too.
I rather like a flat-ish “walnut” color (lumber or nutmeat, your preference ) with a 50/50 of black chrome & steel for the metal. Picking the bolt out in straight Steel makes a nice touch.
The MGs in that set, well, you almost have to decide on a “when” for them. The MG-42 is nearly all metal, and benefit from using 4-5 shades of a metalic color. The MG-42 buttstocks I’ve seen IRL run from a bakelite sort of brown to a medium-gloss black.
I do believe I’ve seen the Layafette tripod in about every Germal martial paint color there was, too.
MP-40 are all metal, mostly, too. I like Steel for abase, then pick out the upper & lower reciever with steel with either silver or black added to make lighter & darker areas. The magazines tend to be dark, too, a metalic dark grey (but, I’m also recollecting 6 decade old parts, too).