Not long ago I was talking to a former high school colleague and friend who works now at the local museum at a restauration sector. He is a big sci-fi fan and likes SW too. He visited my house and showed him my collection, then I discussed with him about weathering my SDS Stormtrooper blaster which was too pristine for my taste.
I have the MR Stormtrooper blaster which is clean, shiny and idealized, then I have the real demilled Sterling which has some cool wear and tear spots like a real gun has, and then the SDS blaster which was very clean. I decided to weather the SDS version quite a lot, to make it look like it was used in battles all over the galaxy. The small Sideshow blasters that came with their 1:6 figures inspired me to do this too, they have nice weathering as well.
Thus together with my friend we used silver paint which gave a lot of depth to the Hengstler counter and to the other protruding parts, which would get scratched in real life too. It also separated the folding stock part from the body of the gun really well. When I visited the museum he showed me a few WWII weapons and we decided to go with heavy weathering and scratches on the SDS Stormie blaster exactly like it was on some of those real "war used" WWII rifles.
I know the real scope is bronze, but I didn't want to use two different paints for weathering. Some could say the blaster is a bit over-weathered, but this is exactly as I wanted it since as I said I already have a pristine looking blaster (MR) and a lightly weathered one (the Sterling is lightly weathered like any real weapon would be).
The funny thing is that even if I totally hate painting I did most of the job myself, under my friend's supervision, he only corrected a few things he considered needing his pro hand. Some bad quality pics:
