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Paint your Rifle – How do I do it?

In this blog I’m going to explain you how to paint your rifle. The technique that I’m going to show can be used for one color but also for multiple colors. 

There are 2 different ways to paint your rifle.
1) You just put it on the floor, in one piece and start spraying. 

2) You take apart your rifle in the smallest pieces and paint the separate pieces. 

I’m not a fan of the first one because it’s really hard to get it done right and hit every small part of the rifle. If you just want some camo on your rifle to break the black blob that you have, that is doing the trick. 

But if you’re like me and you like a bit of style on your rifle, you’ll go for the second option and that’s the option I’m going to talk about today. 

There are a few steps you need to do to get to the end result. 

  1. Disassemble the rifle 
  2. Clean
  3. Paint
  4. Assemble
  5. Optional paint

I’m going to go over the different steps with my ICS CXP ARK

Before you start, think about what you want to paint and how your rifle will look like. Make a drawing or photoshop something to get the idea. For the ARK, I wanted it to be the opposite of the black/green that is available. Paint the metal parts. 

Step 1, disassemble the rifle 

You take your rifle and you disassemble it as far as you want. Some pieces of rifles will not be able to take apart, but then you can use tape to mask the parts you don’t want to spray. Make sure to put all the screws in an order where you will remember where they came from. Take pictures or a video that will help you to get it back together. I choose not to paint the screw because I like the look of black screws on a green body. I also choose to not paint some other smaller parts to have some contrast. 

Step 2, clean

After you have taken your rifle apart and have taken all the pieces you want to paint, you have to clean/degrease the parts to make sure the paint sticks better to the metal. Before you put any product on it, make sure that all the sand and dirt is removed. I did not sand down the pieces, that will make sure the paint will stick even better, but I never do that and it works fine, for my look. Make sure that all the pieces are nice and dry before you go to the next step. 

Step 3: Paint

The painting process is one that you don’t want to rush. Take your time to put thin coats of paint on it and let it dry. Make sure that you hit every little corner. When it’s dry, turn the pieces around to hit all the spots on the other side. Here I chose to put them on a surface, but if you have to place you can also hang them. It all depends on the size of the pieces and how to hang them. Here we have smaller pieces that are not easy to hang, so that’s why I choose to put them on a bench. 

Coat 1, let it dry, check it, move the pieces, coat 2, let it dry, check it, move the pieces, coat 3, … and so on. After 2 days of putting on light coats, letting it dry completely all the pieces had a nice green color. 

Some people use a clear varnish over the painted pieces, I don’t do that because I like the way it looks and how it wears down after time. But that’s my personal opinion. If you want to protect your paint job a bit better, you can spray some clear varnish over it. 

Step 4: Assembly

You remember the part where I said, take pictures or video and put everything in a spot you can remember, well this is going to help a lot here. Because the painting takes some time, it’s important to know how to put it back together. 

So the next step is to put everything back together. Now because I did not protect the paint there will be scratches on the paint. But I don’t mind. I like that scratched look. If you don’t want that, protect the paint. 

Now you just put everything back together. You have to be aware that because of the paint, some of the parts might be harder to fit. So in some places you might have to remove the paint from the surfaces that meet to make sure that everything fits. 

When you put everything back together and you have no pieces left, that means that you did a good job. What some people do when they put everything together they will start using sandpaper to look it a certain way. I don’t do that, I use it and it will get worn out because of that. It will get a certain look over time and that’s the way I like it. 

Step 5: Optional paint

When I put everything back together and looked at it, I felt that something was missing. The green was a bit too much. So I took it off all the black, plastic pieces and taped off the gearbox. I was going to add some darker color pattern over the green base layer. Because of that, I did not have to take it apart again, because now I wanted to pattern to be connected. 

With a sniper veil and some brown paint, I did not have any black paint anymore, I sprayed some light patterns. I let it dry and remove the veil to see the result. With the sniper veil it’s a bit trial and error to find the look that you want. But I’m really happy with the result. 

In this step it’s important that you have that nice base layer and then you can do everything you want with it. You can cut out stencils or add stickers or other crazy stuff. 

I’m happy with how it looks and it will blend more with the woodland environment I usually play in. 

Conclusion

This is how I paint my rifles. There are a few other options to do it, but that’s the way I like to do it. If you liked this video and you painted your rifle this way, send me a picture on facebook, instagram or discord. It’s always nice to see what people do with their rifles. 

If you have any questions or remarks on this process, be sure to leave a comment and don’t forget to like the video if you found this interesting. I have some other DIY videos on the channel but also videos where I use my rifles on big and small events.