Copied from Wikipedia: “The M1917 Browning machine gun is a heavy machine gun used by the United States armed forces in World War I, World War II, Korea, and to a limited extent in Vietnam, and by other nations. It was a belt-fed water-cooled machine gun that served alongside the much lighter air-cooled Browning M1919. It was used at the battalion level, and often mounted on vehicles (such as a jeep). There were two main iterations of it: the M1917, which was used in World War I; and the M1917A1; which was used thereafter. The M1917 was used on the ground and on some aircraft, and had a firing rate of 450 round/min; the M1917A1 had a firing rate of 450 to 600 round/min.”
I’m rendering this with Cycles, which I’m sure everyone assumed 
I’m pretty lost as to how I should go about texturing this, I might try to make the textures myself using noise texture node on top of glossy shader or I might just get some free textures off the internet. Tell me your opinions on how I should go about this, I’m willing to look at link and watch tutorials so please feel free to drop some link bombs in your comments!!!
So far I think it’s pretty good but the vert count is getting kind of high in my opinion so I’m trying to start using a mix of smooth and solid shading along with extra edge loops and sharp edges.
The more that I can model instead of fake with textures the happier I’ll be, even though it’s easier to fake it I want this model to be real as possible!!! So far I’ve spent 2 days working on this and I’m still not done.
Also here is a couple of the reference images I’m using so that you can have something to compare to.
