Hobby Update M41A Pulse rifle

I have been an Aliens fan since the movie first came out. When the opportunity came out to buy one of the Nerf replicas, I treated myself.

This is what it looked like when I opened the box. The shape is reasonably accurate, but the paint scheme is quite different. I decided to repaint mine to look a bit more like the ones from the movie.

After sanding the old paint job off and then filling in the parts of the casing that had raised logos and text. I also had to fill in all the screw holes. This was a deciding factor in whether to take it to bits and paint it or paint it in one piece.

I modified the magazine to make it more accurate. This meant expanding the top so it blended better into the rest of the casing. I glued blocks of balsa wood around the top of the bottom of the magazine and then trimmed them to shape and filled in the gaps or at least most of them.

This is what it looks like after modification.

Now some paint.

I masked off the black bits and then sprayed the casing olive green. This got most of the colours in the right place. I had to do some hand painting.

Now after some grime, weathering and metallic touches. Its hard to know when to stop but a Marine would not let their weapon get too grimy so its kind of minimalistic. I did a bit of silver drybrushing and then some edging on the black parts with an HB pencil.