Painting & Refreshing

Tools/items needed:

-Vinyl Dye Spray-paint
-Masking tape
-A mask
-Bin liner

There’s nothing like a good looking blaster, soaking is one thing, but looking fly whilst doing it is even better.  You wouldn’t turn up to a job interview in crapped pants and a raggy top would you (unless you didn’t want the job)?  Looking fresh is good, however on Super Soakers, if they haven’t been cosmetically treated very well, they don’t look the part that they once used to.  Or you may just not like the stock colour.  Either way, it is gonna need a touch up with some paint.

I on this occasion will be making a CPS 1500 look more like how it used to be.  While it hadn’t been used much and had its original box and even the little info tag it comes with, whoever had it before had clearly left it in the sun too much, as it had developed the Super Soaker version of a tan.  To give you an idea of it, here’s what bits of it looked like before being painted, the unfaded bits left clearly show the extent of the colour fade.

So yeah, that don’t impress DukeSoakem much.  I am planning to sell it soon, but there is no way I would sell it like that.  We need to refresh it up with a new fade of grey.  Before I go any further, I’m not a fan of spray-paint, as while it looks nice, from previous painted soakers, it doesn’t take long for it to chip or show flaking.  It doesn’t penetrate, it just masks. However, as you’ll see next, those days are over.

We are still going to be using a spray, however we are using vinyl dye spray-paint.  Vinyl dye is unlike normal spray-paint, as it actually seeps into the plastic when sprayed on, so the colour actually stays there and won’t chip off.  It acts like what the original colour would have been like on it from when it was first made.  It is for stuff like leather, however it works on plastic, which is perfect for what I am doing.  You don’t even need to sand the surface or anything.  Some more shiny plastic surfaces need to be, however even then it is not much to sand, and on this blaster that wasn’t needed.

I wanted to retain the grey, so I purchased a can of Brillo Vinyl Dye Spray in light grey, it is a tiny bit darker than the stock grey, however you can’t get a colour that is bang on the original, and this colour actually turned out real well in the end.  Oh, it just gets better too, because the Brillo Vinyl Dye Spray is also waterproof!  Perfect!

Now we get to prepare for the painting.  I took off the Super Soaker sticker completely as it was pretty rough to the point where it just wasn’t worth keeping it.  As you can see I also unscrewed the cosmetic parts off the 1500 so I am left with just the shell.  Along with this, if you are doing something similar, use masking tape on parts you cannot really get off.  As you can see, some of the 1500’s glued nozzle cover was still left there as it is a pain to take off fully perfectly, so it is covered.  Taking the 1500’s nozzle cover off could have been worse than it ended up being.

I used a bin liner over a large plank of wood which I then put on a raised surface.  The reason why the bib liner is handy, is so that when you have finished painting, unlike newspaper, the body won’t be stuck to it, so it won’t be sticky and you won’t get a messy rip when picking up the body.

Now with it ready, it is time to paint.  Make sure you put a protective mask on your face to cover your nose and mouth, last thing you want is to inhale it and have man flu for 4 weeks.  With a gentle hand do quick swipes over it bit by bit.  I know you won’t get it perfect as it is difficult, but take your time.  Once this part was done, it looked like this, a lot better and no tan anymore.

I then repeated the process with the other side.

Once left to dry, it was time to put the gun back together and reap the rewards of the new much more fresh product.

There we go!  The CPS 1500 now looks way better than before.

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