I would say paint it as you see fit. A dark brown will 'appear' dark enough but it will add that bit of realism. I know I can be bashed for saying this but it is 'your' prop and costume... make it how you want it. I personally like the wood rather than painted surface... it breaks up the colors and makes a piece more interesting.
I am about to stain my stock but noticed that thr stock is made up of 2 different woods and colors??? Anyone have this problem? This may prevent me from staining because the wood may take the stain unevenly.
No .. I sanded it pretty good and then used Minwax polyshades, which is a stain/urethane mix, so it goes on pretty even ... a few sandings and a few coats and it looked pretty good ... I sanded the last coat before I sprayed the black ...
glad it was of some use to you and congrates on the blaster it looks good.
Ill be doing another soon for my spidey blaster which i got last week.
Im going to be using GAMESWORKS SHOP paints, and they do a paint called TIN BITZ which is a black/metailic rust colour which ill be using to weather/age it.
If anyone else has used this tutorail post your pics please.
Don't know if this has been threaded already, but I'm working on another project in which I'm taking a part metal and part abs like plastic kit and trying to make it look all metal. Not looking to make look to weathered. It's actually a German WW2 MP40 sub machine gun kit. Most of the big parts are plastic and I wanted to get some ideas on what paints and primers to use.
I'd recommend a sandable gray primer (Krylon makes a decent one) then use silver Rub-N-Buff. There are plenty of examples of how this looks in the Jango forum (armor and helmets).