I'd love to know your technique; I've been wanting to snag another one of these with my tax return and give it a proper go.
I don't know if I'm the best to give you advice since it's my first "real" airbrushed (had it for two/three years now, never used it for this kind of stuff (mostly for the props I made for short movies, webseries and stuff). I trained before by doing some repaint job on a K2SO Big Figure (I may post it soon too, but not now since it's a gift for my wife
).
Basically to sum up :
- I opened the gun in two separated parts (that was SO tricky since they're glued/melted, just so I can work on the basic electronics, remove the "water pistol" part. Put the trigger on a spring so it can still be used. I've painted everything at ~20PSI (after looking at some advice here and youtube).
- Closed it and glue it back together, using Plastic Cement I usually use for styrene. And it worked pretty damn well!
- Closed any gaps and the filling hole with plastic puddy (again, from Vallejo... I have no parts in the company, it's just the easiest thing to get in uk
)
- Gave the entire gun a good sanding (@220 mostly). I forgot that step in my first go and the primer wouldn't stay (of course...). You really have to sand it entirely and not miss any part.
- I used 4 or 5 layers of primer. Since the gun is transparent and I wanted to add LEDs, I really wanted it as opaque as possible. Vallejo recommend their Gloss Black in the Metal range. And of course, if you're doing metal, I tried on a grey and gloss black, gloss black is definitely the best.
- After masking the black part of the PKD, I added the steel paint. Chrome was giving me pretty much the same result though, didn't saw massive difference. And it was too light for my taste, so I gave it a really thin layer of gunmetal, airbrushing from a greater distance, just to give the dark grey I wanted, without being gunmetal.
The extra metallic part (screw, etc...) were hand painted with a fine brush. For the weathering, I couldn't wait. And even though oil paint is better for it, I used acryllic with a lot of water, brushed it over the gun and removed the excess with a paper towel, gently, letting the brown and black paint set in creases. Did some dry brush thingy too. And even used a metal/silver paint pen on so part, to do scratch.
I decided to stick with the primer for the black part of the gun... which is not a thing to do I guess... but as I was adding a varnish (metal gloss) I though it wouldn't harm. I couldn't find any black metal available around me. And removing the masking tape created some holes (that's why I insist on sanding). Nothing a good brush couldn't fix.
So here it is... nothing really fancy, just "noobie" stuff here I guess. But had a lot of fun and learned a lot. Took me about 2/3 days. If I had to do it again, I would try to get it smoother and shiny on the black part. Here it's a bit too rough compared to the OG prop. I'm gonna try putting more paint next time, I saw people using puddles in their advantage... the main thing I learned to avoid
.
