Cosmo:

I am thinking about camo painting my rifle but I have no idea how to get a good woodland pattern. I read Gars article but I don't want a grass pattern. Does anyone have a good method for getting a woodland pattern?

Many of the patterns I see are too small, everything blends together and it still looks like a gun. I have a pic of new unfinished scout on the weapons forum. To do that I cleaned the stock with alcohol then gave the whole thing several light coats of OD, several days later I masked it with the torn edges of 2" masking tape and gave it several coats of tan. About 6 "chunks of color seems to work well no matter what size thing you are trying to camo. A foam earplug works well to prevent paint from getting in the muzzle. Don't paint moving parts, I bought a M1A from a friend that had been COVERED with spray paint, it affected the fit and function of some things including the action and sights. Now it just has an OD stock, everything else is back to the original finish.

A friend of mine painted his stock and gun after removing trigger group. First he painted all the metal in O.D. green and then the stock the same when the stock was dry he cut news paper patterns out by cutting on the fold then taped the paper to the stock and painted in black when that dried he did the same with brown and another shade of green it came out pretty good. By the way he used automotive spray paint with Teflon.

I do a light undercoating of mottled colors, then use darker colors, matching my area, for the TOP half of the stock...sort of like how the belly of a lizard, etc is lighter than its bottom half. I use real leaves from my immediate AO as patterns.

I have painted a few wpns..... You can paint the barrel. Tape off the muzzle, sights, and bolt (I have cold blued silver bolts before too). For a woodland pattern you could first paint the whole thing flat OD green (have to remove all oil first - alcohol works ok). Then lay some leaves on it and over spray them with flat tan blotches and flat brown blotches - about 6-10" wide. When you remove the leaves you will see green leaves on top of tan and brown. You should of course attempt to get colors as close to your AO as possible. I think there is a better-written account of this at www.snipercountry.com. I also use grass, sticks and some (very little) gray and black.

Grey would be more used. What color is a tree trunk? What are you going to hide behind if the shooting starts, a leaf or a trunk?

I've long said the best "camo" uniform is a greenish field gray. But my flat gray paint is auto primer and not quite the right shade to use too much of.

The Rubicon

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