Endoskeleton arm - dirty or clean?

[_Lee_]

About to start painting my endoskeleton arm but can see a lot of different paint finishes from chrome through the dirty and greasy.

How do you guys have yours??

 

[laellee]

BOTH! lol
I like to dirty it up thoroughly, and then do a pretty thorough cleaning job on them to get all of the grime back off. My goal is to end up with an arm that looks undamaged/pristine, but showing signs that it was also 'in-service' similar to applying and then wiping away dark washes on model aircraft panels.