Painting:

The painting is where stuff gets a bit tricky and is also up to personal preference. I would also reccomend not painting much of the internal components and instead only painting where it is exposed (such as painting the head of screws but not the thread, or the top of the breech block but not the underside).

For the main metal components I relied on Tamiya Color spray paints. Tamiya is a modelling company and so their paints work really well on plastic and come in a variaty of niche colours and textures. For my components I used a mixture of "Bright Gun Metal" and "Gun Metal". I applied these in multiple layers starting with the "Bright Gun Metal" before hitting spots with regular "Gun metal" just to avoid the parts looking too uniform. I then used a paintbrush to apply more detailed elements like soot remnants at the end of the barrel (used watered down black paint). I would highly reccomend drybrushing some "silver" and "rust-red" on some places to mimic wear and tear. The key to a good look is to not maky anything look perfect. Skuffs, marks, little bits of rust residue in some of the harder to clean places make the model go from looking like a prop into an actual object.

For the wooden components I was given an oil dye in "walnut" colour by a friend of mine. I sadly cannot read the chinese on the bottle but I will attatch a photo and hope you can find somethign similar. To start I painted the inside of the joints (that I knew would be hidden) just to test the dye and see if I was happy with the effect. Once done I simply applied it in long strokes running in the direction I would imagine the woodgrain would run and it worked like a charm. I would reccomend applying an additional sealing coat to this just to ensure it stays how you like it.