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How to Paint White Metal Barrel Castings

If you’ve received a kit, literally almost any craftsman structure kit, you probably have received some of these wood barrels. Or at least something very similar to them.

They’re great little castings, but along with the 55 gallon oil drums, they’re among the most common casting that we get.

I’m not complaining, but this presents an opportunity to start to experiment with them and begin to learn to paint them in new ways, since you probably have a few extra laying around.

Because they’re so common, you see them on almost everyone’s build as a detail part, but you don’t always see them painted and weathered to their full potential!

So often I see them painted one color, with no wash applied or if there is a wash, it’s just a basic india ink wash and that’s it.

Let’s get outside of the box and try something new (and affordable)!

I want to state first that if you have trouble seeing these or want a little help with seeing better and more detail up-close when you’re painting, you really need to get yourself a helping hands tool for your workbench.

The first step I take when painting white metal castings is to spray paint the detail part with a quick coat of a flat primer spray paint. I typically use black as it fills in the deep details and lines of the part. But from time-to-time I will use white, mainly if I want to paint bright pastel colors and don’t want the dark primer showing through.

Once the black spray paint is dry, it’s time to paint the detail part!

The colors you’ll be using are completely up to you obviously, but you’ll want to choose colors that are related to what you’re painting.

In this demonstration I used Folk Art Mushroom and Apple Barrel Burnt Umber. I also made a wash in another pallet well with the Burnt Umber and some water. The will be used in the final step.

Layering the paints:

The first and second layers of paint were the Folk Ark Mushroom. Layer one was applied a little bit heavier to cover the primed white metal barrel, but then the second was almost a dry-brush just to cover up any areas where the paint might have been a little thin. Let this layer dry before moving on to the next.

The second layer of painting I applied to this was for the barrel bands. Now I understand that these are metal bands, but I wanted them to be brown due to aging and the top layer of the metal banding having oxidation on them, giving them the brown look. You can certainly paint them a newer color metal, but I chose to stay with brown. Patiently paint the barrel bands on and make sure to listen for my tip in the video on my method for keeping my hands still while painting such small details. Again, allow for this paint to dry before moving on.

The third and final layer of paint is just a simple wash of the Burnt Umber and water. I applied two layers of the acrylic wash to bring out the details of the white metal casting, but the number of layers you applied will depend on how dark you want the wash, what the water/paint ratio was when you mixed it.

Don’t ask me what my ratio was though, because I don’t measure anything when I’m mixing paints or washes. I just wing it when mixing paints.

Once all three layers are dry, you can remove the bottom spru (if you haven’t already) that we were using as a handle. That’s if it even has one.

There you are!

Now you have no excuse to have boring HO Scale wood barrels that we see all to often painted just one color. It only takes a couple extra minutes and it really adds a lot more detail and character to your dioramas and layout scenes!

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