I’ve been moved from my cushy office at work into a cube farm. In preparation for the ensuing cube warfare, I purchased a couple of Hasbro Nerf N-Strike Maverick. The first step, of course, is to start the mods!

A good starting point is The NerfHaven Modifications Forum. The mods on the Maverick range from minor to freakin’ heavy. There are also several YouTube Videos.

Stock Maverick

Before the mods began, I wanted to get a very unscientific baseline of the Maverick’s performance. And the results of the exhaustive testing were: If I fired from the living room toward the bedroom (yes, I live in a small apartment, as do, I suspect, many Nerf modders, but I digress), and the darts more or less landed on the bed. The scientific method carried out to its fullest!

Open the Maverick is easy enough, just a lot of screws. Since this is my first modding project (also the first time I have owned a Nerf blaster in a long, long time), I wasn’t going to go crazy with it. I pulled out the barrel and removed the six air restrictors and springs. I also inserted five pennies behind the main plunger spring.

Inside the Maverick

First mod, a success. So, I opened up the Maverick and performed the “Drop Clip” mod. In it’s stock form, the slide-out barrel of the Maverick only slides out enough to reload two darts at a time, which can really suck when under heavy enemy fire. I pulled out the Dremel MultiPro Cordless 7700-02 20,000 RPM Two-Speed 7.2V Rotary Tool System w/50 Accessories and shaved off two plastic tabs on the barrel and frame. Now the barrel rotates out far enough to reload four darts at a time.

Improved performance: check. Ugly day-glow color: check. It was time to paint.

The Paint Job

Normally, spray painting on plastic blows, but I found Plastic Primer at the hardware store, and it actually does stick to shiny toy plastic.

Steampunk?

I saw that there are already many steampunk Mavericks on the interweb, so that probably influenced my choice of colors. I’m not much of a painter, so it’s just flat colors, silver, black, gun-metal blue, and antique brass. The next step would be to add some weathering effects so it actually looks steampunk instead of just painted plastic. We’ll have to see if I’m up for that one.

Painted Maverick

That’s all I got, here’s a stupid little video to send you off.