Now you see it, now you don’t. Like a magician’s trick, hydrographics is a simple method to add realistic camouflage to make any firearm virtually disappear.

by Roy Seifert

When my mother turned 90 the entire family got together to celebrate this happy occasion. Everyone in the family knows that I am a “gun guy” so it was only natural that my 22-year old nephew, Nathan, came to me with a gun question. He wanted to go duck hunting with some of his friends in the fall and asked me what shotgun to buy. My somewhat glib response was to get something that would go bang and kill a duck! After a brief moment of confusion he then asked me what brand of shotgun I would recommend. I told him Remington, Mossburg, Browning, Winchester – just to name a few – all made fine shotguns; it would really depend on what he could afford. I made it clear to him, however, that it’s not the gun that’s important; it’s the man behind the gun.

At the time, I owned three 12-gauge Winchester model 1300 shotguns. One was a Defender model that I use for 3-Gun competition and the other two were field grade. I decided to gift one of these field-grade guns to Nathan (how many of us received our first gun as a gift from a father, uncle, or mentor?) but I wanted to prepare it for him for duck hunting by adding camouflage.

There are a number of methods to camouflage a gun; some good and others not so good. A very popular method for adding camouflage to a gun is using hydrographics, sometimes called liquid printing, water printing, or water transfer imaging.

Read more in the December 2015 issue.

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