DIY Camo stock paint

[Bad Andy]

So I have a Rem 700 Walnut stock that I am refinishing (its my beater hunting stock). It is painted with a rattle can (dull green). I have been thinnking of creating a camo type/leafy pattern on it. Never done this but looking for ideas and techniques. This is a very low budget....I am talking rattle cans only maybe two more 2 more colors (green and brown)...I have no air brush and also looked at dip kits....again....low budget. Any pics of your camo jobs would be great....thanks.

[kencha]

What is the stock finished with under the paint? IOW, is the paint that is on there adhering well?

Krylon camo spray bombs work well. Not the most durable, but easily touched up or wiped off to start over.

You can get fancy and buy any of the stencil kits, or just grab a few branches and/or tufts of local grass to use.

Other than that, Krylon Webbing Spray can be used to make some interesting effects. I had to order it from amazon when I wanted to try it. No stores here carry it. (Well, hobby lobby actually had the gold, but I wanted the black.)

[Omega]

I used DIY stencils; hobby lobby has stencil sheets you can cut your own patters in. Then just layered my paint to come up with my own pattern using Krylon camo paint. Never done a weapon though, mostly my gear and stands but the technique is the same. On my weapon I use a wrap such as this: http://www.amazon.com/Tactical-Camo-...nett+camo+form it sticks to itself not your gun so it can be removed and reused over and over.

[Shooter6br]

I have seen "sponge painting" The animal you hunt will not care. Let you creativity run wild !

[leebuilder]

I have used number stencils of the caliber over the base colour. Turned out real neat. And have sprayed over small branches with leaves, just to give "forestlike" apperence.

[huntrick64]

One of the coolest DIY camo patterns I have ever seen was on an osage selfbow. It only used two colors. A lighter base coat then he took a dark color and stuck his index finger print in the paint, blotted off quite a bit on newspaper, then made contrasting index finger prints in random and overlapping fashion all over the bow. Nobody could guess how he did it, but when you looked close you could see his finger print in great detail all over. No need to sign it either, it's yours!

[Nobade]

I use either a torn up sponge or some grass to make non-stenciled camo patterns. It works nicely with practice. Use real sponge, the plastic ones don't tear ragged enough on the edges.

-Nobade

[Mk42gunner]

I have painted several guns over the years. After the first couple I quit trying to use stencils; too hard to get them to evenly stick to the curved surfaces, and homemade leaf stencils end up looking like pot leaves anyway.

Cheap spray paint works about as good as anything, just get flat colors not gloss. A light tan or green base coat and then just do short blobs of contrasting colors until you are satisfied.

Let the paint dry a little between coats, and once you are done, let the whole thing dry for a couple of days to a week before using it and it should last just fine.

Hope this helps,

Robert

[Cmm_3940]

Bulldogarms.com carries a good selection of premade camo pattern stencils. I've used the digicam pattern with fairly good results. They do have all the issues already mentioned about using stencils, but it's another option if you want to go that way.

-Chris

[1911cherry]

Use some local foliage , use the color you like most for a base coat. Leaves and grasses will make an awesome one off camo for you rifle. If I can steal my turkey gun back from my old man I'll post some pics of it , a rusty old 870 pump, it turned out great.

[duckey]

Thanks for the ideas.

[Ballistics in Scotland]

Almost all commercial camo finishes are totally wasted on deer, for two reasons. Their vision, other than for motion, is extremely unsharp, and they are almost colourblind. The pattern would need to be extremely bold, and of light and dark patches. It might have a lot more point with turkeys, though.

[longbow]

I haven't done gunstocks but I have camo'd several bows. My technique is to use local foliage for the pattern.

I spray paint the bow mat green then lay "local foliage" all over the bow and lightly spray mat brown, black, darker green or whatever colour/combination looks good to outline the leaves. Looks good, to me anyway, and easy to do... all with rattle cans.



I have also used sponge painting as already mentioned and that works well too.

Longbow

[Nobade]

Almost all commercial camo finishes are totally wasted on deer, for two reasons. Their vision, other than for motion, is extremely unsharp, and they are almost colourblind. The pattern would need to be extremely bold, and of light and dark patches. It might have a lot more point with turkeys, though.

Camo isn't for the deer - it's for the owners.

-Nobade

[Mk42gunner]

Camo isn't for the deer - it's for the owners.

-Nobade

That is a true statement. One time I was wearing a long sleeved hunter orange shirt and hat sitting quietly, but fully exposed, on the edge of a river bottom soybean field. A coyote popped over the river bank almost ¼mile away and came almost straight towards me.

Straight enough that he traveled 25-30 yards before the scope's vertical crosshair moved from his right shoulder to his left hip. I timed it several times as he trotted across the field. He never even spooked when he finally realized that big orange blob didn't really belong there, He was pretty close to twenty yards when that happened. He just turned and went around me.

I have often wished I had a good camera with me that day.

Then there is the white tail doe that stood looking at me from across a big hay bale for what seemed like five minutes, with my rifle pointing the wrong way...

Robert

[Yodogsandman]

Sometimes camo just prevents other critters and birds from squawking at you and alerting the game that you're after.

[Ballistics in Scotland]

That isn't surprising about the coyote. As long as you don't move and your smell isn't going his way, a red or plain orange jacket is just like brown or green to a colourblind animal, and fluorescent orange is pretty much like snow.

That is a good point about other creatures giving alarm calls, especially birds, which mostly have good colour vision. But when I was standing in a hedge with a rifle in the last moments of daylight once, I had an owl approach and fly about three times around me, no more than ten feet away, in the belief that I was a treestump, and a small bird or mouse might be scared from my person.

Mind you, I once visited a falconry exhibition in which they had several owls, and the man in charge said they are dim even by bird of prey standards. No falcon is a sort of airborn dog. Airborn shark might be more like it. They got a lot of rescue cases due to the Harry Potter films began. People used to buy owls illegally, and end up keeping them in packing cases.

[duckey]

Well I think I'll just paint it flat Olive drab rustleum and the spray a flat clear coat over it to give the base coat some durability as it tends to get marked up easily.

[Artful]

That isn't surprising about the coyote. As long as you don't move and your smell isn't going his way, a red or plain orange jacket is just like brown or green to a colourblind animal, and fluorescent orange is pretty much like snow.

https://dog-vision.com/

1. Unlike humans who have three different color sensitive cone cells in their retina (red, green and blue) dogs have only two (yellow and blue)^[3,4]. This does not mean that dogs can't see green or red objects! It only means that they can't distinguish green, yellow or red objects based on their color.

Human's view

Dog's view


Most animal's are more sensitive to motion per selective survival then just off color items in their environment.


A single strange color isn't that unusual in nature.

[helice]

If I'm not too late - Rust-o-leum makes a can of spray paint called American Accent Stone. I have used this with a number of black "Tupperware" stocks and have been universally pleased with the results. I hunt in an area where tan is the color so I used a can called Sierra, but they come in a lot of different colors. The paint has a nice texture to it that enables better grip. This texture is in black and brown flecks on my stock. One can had a lot of green in it. When I first posted that I had used this stuff There were a lot of replies that indicated that I was not the first or the only one to use it.