How To: DIY Night Sights for a Paintball Pistol

You'll have to excuse the water marking of the images, I find these kinds of posts are good fodder for plagiarizers and want to make sure Grey Ops' copyright is preserved.

If you follow the blog regularly, you'll remember that I spoke of some interesting (and cheap) glow in the dark paint that I found online. Here's a brief how to for those of you interested in giving your paintball pistol a bit of useful phosphorescence.

For this mod, you'll need:

• A paintball pistol with fixed sights (I used a T8)
• Glonation paint
• White nail polish
• Clear nail polish coat (not required)
• Q-Tips
• Brush + painting paraphernalia 
• Rubbing alcohol (isopropyl alcohol)

Step 1: Prep your marker/pistol for painting

Everything ready to go.

Give your sights a quick swab with an alcohol soaked q-tip to make sure they're clean, wipe with a dry q-tip or allow to air dry. As you'll notice, one of my sight posts has a molding error.

Step 2: Lay down a base coat (the best Glonation paint is unpigmented so you'll need a base coat unless you buy their pigmented alternative)

 Put the finger nail polish evenly across your nails, avoiding large clumps I MEAN UH... 

Put an even coat of finger nail polish on the sights, avoiding large clumps. 

Step 3: Put 2-3 thin coats of Glonation paint on the sights, allowing them to dry between coats.

My tactical brush cleaning pot. A.K.A. an S-Thunder landmine body (couldn't find my actual painting supplies and it was convenient). 

Use a relatively fine tipped brush, as you're dealing with small pieces.

Step 4: Allow paint to dry completely, add a clear layer of nail polish top coat (optional [I didn't bother with it]).

All done.

Pistol sights in a dark room with and without flash.

The green paint supplied by Glonation is AMAZING. The paint's intense phosphorescence will blow your mind. The other paints... not so much. I used green for the front post and aqua for the rear posts as it's supposed to be second most intense. In a dark room after a couple minutes charging, the front post is brilliantly illuminated, while the rear posts are much weaker. I experimented with other Glonation paints and they were barely visible. If I had to do it again, I'd just use the green paint, and I suggest that if anyone wants to do this mod they should eschew the sampler pack and go for a small jar of their green unpigmented paint. For another project, I'll try and experiment with the green paint on a paintball mask, and see what kind of designs I can come up with.

It's worth noting that you can apply this same technique to a real firearm, but please think twice about relying on it if you're planning on using it for anything than recreational use. Also, many firearm cleaning solvents contain acetone, which will strip nail polish and other paints off, so keep that in mind.