In this part of the tutorial we finish the gun shield by putting everything together and painting it.

Measure and cut a hole in the shield just large enough for your pvc gun to squeeze through. Consider where the handle is and how you will hold the shield. Then put the hole in an appropriate place.

Add a reinforcing piece of foamboard right over that hole. And add another one on the other side of the shield. This will give it strength to hold the gun - particularly when you are firing it.

Now slide the gun into the hole. And glue it in place. You slide the gun in from the back side of the shield. You see the barrel here in the front.

Okay! Let's finish the shield by painting it. I will show you a technique so the shield will look like metal.

First paint the whole shield black. Cover the whole shield but do it messy! Lots of uneven paint and uneven brush strokes. The more uneven the better. This will cause a lot of irregularity in the layer of black with lots of high and low brush strokes. Which is perfect.

This is where the magic happens. Get some silver paint on your brush and dab most of it off on a rag. You want your paintbrush to be almost dry with very little silver on it.

Then lightly and rapidly brush over the shield. The brush barely touches the shield and only a little bit of paint gets on the shield.

Keep doing this. It takes a bit of work. Add more paint to the brush, dab it off, then dry brush on the shield more.

It takes a lot of returns and a lot of going over. But slowly the silver paint builds up on the high points of the black paint.

And that's it. Keep doing it until the shield looks like you want it.

I did more drybrushing on the embellishments of the shield to make them a little more silver. These are the ring, the bands and the boss.

How the Gun Works

You load gumballs, or some other type of projectile, into the magazine of the gun. You can stack them up. Probabably about ten shots.

Then you pull and release the firing pin. Pulling it back loads the gumball and releasing it shoots the gumball forward.

Simple enough. You just need a little bit of pvc plastic pipe, a wooden dowel and a rubber band.

Make a Viking Shield

You can make this with foamboard or cardboard. Either way it comes out graet and is double layered for strength.

Made just like they made the real shields.

Make a Viking Shield

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