Getting the hang of this, Nerf Nitefinder

Having worked on two Nerf Mavericks, I decided it was fun to modify/repaint/fiddle randomly with stuff. I've always enjoyed making stuff out in the garage, and this allows me to scratch that itch. Anywho, for my next Nerf blaster I decided to go with a Nitefinder. I'd read a lot of good things about it on nerfhaven.com, primarily focused on the easy mod potential for it, as well as great performance. So, I hopped over to my local Target and picked one up for about $6. Oh yeah, did I mention they're dirt cheap? No? Well now I have. Obligatory pre-work stock blaster photo:

With that out of the way, let's begin. Initially, this blaster annoyed the crap out of me. Why, you ask? Because the main barrel assembly, pictured below, is supposed to separate and come apart easily.

However, apparently that feature is only present in some older versions of the blaster. The brand-new one I bought had the whole barrel assembly glued together. Annoying. So, after a few hours of fun time with my exacto knife, I was able to cut through the glue and separate the barrel out into its component pieces.

After this, everything went much smoother. Outside of having to smooth out the hole pictured above, the entire air restrictor assembly just fell out, which meant I didn't have to whip out the power drill. At this point the blaster was modified as much as I wanted, but I needed to get the rest of the pieces out of the inside before I could being taping and painting. This was especially true for the electronics. The Nitefinder has an LED "laser sight" built into it for kicks. Doesn't really work beyond 15 feet or so, but it's somewhat neat regardless (another pie in the sky idea of mine is to replace it with a real laser pointer someday).

After taking everything out, it's painting time! I didn't really like how the vinyl dye gray color I used on my v2 Maverick turned out, so I decided to forgo it for this blaster and instead use the Rustoleum Hammered Silver I had picked up for my v1 Maverick. Having a better idea of what I was doing this time around I was pretty sure I could make it work without issue. And so, I set about with the painting process. Oh, one other big change I made with this blaster was how I went about mounting the parts. My earlier plan of using cardboard boxes didn't work very well, and so I settled upon using big foam blocks that you might use in floral displays and whatnot. They're super cheap at the dollar store, and while they'll eventually need replacing, they last for quite a while. I also picked up a pack of driftwood sticks from my local JoAnn Fabrics which, when snapped in half, make fantastic mounting tools. And, of course, lots of blue painter's tape.

 I'm giving the inside a light coat of black vinyl dye because I noticed with my v2 Maverick that sometimes the seams don't match up 100%, and doing this prevents the original color from showing through.

That ought to give a general idea of the lightness of the coats of vinyl dye you have to apply. Eventually you end up with a solid color. And it's only 20-30 minutes between coats, so it doesn't really take as long as you might imagine. Anyway, once this phase was over I flipped over the main body, engaged in some strategic taping, and was ready to apply the silver!

With that done, I waited for the paint to finish drying, and then I took off all the paint, and then covered up all the silver so I could paint a few spots black for contrast. In hindsight, what I should have done was applied a black vinyl dye base coat to the front side as well, and then apply the silver over that. Would have saved me a needless step of taping, paiting, and eventual touching up. Oh well, information for the future!

At this point I was basically done, but I hadn't decided what I wanted to do about the circular areas on the blaster. Originally that's where Nerf had stamped their company name, and I had had thoughts about doing something wacky there, but ultimately decided against it. Since I had already used black paint to get the big areas, I really didn't feel like taping up the entire gun again (hindsight for the future here as well) and decided to just handpaint that circle black since I had a few touchup spots to address anyway.

With this all my painting was complete, sans a go-over with some clearcoat. Back to the shed!

Once that dried, the blaster was finished! I put it back together and unlike the v2 Maverick, everything actually worked! See, progress is possible if you keep working through the failures.

Also, I didn't re-paint the plunger draw because I couldn't figure out a good method to paint it without having to disassemble the entire plunger system. It also rubs a lot, and the paint probably would have left scuff marks. Some other things I learned from this project: better organization of paiting procedure, always sand down the area where the trigger moves (scuff marks again!), and that I can actually do this stuff and have it not fail. Always a good lesson, right?

Learning from failure, Nerf Maverick v2

In the time between my first attempt at painting a Nerf blaster and when the second Maverick arrived, I hit up the internet. First thing I did was find a more reliable source of information for how to paint blasters. The result was my discovery of several nerf-related sites, of which nerfhaven.com (a message board) had the best posts. It gave me the information I was looking for about which paints worked best, as well as how to modify blasters for better power and range.

As a quick refresher, here's the blaster I'm talking about.

Right off the bat, my process was different. This time, I took the blaster apart 100% of the way, and removed the air restrictors in the turret that restrict the power and range pretty drastically.

Another change I had made was to mount the blaster parts I was painting, rather than placing them flat upon a surface. This would allow me to give better paint coverage while not having to worry about the blaster pieces getting stuck as the paint dried.

