But really.... who doesn't like cake? Thin people with no souls, that's who.
I've always loved Jules Verne and his humanist, optimistic take on the technological revolution of his time and his visions of what it meant for the future of our race. Being a true visionary his flights of fantasy were not all sunshine and gum-drops. There was always a warning about what could happen if we fail to acknowledge the fact that our technology is growing faster than humanity is growing as a race. I am also a fan of shiny things and gears.
We have always had a surplus of Nerf guns at Artix Entertainment's secret underground lab, as any gaming company worth it's salt will have. Predictably, what started as a kooky stocking stuffer turned into an all out Nerf war as people started spending their own money on the biggest and baddest Nerf weapons available. I, however, found myself quite satisfied with my Mav-6.
It is a handsome weapon with a decent heft. After poking around on the intertubes for an hour or so I found that the Nerf N-strike Maverick 6 seems to be the Steampunk weapon of choice for a lot of folks. Here is an image of the original gun and the finished product:
First I found myself some medium grain sandpaper. I had some laying around the house.
Once I had my sandpaper i went to town sanding off the N-Strike logo, the "Maverick-6" beneath the barrel, and the NERF logo from the slide. Once sanded, it looked like so:
For the next part, you want to keep your mask on and get yourself to a well ventilated area away from any kind of heat source or anything nice. It's spray paint time! I grabbed an old pizza box, and a can of metallic brass spray paint from Big Lots for two bucks and went to the alley behind my apartment. I sprayed one side, let it dry for an hour, flipped it and sprayed the reverse side, let it dry for an hour, then sprayed the front, back, bottom, top and the yellow section UNDER the slide. I had to hang it on a nail for that last bit.
Once the base coat was done, it looked like this:
My next step was to grab some silver paint that my beautiful wife had lying around and paint some of the accents silver. This can get a little sloppy unless you have a steady hand. I also ran the sand paper lightly over the slide and handle as I planned on painting certain part of the gone like wood.
Now it was time for some flourishes. I had some acrylic paints lying around the house so I used Google Image Search to find a nice wood grain sample that worked well with the color of the gun. I laid down a base coat of a nice warm red-brown, then added the grain by hand using some slightly lighter and darker paint.
My wife was pretty impressed with my hand painted wood grain. I thought it looked like bacon.
Mask time again. I covered the entire thing with a coat of glossy finish that I also grabbed for 2 bucks from Big Lots. The shine on the wood grain made it less bacon-y.
Now it's time for a trip to Home Depot. I just gave myself an hour to wander around and grab anything that looked like it might be useful. I a coil of copper pipe binding material, some nice short screws (if they were too long they might interfere with the function of the gun), some plastic do-dads that had something to do with plumbing, and some gripper washers that looked enough like gears to get the job done. The entire trip cost me about $18.
I also thought a leather grip on the gun would add some class so I stopped by the local fabric store and found a HUGE fake leather remnant for $5. I headed home, spray painted the do-dads, used my basic kitchen scissors to cut the copper coil which was NOT easy and fairly dangerous. It produces a lot of sharp corners that I had to round off. Even thought I plan on mounting this thing on the wall, my 9 month old son will find a way to get to it and accidentally cut his face off.
I super glued a small piece of the pleather remnant to the handle and used an exact-o blade to cut away the excess, then I used the screws to seal the deal. The finished product looks like this.
Some people like to add some dry-brushing to give it a weathered look, but I wanted my gun nice and shiny. There are LOTS of great tutorials on the web and on YouTube but you have to spend some time looking.
Total Cost (with gun,): about $50. Total Time Spent: About 4 Hours.
I plan on doing more of these when I get some time and cash, both of which I'm short on at the moment.
