Nerf Gun - "Chrome" Spray Painting

My son loves Nerf guns, he has quite the collection already but he recently asked me if I could spray paint one of his guns to look like metal. I told him I would give it a shot but I didn't want to take a chance and ruin one of the guns from his collection so instead I went to the thrift store and bought one to experiment with. This way I wouldn't feel bad if I ruined it, like I said this kid loves his Nerf guns.

I put the word chrome in quotes because this is not a mirror finish but you can still get a really nice and shiny finish if you take your time.

Nerf Gun

Small Screw Driver

Drill - (Maybe)

1/8 inch drill bit (Maybe)

Painters Tape

600 grit Sandpaper

Scouring Pad

Paper Towels

Denatured Alcohol or Rubbing Alcohol

Primer

Black Spray Paint - Glossy

Rustoleum Chrome Spray Paint

PPE

I got really lucky at the thrift store I found a Firefly Rev 8 for $6.00 but ended up paying $4.50 because anything with an Orange sticker was 25% that day. I thought it had a really cool look and was different from anything my son already had in his collection. There were several other Nerf guns there but a couple of them didn't seem to work so if you go thrift store shopping make sure to check the functionality of the guns you are thinking about buying.

After getting home and testing it and making sure it fired darts, I began to take it apart. This requires removing all the screws which in this case were on one side of the gun. Most came out fairly easily however one screw wouldn't budge. So, I got an appropriate size drill bit and carefully drilled out head of the screw. Then I was able to separate the two halves of the gun. I was not able to remove the broken screw but there are several other screws adjacent to the broken one so the functionality of the gun won't be affected. Ideally you would want to remove the old screw, you could get a smaller drill bit and try to drill it out or use a tap and die but I was just trying to keep this project simple so I left it as is.

Remember to keep track of which screws go where. I had a few small containers where I placed my different screws. This gun had 3 different sized screws small, medium, and large ones.

I didn't want to paint the cylinder portion so I masked it off I wanted it to remain clear. Also, this gun has an LED light so I made sure to cover the light with tape as well.

Next, I sanded all the surfaces I could with 600 grit sandpaper. For areas that were more intricate or just harder to get in to I used a scouring pad to rough up the surface. The goal here is to just rough up the surface to get good paint adhesion.

After I was done sanding, I wiped down all the surfaces with a paper towel soaked in denatured alcohol. I made sure to clean up any residue or dust on the plastic. If you don't have denatured alcohol you, can you regular rubbing alcohol it will work just as well.

With the alcohol dried, I sprayed the entire surface of the two halves with filler primer, that is what I had so that is what I used. Regular primer will work just as well. I applied two coats to make sure every surface was coated. I set the pieces aside to dry per the instructions on the can.

Once the primer dried, I lightly sprayed one coat of glossy black paint and let it dry per the instructions on the back of the can. I sprayed two more coats of black paint and tried to make sure I had coated all the surfaces with black paint.

*Make sure to read the label on the can of spray paint. This particular can said to apply second coat within 1 hour or 48 hours. This is where your patience will be rewarded, before applying the chrome paint I made sure to wait the full 48 hours. Each paint is different, I used a black enamel paint but some spray paints are acrylics which have different guidelines. I would not recommend mixing enamel and acrylic spray paints. I also try to stick to using the same brand for any of my painting projects otherwise there may be a compatibility issue. So, for this project I used the Rustoleum branded spray paints.

Now it was time for the fun part. It was time to mask off the bits that I wanted to stay black. I didn't have a plan going in to this I just knew that I wanted some areas to remain black. You can't really go wrong here just mask off a section and see if you like it, if not remove the tape and try something else. After some trial and error, I came up with the design I thought would look the coolest. I made sure to mask off the other half of the gun in the same areas so that it would match.

Now it was time to apply the chrome paint. I first sprayed a light coat just covering the gun. I noticed that this chrome paint sprayed pretty heavy so I tried to mist it on as best I could. I waited the correct time per the instructions on the can and applied another light coat. I applied a third and fourth coat a little more heavily while trying to avoid any drips. Then I let dry for 48 hours per the instructions on the can.

It is difficult to take pictures of reflective objects so I included several pictures shining a light on the Nerf guns to give the reader an idea of what the final product looks like.

My son was thrilled when he saw the final result. He couldn't wait to have a 'Nerf War' and show off his latest piece of hardware. While this is not a truly 'chrome' finish the results are still very impressive in person especially considering it's from a spray paint can. I hope this was helpful and hopefully inspires you to customize your Nerf gun. Thanks for taking the time to read my Instructable.