What is Gunmetal?

Gunmetal. When people talk about it, they are specifically talking about Gunmetal Grey, which is a favorite go-to color for frames when plain black or grey becomes too boring.

But what is Gunmetal? As the name implies, it’s a description how the metal a gun is made of looks like. Most earlier guns and weapons were made of cast iron, which where carbon black or dark grey, but has an inherent sheen when polished, hence, gunmetal. Nowadays, guns are made with various metals, alloys and composites, so, gunmetal is used as a blanket term for the inherent hues in these metals. Apple’s Space Grey is actually Gunmetal Grey.

Sources: Google Image Search and Apple Dot Com

 

Gunmetal Grey. Simply put, Gunmetal Grey, or gray, describes the tones of black and is not really just a single tone or color. As with the photo above, it can range from light to dark and in various metallic sheen, regardless of the finish, whether it’s matte or gloss. In fact, gunmetal grey is really nothing more but metallic grey, and the term is used to distinguish it from other metallic colors. If you do a search for metallic grey, you’ll get a few hits that look like gunmetal grey. Note: There’s really no such thing as shades of grey, since greys are all , since greys are all tones of black.

To illustrate, brands show Gunmetal as a gradient.

Various tones of Black and Gunmetal

 

The thing with black is, however, it doesn’t really look black with sheen, rather just dark grey. It’s the same case with Flat Black.

There are hobby paint brands that carry an specific Gunmetal. Tamiya has it in cans, bottles and jars. The one I use currently is Vallejo Gunmetal Grey.

Gunmetal Paint Brands

 

When these are unavailable, one can replicate, or apropos, simulate Gunmetal Grey using specific spray cans. To achieve the effect, all one has to do is layer Bosny White Pearl over Primer Gray or Flat Black. White Pearl is also a gloss top coat, but since I prefer flat finishes, a layer or two of Flat Clear will mute the gloss, but maintain the metallic sheen. 

Left Spoon: Gunmetal Grey. Right Spoon: Gunmetal Black

 

To compare, here’s a sample of Vallejo Gunmetal Grey and one done with Bosny, in two lighting conditions. Can you guess which one is which?

 

will the real sLiM sHaDy please stand up, please stand up, please stand up...

 

Now, if you are not familiar with how Vallejo Gunmetal Grey looks like, you have a 1 in 2 chance of guessing it correctly, but that’s still a guess. In this example, however, I made it rather obvious. You also be surprised that there is at least one other Gunmetal color I know that is not grey.

Do you like Metal or the Blues?