“I should be writing…”

To be fair this is one of those statements I make quite often. “I should be writing…” generally refers to absolutely any time I am doing anything else. Which is quite often. On occasion however any writer needs to do something else. Creativity in words is not the be all and end all of creativity. Sometimes you need to do something more practical and physical.

Bad News started out as a simple nerf shotgun, designed to firing its eight dart load in pairs, as you pump it in typical pump shot gun style

For those that are interested, as last time I did this I got a few questions on the nitty gritty of what I did, the first task was to ‘key’ the surface of the gun with san paper, partly to get rid of the raised words, but mainly because shiny plastic doesn’t take paint well, even model acrylic’s designed for plastic. As such ‘keying up the surface with sand paper gives you something that will actually take pain easily.

The paints are layered, and of Couse a wise man would have taken pictured with each layer if he was going to write a blog post about turning a toy nerf gun into a steampunk nerf gun he would have taken pictures at each stage…. But when am I ever wise…

The first couple of layers are dark metallic acrylics, and dark browns for the stock and pump handle. Then a third layer of bright metalic’s was added, before a finishing dark wash to give it a slightly grimy used look. There is also a layer of matt model varnish over the trigger and the section of the gun down which the pump is pulled to protect the paint from the slide.

The metal heat cage over the top of the barrel, is actually the metal mesh from an old office letter tray, cut to size and shaped with the edges doubled over, it was then painted in a dark iron metallic to give it a less shiny aluminium look. then screwed in place. Interestingly the first time I screwed it on I jammed the pump mechanism, which was mildly annoying as I prefer these things to still work when complete. luckily when I stepped the screws back with washers it cleared up the mechanism and it still works.

The blue wire is just wire from a power cable coiled tightly around a nail and glued in place, while the raised sections it connects to are actually plastic self-adhesive cable tidy’s I used to cover up the ‘NERF’ icon and give the gun a little extra shape and design.

The stock handle was covered with 3mmx 2mm leather thong carefully wrapped around it to held in place by friction.

As projects go it was a fun one, and done over the course of several months as I originally was doing this to offer as a sign up prize for my mailing list at events, but as Covid put pay to that, its just another of my steampunked nerf guns decorating bits of my house. Hopefully when the world opens up once more and I can get out and meet people I can use it as intended… But as I quite like this one now its finished I may need to make a second one for that.

Anyway, as I said at the start of this, I should be writing novels not mini guides to steampunking a nerf gun. So I’m going to get back to that.

Mark