DIY Camouflaged X-Bolt 2 Rifle

I have been playing with the idea of painting my X-Bolt 2 Composite Hunter for a while. After testing out the concept on some of my heavily sun bleached trail cameras I decided to give it a try on my X-Bolt 2.

The biggest question I had about getting this to work was priming the plastic stock. There are a few plastic primers out there but in the end I chose an Adhesion Promoter. 

What was my process in painting my rifle stock?

• First, I took the stock off and removed the recoil pad, LOP module, grip module, comb, and swivel stud from the butt stock.
• I masked off the areas I didn't want painted.
• I used fine-grit sandpaper to lightly rough up the areas I wanted to paint.
• I wiped down the stock with rubbing alcohol
• I applied a light tack coating and a minute later, a good solid coat of Adhesion Promoter.
• 20 minutes later, with Flat Deep Forest Green, I did a tack coat, waited a minute or two, then a full coat of this base color
• A couple of hours later, I applied a second coat of Flat Deep Forest Green
• The next day, I sprayed Flat Army Green into a plastic tray until I had a small pool of paint and I then used a small sponge to dip into the paint and then dab random splotches on top of the base coat
• A few hours later, I used Flat Earth Brown to make additional random color splotches
• After a day of drying, I then applied three coats of Matte Clear with an hour to dry in between each coat and after a day of drying, I applied one more coat of Matte Clear

The hardest part of painting this was using the Matte Clear. It is difficult to see how well you have applied a coat and I got a few overspraying drip marks... marks that no one but myself would ever notice but it still bugs me.

I just completed this and will have to follow up on this article on how well the new paint job on my rifle holds up. For now, I am really happy with how it turned out.