Thank you!! It really doesn't take much work to get a pretty decent blaster with this toy... especially for under $20.00!! This plastic is so easy to sand it was relaxing to work on. I'm in Houston and our weather is up and down, so I have to schedule my painting around the weather. I'm not complaining, in colder areas they have to wait till spring to paint.
Good luck on your hunt for one of these!! They're worth every penny!!!
Usually Edmonton weather is pretty consistent in the winter, cycling from "not that cold" (just below freezing) to "really f'ing cold" (around -30C, -22F), and generally hovering at just plain "cold" (around -15C, +5F) for most of the season. This past fortnight we've been down at record-breaking cold of -40C (which is also -40F) -- and next week they're forcasting +7C! (45F). If that happens, I think that'll count as "up and down."
My thoughts on weathering are this: first, as Mara Jade's Father points out, polymers don't show weathering in the same way. Weathered polymer is scraped, scratched, and gouged but not usually discoloured.
Second, no organisation ever wasted tech time on purely aesthetic issues. I work for a delivery company; that company bought a bunch of new vans last spring and dire consequences were promised to the drivers who dinged them up. Well, eight months later they're all still in excellent running order (which is very not true for the older vans, which are mostly in "it will pass an Alberta Transport inspection and you can just cope with the problems" condition) but they have lots of little dents and dings.
In a military context, edge wear on the paint job or minor scratches and nicks - which is mostly what our prop weathering represents - that don't impede the function of the weapon will be ignored. There's probably a detachment of six or eight armourers supporting an entire Stormtrooper Company. Depending on your timeframe, the regular troopers might have been draftees; even if they're volunteers, they might never have seen a blaster before they joined up. Keeping all those E-11s in working order is, I'm sure, a full time job. If one of the Scouts brought them a sidearm - which, let's remember, is not something he's actually expected to fight with, it's a last ditch emergency weapon for when the Scout's Speeder Bike breaks and a cattle prod for herding prisoners - and said "hey, the blueing is wearing off on the handle where I grab this," I fully believe the armourer would ask "does it go bang when you pull the trigger?" And if the answer was yes, the armourer would be "well, then, piss off, McGinty jammed his resonating chambre in backwards again, the daft twit, and I've three hours to finish a two-day fix."
In other words, I think even a perfectly maintained metal weapon would show minor surface wear after a few months, but I also think it's very plausible that a weapon wasn't made from metal. Most importantly, it's your prop, and it's easy to come up with a story that justifies any level of visual wear so painting the way you think looks cool!