
The Mandalorian IB-94 handblaster
For my planned Din Djarin (The Mandalorian) cosplay, I am also in need of a lot of props. One of them is of course his trusty sidearm, the IB-94 handblaster.

I 3d printed a model in ABS on my Creality K1 Max. It was in several smaller parts and I did assemble it with acetone as glue, which chemically bonds the ABS. Or in other words, it melts the ABS and after the solvent evaporates the two pieces are basically one. It was a little bit like a puzzle, since the thingiverse post of this model, did not had a nice exploded view to assemble all pieces.
I used some screengrabs and other detail images as reference for assembling and later painting. Since it is ABS it sanded quite nicely and I was able to get it in a filler-primer ready state quite quickly.
I used the Duplicolor Filler-Primer (Link) on it, and I think I just did 2 coats with a little bit of sanding afterwards. I decided to curb perfectionism here, because of the huge backload of other models, that needed post processing as well. In the end it was good enough. Sometimes 80% is good enough and you don’t need to waste 80% of your time on the last 20%. 😉


After the priming, I started to airbrush the base color on. I used A-Stand “Black gloss base” (Link) for it. After letting it dry for 24 hrs. I started to paint the grip of the blaster with Citadel “Mournfang Brown” (Link) with a brush. The little rod on the left side of the blaster along the barrel was colored with Citadel “Retributor Armor” (Link).The trigger and end piece of the grip was painted with Citadel “Iron Warriors” (Link).
Basically all the other silvery/metal bits, like the nozzle, the knobs and the weathering effects (like chipping, scratches) were down with a silver wax (like Rub’n’Buff; Link) and a makeup brush.


After that, I airbrushed A-Stand “Aqua Gloss Clear” (Link) on to protect the paint job, since a blaster prop will likely be handled a lot. Right now I am considering doing some more weathering with washes after the clear coat has dried.
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