I know in the past a few people have asked how us omegans turn those garish neon nerf guns into something that looks less 'toy' like.

It's amazing what a simple repaint job will do.
To date, the best substance I've come across for recoloring the plastics that are used is this:
http://www.caswellplatin...m/vht/vinyl-fabric.html

It's a spray based dye that's designed to recolor Vinyl. Most of the plastics used in the nerf guns is PVC, which is Vinyl based.

It goes on light (when misted onto the prop) and wears -very- well. JD's new pistol is a great example of this.

The other spray we usually use is the Krylon ultra-flat paint, which is designed for camouflage use. The only downside to this is that it does not wear as well as the other, and will allow the underlying color to show on high wear points (like the bipod on LC's rifle).

As far as -how- to paint them, it does require a bit of dissembly, as you want to make sure that any and all moving parts are painted separately.

Most internal parts, obviously, should not be painted, and care must be taken to ensure that the inside of the barrel remain free of paint as well. A piece of rolled up newspaper or paper towel usually works nicely. However if you are fully dissasembling the gun, simply removing the barrel works much easier, and keeps the 'Please dont shoot me Mr.officer' orange color.

I generally start with the vinyl dye basecoat, move on to enamel drybrushing and detailing, and then many light thin clearcoats afterwards. It's by no means perfect, but it will last a few events.

"worn metal" is a look best done exactly opposite how you might think. Rather than black over metallic, you go black under, and drybrush on metallic enamel. The low places on the piece then look dingy, dirty, old and possibly corroded, while the high places look polished by wear.

Ah, that's the opposite of what I was thinking. To achieve that effect right away you'd use a metallic wash over black paint.

One side note - Dupli-color has, according to the local AutoZone, sold the recipe and patent for the Vynil and Fabric Dye to Rust-Oleum. Or at least, that's who makes the one A-Z sells now. I tried it on Carl (Airon)'s gun, seems to be comparable.

I'll be careful to leave a little orange lest I find myself facing the business end of the nice officers sidearm. :P

I was just thinking,... what about accuracy, speed and distance on a nerf gun? Are there some nerf guns that are better than others? Any recommendations? I don't need anything huge just yet, I'll be using a basket hilt sword and a pistol to start and then eventually graduate to something with bells and whistles. But, if there are any models that work particularly well I'd love to hear about them.

Thanks a million!