Level 0: Steampunk a squirt gun

Good Morning All:
I am new to the site, so please tell me to move along if this is not the correct place for this.

I am new to prop building, but find it fascinating. I'm an old man with the same interests I had when I was 10, with a little more spending money

I want to jump head first into building prop weapons, guns and swords, and have watched 79% of everything on YouTube (including the cat videos) about the subject

Seems like "steampunking a squirt gun" is a good tutorial on the basic techniques, and a cheap way to build my skills. I've chosen my genre, I have a mental vision of what I want my finished product to look like, I have assembled the tools and supplies that I want to use in my attempt...

and I am stuck.

Simple question: Rub and Buff. All the video I see everyone smears it all over their work, to create a metal creation...but the truly detailed videos only use one color. I'd like to make some areas "stainless" and some "brass" and maybe even some "black iron" all on the same squirt gun. I cant find anything illustrating this. Can I "paint" with rub and buff? Can I smear some areas with ebony and some with silver, and how concerned do I need to be about creating a dull silver mixing zone between them? And, if I buff it all at the end, do I have to worry about cross contamination?

again, my apologies if this is not the correct place, or the correct forum. If its not, please point me in the right direction and I will report when I have a clearly defined project in the future. If this is the right place to ask this, please help

You can totally "paint" with rub n' buff. It is a waxy paste, slightly like a tube of oil paint that's dried out a bit and is thick and crumbly. So you need things like q-tips, popsickle sticks, old brushes you don't like any more, torn corners of paper towel, and fingers to get the stuff convinced into the corners you want it in.

One way to work with different surfaces is to mask off some of them with tape.

To get the widest variety of looks, though, use a variety of techniques. It is hard to go wrong with giving the entire prop a nice coat of black paint as a starter. If you are clever with applying the rub n' buff some of that black will remain untouched in the cracks and crevasses and that will make the result "pop" (as in, the textures are easier to see, the prop looks weathered and more realistic).

And, yeah -- you will end up going outside the lines or smearing one thing on to another. Be prepared to go back a few times touching up edges.

Hope this helps.

thank you so much!!!!! I started with a nondescript 99 cent squirt gun as a test platform, just so I could screw it up a dozen times and try and try and try. I look forward to posting a serious attempts at bringing some of my dreams to tangible existence the old fashioned way...doodads, trinkets, color, texture and whimsy