The other two big changes I had made were the location of my painting and the spray paint I was using. I changed my paint location because painting outside was troublesome due to weather unpredictability, and there was also no way to keep objects in the wind away from lodging themselves in the wet paint. Fortunately, my dad allowed me to take over about half of the storage shed in the backyard, move in a table, and cover the area with plastic drop cloths to try to keep things clean, as seem above. This worked far, far better.

My first attempt used some Rustoleum paint that I thought would look cool (which it did). However, thanks to nerfhaven I discovered that the best paints to use were plastic-specific paints, such as Krylon's Fusion line. However, for the best of the best, what ought to be used is a product called Vinyl Dye. The appeal of this product is that unlike spray paint, Vinyl Dye actually seeps into the plastic and re-colors the material itself. The appeal of this for blasters is obvious, as using paints that build layers can inhibit moving parts and create rub marks of paint where pieces meet.

Anyway, at this point I was ready to begin the painting process. Vinyl Dye requires very light coats with about 20-30 minutes between applications, so I had already resigned myself to the reality of not being able to get this project done in a single day, or even a single weekend. So, I set about with the painting process and kept adding light coats of Vinyl Dye until each piece was thoroughly colored the way I desired.

So, at this point the exterior of the blaster have been thoroughly covered with a base coat of vinyl dye. The main frame will ultimately need a different color applied, but first I took the pieces that were "done" and moved them indoors, so that I could do some hand-painting of the finer details. I decided to use Testor's Enamel paint for the finer details, the same stuff you'd use for model painting.

So, at this point I took the main frame of the blaster back outside, and after liberally applying blue painter's tape and newspaper, ended up with something looking a lot like this:

And now at this stage, I painted those two exposed areas gray. The same gray I used on the turret pieces, if you were wondering. Once that part was done, I took the main frame back inside for any touch-ups that needed to be done.

At this point, the blaster is 99% finished. The only thing remaining on the to-do list was to apply a light layer of clearcoat spray paint, to help prevent rubbing off and chipping. Which, as you might imagine, involves another trip back to the shed.

Sure does make it look shiny though, when the flash fires off. In any event, everything has now been completed. Basic modification has been finished, and the paint job is done along with a clearcoat chaser. So now all I had to was re-assemble the whole thing and marvel at my own handiwork.

And that wraps up my finished Nerf Maverick v2. Unfortuanately, despite looking awesome, due to internal issues with the blaster itself (and a common problem with the model as a whole) after taking it apart and putting it back together it doesn't fire like it should. It works, but not very well. But I'm okay with that because it looks great, taught me a lot, and was fun to do.

The beginning of it all, Nerf Maverick v1

As an FYI, I've decided to make a bunch of posts to this blog in the chronological order that I actually did my projects over the past year, so that everything forms a cohesive pattern of improvement and progress.


Almost a year ago, I stumbled across a picture online.

This picture, in fact:

Obviously, the young lady in the photo is lovely. However, I also took note of the weapon she's holding. At the time, I had no idea what it was, but quickly learned through the comments that it was a nerf blaster called the "Maverick." With this information in hand, I decided upon two things immediately, and set out to a) buy one of my own, and b) paint it into bad-assery. Because Nerf blaster are cool, that's why.

I discovered that the Maverick was readily available online (and for only $10 or so!) and thanks to amazon, ordered myself one. A few days later, it arrived, and looks like this right out of the box.

The first thing I did after taking a few pictures of the body was to take the blaster apart, and see what the internals looked like in order to successfully put it back together again.

From here, I had looked up a few basic tutorials on painting nerf blasters and plastic in general online, and set about sanding off the "shine" on the plastic, so that the paint would have a surface to stick to. Also, I focused especially on the areas of the gun that had upraised lettering on it, such as the safety warnings and messages not to modify the blaster in any way. This is what the cocking mechanism looked like after I did some sanding on it. I don't have any pictures of the body, but it received similar treatment.

At this point I thought I was ready to begin painting. Since I live in an apartment, there wasn't anywhere I could use of my own to do some painting, and my dad graciously allowed me to do some painting out in his backyard, beyond the fence. I also picked up some spray paint that I thought would look cool.

At this point all I had to do was select some time to hang out at the house and do some spraypainting. A few days later I had the time, and set out to give it a try. The results....well, let's just say there's a reason I call this one my prototype.

Basically, the end result was a disaster. It might not look too bad, but because I didn't disassemble the turret mechanism, the blaster didn't work at all (I later fixed it to rotate properly, but it still doesn't work quite right). In addition, I had no idea what I was doing and tried to do all the painting in a single day. The paint I had chosen had a one-hour wait time between coats, and in order to make the process go faster I used the spray paint extremely liberally. You should be able to see the bubbling that occured in some of the pictures, a clear indication of massive over-application. In any event, shortly after I finished this project I ordered myself a second Maverick in order to try again with my failures in mind, along with a multitude of improvements to my process.

As a final note, this is what the blaster looks like at present, totally assembled, but totally non-functional as a blaster. I have grand ideas to someday see if I can't sand a lot of the excess paint off and make it functional again, but that's a ways off.