My Little Nerf Project

Numlockman1 · Dec 19, 2016

So my young cousin's really into Nerf. Every Christmas we have a big extended family lunch, & he always tries to start nerf wars. So this year I decided I'd take on the little bugger, & toss in a few years of model making experience, with a ...not so stock dart gun.

So, I figured I'd document it. If it's welcome on here, I know it's probably not exactly what people think as a prop. So hopefully it can share some ideas, & get some much needed advice when I need it.

I wanted to start off with something that was already fairly realistic looking, performance I can tweak later if I feel the need to. So I decided on the Buzz Bee gunsmoke.

Unfortunately I didn't think to take many photos before I got going, but I guess there wasn't anything complicated happening. Gave it a very light sand to remove the gloss layer, then on with the primer.
Note: I have masking tape over the cap thing at the end of the barrel to keep that as the stock orange (might repaint to red if I think it might look better once finished) encase I get pulled up for a breath test & have it in the truck... :lol :unsure

So while that was drying & setting in, I moved to the shell modifications. Out came the air restrictors! I managed to get an extra 4ft in average range just from that..

Painting for the shells will come later when I work out how to get a nice brassy colour on the bottom.

Day Two: Masking up what will eventually be a faux wood (fingers crossed...

), & putting the base layer of silver on.

To do list:

Shell Paint. I'm thinking a red body, with as close as I can get to a nice brass base.
Layering of some black on the barrel for some mild to heavy weathering.
Lighter weathering on the breach area, might look into replicating some pitting.
Faux wood paint for the shoulder stock. My idea for that is to lightly layer some black first. Followed by a layer of brown, some of which to be sanded down to give a light wood grain effect. A few more layers of brown, & sanding & hopefully that will net me some fairly alright Faux Wood. If anyone has any suggestions on a different method, I'm very keen to read through them. Being the hardest, & most visible component, it does need to be done right. & I'm mostly just guessing with my technique.
Finding some spare buckles, & an old belt for a sling.

If anyone has any suggestions I'd absolutely love to hear them!

rchrz60 · Dec 20, 2016

You're doing an awesome job, and yeah, I'd still consider it a prop.

I took my kids Han Solo Blaster and Clone Trooper Blaster, both Nerf guns, but repainted both of them. Now the Clone Blaster looks more like a Stormtrooper Blaster and I even changed the blue lights to red. Han's Blaster now looks like something that was on the set for Harrison Ford to use, it's awesome.

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Numlockman1 · Dec 21, 2016

rchrz60 said:
You're doing an awesome job, and yeah, I'd still consider it a prop.

I took my kids Han Solo Blaster and Clone Trooper Blaster, both Nerf guns, but repainted both of them. Now the Clone Blaster looks more like a Stormtrooper Blaster and I even changed the blue lights to red. Han's Blaster now looks like something that was on the set for Harrison Ford to use, it's awesome.

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

I was very close to getting the Han Solo blaster. The night before I went down to grab this I was watching Magnificent 7, so that sort of inspired me to go with the break action.

Speak of the devil...

Day Three: Masked up for the blackening of the barrel. Hopefully this'll lightly sand back well to reveal the silver coat below for some weathering.

Work on the cartridges continues. Originally I was going to go with a modern plastic shell look, having the red body with brass bases. Changed my mind on that for the more vintage look, decided to take off the masking tape & either keeping them as silver, which looks a lot better than I thought it would, or putting a very light coat of chrome yellow over that to hopefully equate a brassy colour. Then maybe some semi translucent smoke over that if they look a little too 'new'. But I'm very tempted to maybe emboss some paisley type designs on them & go for the Sterling Silver look.

JamesM242 · Dec 21, 2016

Looking forward to seeing how this turns out - a technique I have used before is hitting the silver base coat with a clear coat before the darker layer of paint - this gives you a little wiggle-room when it comes to the light sanding.

Numlockman1 · Dec 21, 2016

JamesM242 said:
Looking forward to seeing how this turns out - a technique I have used before is hitting the silver base coat with a clear coat before the darker layer of paint - this gives you a little wiggle-room when it comes to the light sanding.

