 Did somebody say 308? Hey everybody, this is an AR-10 that I have recently acquired. This is a PSA gun. So I got it because it was available and because I don't have a 308 yet. So now I do. Big problem though with this particular gun is this kind of stainless steel like thing going on there. So that's gonna change. So we're gonna paint this sucker. I don't have an optic yet for it. I got some scope rails coming, but we are gonna paint this gun. And because it's an AR-10, which is basically like an AR-15, we're gonna paint it the same. So we're just gonna close the dust cover. I'm gonna put a mag in the gun. I'm gonna tape the end off. I don't have any sights or anything to protect. I'm gonna make sure the charging handle is forward. The only thing I'm gonna do in this one is I do like this grip. It's kind of this rubber over molded thing. I really like the texture of this. So I am actually gonna tape that handle off just just to preserve the texture. I really I really like the texture. The stock, I'm gonna leave all the way out to make sure to get some paint here because usually if you paint with the stock all the way in you will get then this is black and just it ends up looking funny. I'll take the sling off, of course. For the bipod here, I'm actually just gonna tape that up a little bit because I'm gonna use it to rest on the bipod. I think it'll be a little easier to spray paint if it's resting on the bipod. Maybe not. Maybe that will not work out. But that's my plan there. For this gun, what we're gonna do is we are gonna do a type of masking. So we're gonna base coat it. This project will take several days, I expect, because I'm going to base coat it in like a green or a tan or something. I don't know. We'll figure it out. And then I'm going to apply some stencils of irregular shapes, and then I'll coat it again. So I'll put some stencils on. You'll see as I walk through it. And then I'm gonna coat it again. And then again, let that dry, put more stencils on, coat it again and again and again. And then as I peel off all the stickers, those maskings, right, from the stencils I put on, will reveal different colors. And so it'll kind of be like a multi-cam woodland type pattern. It's what I'm going for here. I don't think I have all the correct colors for woodland or multi-cam. So it'll be some variation of that. But that's kind of what I'm going for. And then what I'm gonna do with this particular one is I'm going to clear coat it. At the end. I've painted a couple different guns now and they just, they wear off, which is cool. I like the battle-hardened look or whatever. But I want to clear coat this one to see if that ends up holding up better. Every time you paint a gun, it's some kind of an experiment. I think that's why there's a lot of freedom in it and a lot of excitement in it. So that is how we are going to custom paint this AR-10 today and over the next several days because this is gonna be a multi-day project. I'm gonna try to give about 24 hours of dry time in between each coat in order to really maximize the masking effect. And then like I said, once I peel off all the stickers, then I'm gonna clear coat the sucker and hopefully that's gonna hold up better in the long run. So let's see how it goes. Okay, so I taped off the muzzle, which you might not be able to see that might just be out of frame here. The grip and that's about it. There's no sights or anything like that. On this one, I kind of papered off the bipod there because I'm gonna try to leave it on the bipod. I think it'll make painting easier and that's it. So I'm gonna start with this dark green. The reason I'm gonna start with that is because that's the color I think I want the barrel to be and I won't be able to mask that as effectively since it's inside the hand guard. So I'm gonna start with that and here we go. So what I did here is I made some templates. As you can see, I've kind of taped those in in some places here. But all you do is take some wax paper, put some masking tape on some wax paper, draw out some irregular shapes. You can probably do it with your kids and then just cut them out. I found that I made most of them too big. So I did have to tear some in half in order to mask this the way I wanted, but that was the basic process. It's pretty simple. For a second coat, we're gonna go with the light green. Way too much brown in it that I don't really like. Yeah, just too much dark brown. The tan I don't mind as much, but too much dark brown. I finished with dark brown. What I should have done was started with dark brown and then finished with either the dark green or the light kind of puke green there. So finishing with dark brown ended up with way too much dark brown that I don't really like. It's just not visually appealing to me. It's probably effective in as far as camouflaging the gun goes. So I guess that's good, but I just, it's just, this just does not inspire me. I'm just not really enthralled about this. The masking process itself was super tedious to remove all the tape from, so I didn't really like that. I'm more of a quick and dirty guy on my camo methods. And this is just, I don't know. Also, I also, when I was removing the tape, I don't know if you're gonna be able to see this here, but I kind of scratched the paint up here and it went back to the bright stainless steel silver there, which is really obnoxious. I'm gonna touch that up. I'm just gonna hit that with a spray can and let it roll. I think what I'm gonna do is I was going to clear coat this to try to, you know, preserve it, but I don't want to preserve it because I don't really like it. So I think what I'm gonna do is just leave it be, let it get a little battle-worn, let it wear out, see if that doesn't improve the taste to me, see if I don't like it a little bit better after it's got a little wear on it, and if that doesn't work, eventually I think I'm just gonna recode it. The first thing I might do is just get some sponging, hit it with some dark green sponging all over to try to camouflage the bad camouflage, if you will. So yeah, just not really that big of a fan of it, mostly because of the color scheme. I don't like how the color scheme worked out. I think if I had, again, finished with the greens, so it had more green in it and less dark brown, I think then it might have been something I would be digging, but because I, like an idiot, didn't really think about it and finished with the dark brown, that's what I ended up with. So here you go. My suggestion to you is whatever color you want to be, you're kind of more prevalent or base color, finish with that color, do that color first, and whatever color you want to have less of, use that color first. That would be my advice to you in Things I Learn. Some of you were like, well, dodged it, and I could have told you that, but that's what I learned. This kind of brown, chocolate chip, just not a big fan of how this one turned out. I hope you have enjoyed this journey with me, and I hope it's been helpful. So let that be a lesson to you in how you end up doing your gun, and when you're going with the masking, be very careful removing that tape, which is tough to do, it does not scratch it. And remember to end with whatever color you want to be the dominant color on the gun. Do brave deeds and endure.