Battle Worn AR finish

The "Rat Rod Look". Street rod builders started doing it because of high cost of paint and body work. The practical side is that you don't have to worry about dings, chips, and dents. Now its become a fixed part of the car culture.

Only a matter of time before it spread to other items.

Yep, thats what we did!

This is my 58 Morris Minor. My dad drove it as a daily driver from Mt Vernon - Pentagon - Mt Vernon....in uniform.....got a lot of stares!

(Just an fyi here.....take note of the interior; faux leopard seat covers my mom made as her contribution.....she called it "the bomb")

A couple of ARs...

Left one is a 16” in 5.56 and the right one has a 18” barrel in 6.5 Grendel.

Edmo

I don't mind a worn finish on an AR. I just let time and use take its toll. I don't baby my ARs so they show the wear on the finish.

Ttrl thanks gunny!

Gunny

Normally I would be opposed to any extraneous wear and tear of the finish on my guns but somehow on an AR it looks okay; maybe even appropriate.

By all means, carry on!

Ditto.

Maybe because Mother Nature is also scarred up and not painted nice and neat like a picture. The wear just blends in better.

So Gunny if your son likes a worn looking gun how about trying that argument on him when It comes time to get a car?

GunnyUSMC, let me start by saying that:

• I agree with you that most of the factory "battle damaged" finishes don't look realistic.
• Your craftsmanship and attention to detail is truly impressive.

But, I still think the rifle in your OP looks more like it was camouflaged rather than battle damaged.

There's a twist you can use for "worn" effects.
You "seal" the base color, what ever that is intended to be, preferably in an acrylic clear. You then apply a release, hair spray works well, and put the to-be-worn-away finish on over that. After the top finish dries, you can buff it away to expose the base color.

You can get similar effects by just changing the solvent bae of the paint used, and come back with the thinner--in scant quantity--of the top coat when it is just barely dry.

So years ago I was big into models, cars, planes, tanks, helicopters, whatever. I place in a few competitions but never really won anything. I finally asked one of the people judging for some tips and ideas to what they looked at. He said my tank looked good. Very detailed but fresh from the factory. So I began getting a lot of tips from the winners circle. One of the most bizarre ones was to use mustard. I again heard and saw this when building some props with some friends. There were several of us working on many different props. One of the guys was doing a well used metal box. He started with a standard tote and used a blow dryer to bend and form dents and dings. On the sharp corners and edges one would expect the metal to show through. He prepped the plastic for paint and sprayed it aluminum as a base. He let it set up. Then he put mustard on the parts he wanted to have paint flaked away. Then he went into his second and third coat. Another trick he used was drying patches of paint with the hair dryer before moving onto the following coats. This gave the paint a very non-uniform look. When he was done he let it sit for awhile. He then sprayed the thing down with a garden hose. All the mustard blew off revealing the shiny paint underneath. The top coats peeled off revealing the under coats. He barely touched it with anything, maybe a brush from a scotchbrite pad here and there for further effect.
So if your going to create a worn look maybe look up sites on props, models. Cosplay would be another site. Those people build a lot of their one kit and costumes. There are a lot of tips there. But, yeah, Mustard. Totally blew my mind. Also think about were something would be worn. Where its handled and sharp edges and exposed ends. Or just paint the damned thing and drag it down a gravel driveway. It just depends on how much effort you want to put into it.

I used to think it funny that on M16A1s the more "worn" they were the shiner the handgaurds and butt stock. One sure way to tell an M16A1 had been around the block was the scrapes through the finish on the upper and lower from the rifle sling latch

BTW about 1974 I took a set of handguards that had been pulled off rifles for having broken "teeth" (half the vent hole top or bottom) and a butt stock with a hair line crack in the stock (and epoxied the crack) and cammoed them up with Testors model paint and some brushes. Really crappy job by today's standards. I used the rifle on a couple of our patrols and on guard around our Combat Alert Site for the Pershing missile system. Then one day the CO showed up (our actual barracks were 60 k away and he showed up maybe 3 or four times a year on CAS if that, about half of that 30 months my platoon had no officer and it worked great, believe it or not they had difficulty finding 2LTs with the right clearences and emotional evals for nuke security) saw my rifle and threatened to give me an Article 15 for willful destruction of Government property. I also had one 30 round mag that was painted up and a 20, but the 30 round was my own as the unit was issued only 20 rounders. Fortunately he was happy with me just replacing my art work and then he stomped the handguards until they broke. (Captain Jerk was the most polite of the nicknames we gave him) Later we made sleeves from fatigue blouse sleeves with black heel and sole dressing dots and stripes for camo, but they were not as good. One guy made a small sleeve to go over his barrel from flash suppressor to front sight from one of the camo pattern ascots we briefly used. We normally in garrison used sky blue ascots and in "summer" wore our shirt tails out and slightly bloused about a naked "pistol" belt and a OD green polished helmet liner and got a good bit of ribbing about being big green sex toys. We also made slips for our rifles from white sheets for the snow and got harassed when found out.

-kBob

That's as silly as buying jeans that already have holes in them.

I go out of my way to try to keep the things I paid good money for looking nice.

I like how my work guns have scratches and finish wear vs sitting in a safe and looking flawless. As long as they function flawlessly I don't mind a little character.

before long somebody will start selling faded over washed jeans with holes in the knees.
I don't mind honest wear on an honest firearm but I haven't yet grasped the accelerated wear concept.

Kingcreek said:

before long somebody will start selling faded over washed jeans with holes in the knees.
I don't mind honest wear on an honest firearm but I haven't yet grasped the accelerated wear concept.

Click to expand...

When I was a teenager, my mom would take my used and "distressed" jeans with her to Germany. My nephews and cousins couldn't get enough.
And the then empty suitcase was filled with fine European chocolate, so it was win win.

I'm a rat rod kind of guy, and I love the look of wear and tear. I think I have an aversion to ostentatiousness.....
But, I've never purposely made one look well worn. (Rifle, pistol, or auto) I have safe queens that are mint, and others that.... Well, they may have suffered along the way.

But, this thread has jogged my imagination a bit, and I have an A2 that may yet see some rattle can splatter paint.