Mandalorian Mercenary Sniper Rifle - A not 40k project :O

As one of my other hobbies I occasionally dress up as a Stormtrooper from Star Wars with a bunch of other costumers to raise money for charity. My father costumes as Darth Vader with me tagging along as the stormy. Strangely it was me that got my Dad into it not the other way round.

 I'm the one in the middle front, my Dad is Vader.

Recently my Dad did a 160 mile walk dressed as Darth Vader from Ormond St. in Stoke to Great Ormond Street childrens hospital in London. He did it over 10 days, averaging about 16 miles per day. I helped by driving ahead of him for a mile then waiting for him to catch up, then de-helmet him, give him a drink etc. On the last day I walked with him in costume from Edgware to the hospital. It was a long 9 mile walk with lots of people stopping us on the way.

Anyway, getting onto what the post is actually about. My sister helped on the last day, seeing the attention we were getting and wanting a piece of the action, she decided she wanted a Mandalorian Mercenary costume. Mandalorians are quite easy and fun to do as there is a lot of flexibility in their outfits unlike Vader or stormys which have no flexibility at all. She decided on a white and red mandalorian with a rifle and pistols. My task in all this was to produce a rifle.

Knowing how my sister loves sniper rifles in FPS games like UT3, Call of duty etc. I decided to make her a sniper rifle.

I've wanted to convert a nerf gun to look more realistic for quite a while now and I finally had an excuse. I decided to work on a Nerf Longstrike, it was horrendously bright orange and blue and covered in logos and annoying paterns. I had my work cut out.

With the help of a power sander I removed all the annoying bits and flattened the surfaces. I then painted the rifle with silver primer and satin black. I then did the weathering with devlan mud on the silver bits. The weathering for the black was done by spraying a sock with silver paint and rubbing it all over to pick up the edges. I then fitted the sniper scope I bought off ebay. Luckily the nerf guns have the same size accessory rails as real guns so you can fit pretty much anything to them.

Best of all, it still works as a nerf gun! Not to be used in public without wearing a costume around a bunch of other costumers or you're likely to get the police on to you....