Quote:
Originally Posted by Group 4
That looks most excellent. Good job.
|
Quote:
Originally Posted by PHXSHOOTER
PD, Great shot and awesome finish on the XD.
|
Thanks for all the nice comments. I think I may have described the technique before, but I'll share it here in case anyone is interested in doing their own gun on the cheap.
I used three cans of Krylon Camouflage paint (with Fusion Technology) in Brown, Olive and Khaki colors. We have a lot of pine trees here, so pine needles are easy to come by, but you can also use a straw broom (you can disassemble the sweeping end or just cut off the needles for this purpose).
Clean and degrease the gun thoroughly. I used a paper towel dripping with cheap isopropyl alcohol. I took out the slide stop lever and takedown lever and even removed the striker pin plate (or whatever it's called) at the back of the slide.
Make sure you mask the sights with tape. You can spray over them and remove the paint from the sights afterwards, but it's easier to just cover them to begin with. I also found out—the hard way—that it's best to lay a piece of masking tape inside the slide to prevent paint from going into the slide rails. Again, you can remove the paint after you're done, but it will be easier to just keep the paint from getting in there at the beginning.
As long as you don't goop the paint on too heavy, you shouldn't have any problem with the loaded chamber indicator sticking from paint buildup. I didn't mask it and it didn't get sticky at all after the paint had dried. Same thing with the grip safety. I loosely assembled the frame and slide just enough to allow the exposed parts to get a coat of paint. If you line them up just as they would be on the finished gun, there will be a few millimeters of unpainted slide just at the front under the frame. Don't forget to insert an empty magazine!
Once it's all cleaned and the parts are removed or masked, you can start spraying. I covered the entire gun with Khaki as a base coat. You can use another color if you live in an environment that is darker than central Florida, or whatever color you prefer.
Now lay some pine needles loosely over the gun. If you can clearly see the gun under the needles, you need more needles. It should be hard to see there is anything under there. It seems to work best if you have them randomly arranged across the surface and not too tightly packed or too close to the gun. The real benefit to this technique is the effect produced by having the needles block the spray in different ways. Some of the needles will leave a very distinct line and some will be very obscure. If they are all pressed tightly against the surface they all leave a very clear impression of where they were touching. Shoot a few lines through the needles with Olive or Brown and wait a minute or two for the paint to dry a bit before you move the needles to take a look. I know it's hard to wait when you want to see your results, but if you pull the needles aside while the paint is still wet, you'll get streaks across the finish (but maybe that's what you're going for! Hehee!).
Take a look at what you've got and see if it's too light or too dark. On my first attempt I was too far away from the needles and the paint was barely getting to the gun. I sprayed again from about three inches away and the results were much better.
Lay the needles down again in a random fashion and try another few shots of your remaining color. Spray in different strokes from the last color and you should get a pretty good random pattern that looks really nice already. If you stop now, you'll have a great looking camouflage job and it only cost you $12 for paint.
If you want a little more detail in the camo, rip some corners off a kitchen sponge and dip them into little puddles of the spray paint. Dab the wet sponge on another surface before you touch the gun (to remove the heavy drips) and lightly dab the sponge on the gun surface to add little touches of detail. You can use all three colors, but use a different piece of sponge for each color.
If you use Krylon like I did, it won't be as tough as Duracoat (obviously), but it costs less than $20 and if you don't like it you can start over with relative ease.
I still have two guns in the safe without a custom paint job, so I'm waiting for warm weather to do those and I'll probably make a YouTube video when I spray them. I'll post here when I get around to doing that.
XDTalk Forums - Your XD/XD(m) Information Source!
»
XD's. Post em up, EVERYONE
[/IMG]
Linear Mode
