In order to get my blunderbuss' finish particularly grimy, I'm going start with a cheap grey primer by Colorplace, which I know can clump up if sprayed a certain way to copy the rather bumpy texture of the original prop. After that, I'm going to experiment with pencil lead dust and drybrushing a variety of acrylic blacks and dark greys in different finishes. And before clearcoating it, I'm going to brush on a bit of baby powder to give the whole piece a general haziness.
The gripframe, trigger, and triggerguard will be basecoated with a stainless steel spray and then given a few washes of acrylic charcoal to knock down the shine.
The grips will be clearcoated first, and while it's still wet, I'm going to sprinkle a bit of coarse sawdust on it to simulate the rather rough-looking texture of the original's grip. After that, it'll be a brown base coat, acrylic handpainted stripes to look like grain in different browns, an almost black dark brown acrylic wash, and then finally a light brown drybrushed along the ridges to look like wear. The grip screw will be handpainted gold and then given a charcoal wash.
Speaking of tape, I plan on using hockey tape applied very haphazardly on the grip. I'm using a watered-down acrylic pale brown as a base and then giving the whole grip a dark brown wash. After that, I'll use charcoal dust or something rubbed in with my fingers to really get in those cracks.
For metal weathering, I've used the same technique for 10 years: Drybrushed silver applied sparingly to edges and corners to simulate wear and tear. Also, I never add scratches any other place unless I use a Dremel or 60 grit sandpaper to make the section look like the results of a drop or bad scrape.
As for rust, I'm gonna try a new technique that I only recently read about: Volpin, in one of his Skyrim helmet builds, described applying iron powder mixed with dark purple acrylic paint to areas he wanted rust. After spraying the iron powder with a mixture of hydrogen peroxide and vinegar and leaving the helmet alone for a day, he was left with beautiful rust marks. Check out the process
here.
Like I said before, this is just my plan (I won't be starting the painting process for another week or so), but I'm fairly confident it will work out. I've ALWAYS hated the painting process of any of my projects, but since the blunderbuss is such a mess finishwise, even if I screw up, no one will notice :lol
-Jonaas
It's a wonderful commentary, and very funny.
