Paint a Nerf Gun (n-strike Maverick)

Hello Ladies and Gentlemen, welcome to my first ible! today i am going to show you how to paint a nerf gun. I will be using a Nerf N-Strike Maverick rev 6 (available for 8-10$ but if you have a gun you dont mind taking apart you can use that) 

A nerf gun (of your choice, but again i will be using a Maverick)
Some plastic spray paint (krylon fusion plastic works well) one can of black and any number of other colors you want to use.
An exacto knife
some general purpose sand paper (or low grit if you want to minimize the risk of making scratches the paint wont cover)
some blue painting tape
a small philips head screw driver (I refer to these as tweakers)
and a cardboard surface for painting on top of (a grassy gun is no fun and mom probably wont be happy if you paint her driveway)

For the sake of time and fact that there are numerous different nerf guns i have already taken my maverick apart. There is a wonderful tear down of this gun on iFixit.com
 http://www.ifixit.com/Teardown/Nerf-N-Strike-Maverick-Teardown/1380/1#.T8G2U7Aoq_E

   It was highly useful as at one point i forgot where a spring went upon putting it back together. if you have a gun that does not have a teardown or you cant find a video or forum with one, take pictures of the guts before you start pulling things off, and be sure to get multiples incase a screw or spring is under a piece you remove. 

use your tweaker to unscrew all the screws in the guns shell and put them aside in a safe place where none of them will roll away (the last thing you want is to not be able to put your gun back together) gently pry the gun apart and you will see the beautiful orange and bright colored plastic that makes up the inner workings of your gun! 

now that you are inside your gun you should remove all the pieces that make the gun shoot and then anything else you dont want to paint

now that you have removed all the parts you do not want to paint, get your sand paper and lightly sand every piece that you plan to paint sanding the pieces makes a better surface for the paint to stick to and will help it last longer under the grip of your hands.

if you are using the lower grit sandpaper you may have to use more of it to sand the whole thing.

after sanding the pieces you want to rinse them with water to get all the plastic dust off, painting on top of that dust will cause the paint to come off easier than if you had not sanded at all!

I am sorry i have no pictures for this step, i had already painted my gun when I decided to make this ible :/ 

Now that you have sanded down and rinsed all the pieces of the gun that you want to paint, you want to make sure they are dry and place them on your painting surface, then cover them with two coats of black (you could probably use a gray primer and then black here as well, just make sure it will bond to plastic) this layer will help fill in some of the scratches and will make a great surface for adding extra paint. 

I used the base layer of black so that when my top layer starts to wear off it will be less noticeable, however if you dont want black to start showing through your paint when it wears off you can use multiple layers of your color of choice however this may not look as good and may require alot more painting.

HOWEVER before you get to adding your colors allow time for the base coats to dry in a dry and safe place for at least 20 to 30 minutes or you will get finger prints on that may never come out without more sanding.

Now that your base coat has dried,  you want to tape off any areas that you want to keep black or whatever your base coat color is. the exacto knife is incredibly handy and cutting around shapes to get smooth lines (such as around the barrel dome)

now that you have taped up your gun and used your exacto knife to make nice clean lines around your target areas its time to load the painting surface up with pieces again and head out to the yard (or other well ventilated painting friendly areas) and put on that shiny new finish! 

I recomend painting only one side at a time! that way you will have something to tape up while the other is drying.

make sure to get a good coat and not to miss any spots unless it is intentional If you mess up your tape job and get paint where you dont want it on the first one there are two things you can do. 
one - - you can start all over and sand paint tape paint, or 
Two - - make it look like it should be there! on the other half of the gun, do your best to replicate the same tape pattern and use the exacto knife to clean up the shapes! this happened twice on my gun and the end result actually looks kind of neat!

corners often hide from your spray cans beam so be sure to turn it if necessary or walk around the piece to get all the nooks and crannies!

after you finish painting, set your pieces in a safe dry place again to let them dry for at least 20-30 minutes, then you may check them to see if they are dry enough to handle without putting finger prints on them. 

once dry remove the tape slowly and you should end up with nice hard lines!

i

allow everything to dry and cure for a minimum of 24 hours! depending on how much paint you put on it could take up to a week to fully cure! so if your gun feels sticky i recommend letting it cure for another few days before picking it up again!

now reassemble your gun, be sure to refer to your photos from step 2 if you cant remember how everything goes together. 

enjoy your custom gun and be sure to post a pic or two for the rest of us to see! happy battles!