Yeah, I was hoping if I could get away without a clear coat over that if it would still work. I've not got a lot left in the one can I have still. My backup is if it doesn't work quite right with that setup, I've got enough silver & black to go over again & throw a clear coat in.

Numlockman1 · Dec 22, 2016

Day Four: Started off with the barrel weathering. This actually worked a lot better than I thought it would, it looks like I have some of the silver layer below, & some of the blue from the primer coming through which I quite like the look of. At first I felt I went maybe a little too overboard on the weathering, & I took off a little too much in a few places. The plastic is a lot easier to sand back than I thought.. I just used a scour pad to take off the gloss layer.

Up next to correct this, & to give a second tone to the weathering was some touch up paint. For this I used a tooth brush, which is something I've used a bit with model kits, but nothing on this size. After that I ran over everything with a little black acrylic paint to darken it out a touch more.

Next was the breech weathering. For this I used the tooth brush again, but developed a keep it simple stupid approach. Basically I put too much on, but as I was scrubbing some away, it gave me a very realistic... "someone trying to clean something off" stain (I wonder why..

) I think tomorrow I'm going to hit it with some of my smokey colour can to remove a bit of the gloss that's still there from the silver, in hind sight I probably should have given it a light go with the scour pad.

Cartridges! So I didn't get anywhere near as far with these as I would have liked today. It was windy as hell, which made the cardboard I paint them on just refuse to sit on the rack. Subsequently I spent around 5 minutes looking for one of the cartridges when they fell on the ground. So, I decided to attempt the brass. It sort of worked. I'm going to hit these with some weather work with the toothbrush tomorrow, & probably throw a coat of that smoke on them to try & hide the iffy bits where it's a touch too yellow.

Numlockman1 · Dec 23, 2016

Day Five: Happy Christmas Eve Eve!

Riiiiight, so today I had to get a crack on to get this more or less finished, & we got there but holy howitzer this tested me.
So we started out extending the silver plating. Originally I was intending to make the break action pivot in the faux wood, but I decided I'd change over to the more realistic metal pivot. Then came a little weathering, gotta love that weathering!

Once that was done off came the masking tape that had been on there for a few days. There were a few spots where I didn't sand down the gloss enough & I lost some primer. So I sanded that down a little around the area to smooth it off & hopefully give something for the layers above to grab on to. Then the masking went on for in prep for the brown.

So then we were on the wooding of the wood! I went for the real aged wood feel, one of my visions for this dart gun is to look like a 120 year old frontiersman's gun. I went with light coats of black applied with a thick brush. Building up, & sanding away with the scour pad bit by bit. Patience was the second biggest component of the wooding. Painting running along the same axis was the biggest. Little bit by little bit was a big key as well, not too much on the brush, not too little. I'd start with streaking sections a bit at a time, clearing excess off the brush on the cardboard, then heavily brushing the streaks in. I sanded as I went, sanding in the same direction as the brushing. Eventually because of the very light sanding I started to get a texture fairly similar to that of wood that hadn't been polished in a while.

Finally, here's a small sneak peak of the final product that I'll be posting back with tomorrow!

Numlockman1 · Dec 24, 2016

Day Six: Happy Christmas Eve!

Today was all about finishing it off, which the further I get with this, the more I realise that there really is no clear finish line.
Well, we started off cleaning up the edges where the masking had overlapped a touch too much & so forth. Just dusted it off with the grey & sanded it down a small touch.

On next was the clear coating. I started to actually quite like the high gloss look that the wet paint gave, might be something to look at in the future. Cartridges stayed the same since last shown, just threw a light clear coat on them to help avoid any paint loss.

Alright, enough stalling. The last thing I did was attach a sling with a loop to shorten the belt if needed. Unfortunately I was losing my light very quickly & didn't have time enough to wait for the glue to dry & take off the rubber bands. I'll grab some snaps tomorrow & edit them in.
I hope you enjoyed the journey as much as I did. I'm certainty going to miss working on this.

Merry Christmas! I hope next year brings you all some awesome projects, & loads of costumes. xD

JamesM242 · Dec 24, 2016

Nice touch with the sling!

My Little Nerf Project

Numlockman1

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rchrz60

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JamesM242

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