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VimFuego2000 — Lightened Flipfury
#nerf #customization #modded #paintjob #blasterpistol
Published: 2016-02-02 03:16:15 +0000 UTC; Views: 834; Favourites: 8; Downloads: 1
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Description
Trimmed down for battle-readiness, this Flipfury is well-suited to being a secondary weapon, as the absence of the extra bodywork makes it much more holster-able. The shaved grip gives it a more 'as-new' look.Related content
Comments: 13
That's very kind of you to say - thank you
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I just found your post on the nerf gun props thread on TheRPF by accident. i thought of a question thus: can you comment on how you did the paint job? it's hard to tell if the subtle gradients are the result of airbrushing, low contrast drybrushing, or rubbing off a darker top coat to partially expose a lower coat. Whatever it is it looks more convincing than the airbrushed blasters i've seen around even if that is what this is.
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Plain-old drybrushing in fact - but I take my time on it and go as light as possible. I see a lot of examples around that look like all of the edges have been cross-hatched, which to me suggests that they have way too much paint on the brush to begin with, and they also need to vary their angles more...
The Metallic gun-metal paint I used left quite a rough surface to work with too, which is great for drybrushing as it catches the paint really effectively, making it easier to build up those gradients that you can see.
I think the secret is to have almost zero paint left on your brush so that the effect is so subtle you almost can't see it to begin with, and work at layering it up slowly.
I hope that answers your question, but if you've got any others I'd be happy to answer them
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Completely thank you. so what was applied over the gunmetal?
I recently did a blue-painted ceramic sculpture and i meant to give it a low contrast two or three tone drybrushing treatment but time, resources, and skill weren't on my side in advance of the show i was about to participate in. Next time though, i'll get on it.
the results you got look more like sand-cast metal than what a gun would normally be made of which is stamped and machined metal, but that's not a bad thing. it's quite compelling here.
I agree with you about the crosshatching effect others seem to get. Metal scratches don't look like that IRL too. I saw a guy on that therpf thread do a minimalist paint job on a supersoaker where it was just flat black with selected edges believably painted in silver to suggest light wear, where bluing would have rubbed off. If one is going to depict wear, it's probably best to do it like that.
Obviously that's not what you were going for. just saying though.
I like that you left the grip clean.
Now that the blaster is minimized, have you had any body-flex issues?
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I used a matt aluminium enamel for the drybrushing - the gun-metal was an enamel also, but smelled more like a lacquer paint, which might explain the rough, sandcasted finish (quite an acurate description there). I might have been holding the can a bit too far from the surface...
Getting wear in just the right places is tricky - if anything, I'd say I'm probably a bit too heavy-handed when it comes to weathering. All or nothing! lol!
As far as body flex goes, there is a little bit, but not enough that it causes any problems. The flat panel behind the drums seems to hold everything fairly square and stop the top strut from getting overloaded. All of the relevant tubes stay aligned and the spindle isn't obstructed in any way, so I'm pretty happy with it as is. I didn't really build it for serious nerf-warring, but if I was I might have considered adding a piece of angled metal through the top strut under the rail, but that was a little more work than I wanted to do at this point - not to mention the lack of tools to do so...
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All sounds good. i thought enamel over enamel was a bad idea because the top enamel would lift the bottom enamel. not so?
Anyhow your results are great. good color choices.
My brother has an art foundry so i have come to learn how to ID different kinds of castings when i see them in teh while. again your results are quite handsome.
About body flex, sounds good. by (buy?) the way, I just got my hands on a Buzz Bee Sentinel which, though somewhat ugly out of the box and lacking a long enough stock, has nearly no body flex whatsoever. Except for some minor rattling of some large parts, i would say it's actually more resilient than most nerf blasters i've handled though i have heard that the new Recon mk.2 is pretty bulletproof too. The Sentinel also has a plunger volume comparable to the Longshot and can hit 100FPS without any mods at all. I kinda want to put the barrel vent from an alpha trooper on it and figure out how to give it a barrel extension in general. Not sure what to do about the stock yet. I'd be interested to see what you could throw together with it. at Kmart here in the US it's sometimes as low as $13. Also it's more reliable than the Slingfire and will last longer because it doesn't use gears.
Elsewhere on DA i saw someone make a fallout style rifle thing out of a flipfury. Your paint job is better i think so I'd be interested to see how you would do it if you did it.
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Enamel on enamel will work fine, as long as you give the base at least 24 hours to dry properly first. I will sometimes wait a week in between coats to allow the paint to completely cure.
Watch out for the BuzzBee blasters - the plastic they use is more rigid than Nerf's, and I've found it has a tendency to shatter quite easily. The edges of the broken pieces are razor-sharp too, so I would hesitate to give them to kids, tbh...
I'm planning to do more in the way of extreme modifications in the future, so stay tuned
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thanks for the tips. i will keep that in mind.
I did notice that the shell on the sentinel is quite rigid. it hardly creaks at all. or the white and orange parts don't. the gray parts do but they're a softer plastic.
I intend to embellish the thing a lot before it's even painted.
Some guys on youtube did a stress test of the sentinel that involved shooting it hundreds of times in a row and repeatedly throwing it down a hall onto a hard wood floor. it held up just fine. are you thinking of previous generation buzz be blasters? i've heard the build quality on those is terrible.
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I'm not sure what model it was - it looked a bit like a tek4, but it was single shot. Anyway, it got sent as part of a bulk load that I bought off TradeMe, and they guy hadn't used any packing in the box, so it was broken when it arrived. While I was fishing the broken bits out of the box I cut my thumb on one of them. Picked it up with the lightest touch too...
Looking forward to seeing what you do to the Sentinel - I love the lever-action blasters.
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bulk orders of used blasters always come packed creatively LOL. sorry you got hurt on it.
Whatever I come up with for the Sentinel i want it to be repeatable. Not sure what that will take at this stage though. if not repeatable, it might require Legos among other things, though i know that's heresy. Maybe for my first i should just keep it simple.
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Now that Lego's original patent has expired, there's heaps of knock-off stuff appearing in the thrift stores. I picked up a Joker action figure style set for $2 the other day. It's got loads of armature pieces as well as these bits of armour plating for the legs and arms - I should be able to do something interesting with them
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that's a great idea actually. My local thrift stores don't have anything of the sort however. But there's always other sources. I'm trying to convince some NIC 3d printers of the merits of making bits for the Sentinel including a stock extension. If any agree I will let you know.
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