August:
[url=http://nerfhaven.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=23024-url]25th [UT] S.L.A.N.G. [/url]

This pump is among the best I've found for nerfy uses. 16", steel and chromed and less than $10 (with amazon prime shipping). You can chop the hose and attach a quick connect fitting to adapt to standard tubing... It'd probably fill both tanks in a single stroke.

Amazon AISN: 

• B000M4D6D2  Pump $8.25

Other useful air fittings...

B0747NSJT2 5 pack of quick connect check valves (elbow) $7.99 (fill both tanks at once, one tank wont drain into an empty tank)

B01LXEC9R3 20 pack of assorted quick connect fittings (including a few y's - stupid handy to have around if you're building air blasters. $9.99 (you could probably get by with a single Tee from your local hardware store for a few bucks instead though)

I've got some maker geeks translucent green filament at home. That shell would look gorgeous printed in that. I am hoping you're willing to tweak the file to run off of a single pump though. It really makes the function of it all so much easier when you don't have to worry about which tank is empty which pump to use when it's time to re-prime.

Hey, I'm laying plans to come for Armageddon, and booking a cruse for the following week. Is the tenth a pretty solid date? It's really going to screw me if the date changes after I book. I'm really looking forward to attending my first major Nerf war.

Edit: The cruse was filling to the last 6 cabins. I had to purchase the tickets while they were still available. I'm really, really, really hoping the tenth is solid, cause i just may cry if it changes now!

Thanks all for an frekin' awesome war!

my recap Pros:

~Even though i was gluing it up, and had never even fired a full clip through it my PAS, not only lasted the entire war, but got some ownage in too.
~Even though my gun broke some how, some way each war, i had the tools and supplies to field repair anything that broke and get back in the game.
~My first major nerf war was a full on war, and not one of the little skirmishes like what I'd host back in Utah.
~leaving the hotel room at Glendora's garden inn and suites to see 3 others loading Nerf guns into the back of a van and asking: Geddon?
~Having my ERTL PAS examined, admired, and even feared. I had to cross a lot of design issues, and work though a lot of problems to get that thing to work like it did. Thanks for the props.


Cons:

~Rolling my ankle during the first round, hobbling through the rest of the day, and probably spending the next week on the cruse layed up (not actually a bad thing) because i kept playing on it.
~watching in absolute horror as the barrel of my gun snapped off while attempting a barrel tap on someone with a sword. (it was straight from a samuri movie)
~using # 8 washers for steffan weights when i should of been using #6 and having the hot glue jam up in my pistol splat.
~Being naive enough to think 70 Steffans would be enough.
~Probably won't be able to attend every year! Lame.

*edit* double post. Sorry about that.

I've had almost no adhesion problems with my foam->silicone stems. Its possible that because all of my stems injects are mixed with the something that isn't pure silicone and contains some pretty toxic solvents that it is forming a better bond to the foam. Also possible is that using the plastic baggie I can really get all of the silicone mix into the dart blanks. The final possibility is that the foam I'm using (MHA Pink) is just denser/less porous than the beige you're using (from looking at your picture).

I've heard about using a combination of rubber cement and superglue to prime and adhere silicone to foam, but that seems like a very painstaking process unless you are molding your domes with the stems and then doing final assembly of just inserting stems into molds.

I might pick up a box of walmart Q-tips and rubber cement and a tub of CA glue and see if I can replicate this since I do have a stem mold.

Beige foam is much more poreous, but oddly enough I've found a stronger bond between bare foam and silicone if it's more pourous. White foam had poor adhesion and amazon grey (very tight pours) had no adhesion at all. Our third version of gumdrops (gumdrops 3.0 - still mid development) is based around sticking a drilled blank in one side of a form and spackleing silicone onto the other side - filling the head cavities as well as filling the drilled blank - attaching the head to the blank as the silicone cures. The problem we've been having has been bond strength. Heads fall off after a few wars. Adhesion has been the last great hurdle preventing us from completing development. 3.0 construction really is as simple as drilling blanks, sticking them in one side of the form, spackleing silicone into the other, scraping off the excess silicone, dabbing a wad of dryer lint on top of the uncured heads (the loose fibers of the lint pull off and stick to the tops of the un-cured heads for perma-hopperability) and popping hundreds of completed darts out of the form once cured. Construction is stupid simple and crazy efficient, we just need the durability improved.

Zorn, I'd love to hear more about your secret sauce for stronger bonds! PM me if you're not comfortable discussing toxic mixes where younger nerfers might get themselves injured. If you can help us with that last problem, we should be able to finally wrap up development of a high rate of production metal free dart option!

I really like where this is going. I've been thinking about trying to either "free hand" a dome onto a VANS, or siliconing a dart tip and briefly pressing the dart into a mold dusted with cornstarch to shape the dome. If a dome is shaped and removed from the mold to cure - do you think it will hold its shape? That way only one dome would be needed to shape domes as you went, instead of needing a bunch of domes to make a sheet. A dome centered under a 1/2" hole could produce consistently centered domes (in theory)

What's the average finished weight of your domed darts? The main killing point to VANS that I've attempted has been that they've been too light.

The problem with using paper over the top is that only cornstarch-laden silicone would still cure. Unless you used something like regular paper, so it was still permeable. That might actually solve some of the adhesion problems too.

True! My earlier gumdrops have often used felt as a binding anchor because of the absolute death grip the silicone and hot glue formed with it. It was so painflully slow to cut out though, it killed the concept. Even pre-punched felt discs were tiresome. I'm not sure silicone will bond with paper. It was a good bond (but not death-grip) with denim. Denim is far more porus than paper, but stranger things have happened. Maybe we can back the heads on a paper sheet, soak the sheet of heads to strip away most of the paper and still have enough paper left to bond between silicone and foam? All we really need is something that will bond to both...heck maybe throwing a headed up felt sheet in the wash will be enough to separate the heads while leaving some felt to anchor too? I think I have a small sheet of gumdrop 2.0 heads somewhere. That just might be worth a try actually!

Pro tip:
For anyone who wants and off the shelf blank holder - cookie cooling racks with 1/2" spacing works fantastically well with no modification needed. Holds hundreds of darts reasonably straight for filling. It's a little discovery my Mrs. wishes I had never made.



Zorn -

How's the bond strength on your domes? I'm still working with a small group on the development of gumdrops 3.0 and our big challenge has been bond strength and dart longevity. The heads kept falling off of our 2.0 versions. Following a tip from another nerfer - we've found rubber cement to be a fair adhesive (Finally! Something that adheres to silicone!!!) and have started priming the holes in our blanks with it. Adhesion has significantly improved, but we haven't been able to experiment much further with that development. I would love to actually see a little foam come off with the head if pulled hard enough to decapatate.

*I haven't noticed any swollen loss of density (that would be interesting to weigh and find out how much weight (if any) is sacrificed) but I have noticed significantly softer heads and easier fill if I mix in some mineral spirits with the silicone before adding corn starch.

*Not all brands of silicone cure faster with corn starch. Rather than make a list of what works, I simply suggest going to walmart and buying the $3 opaque tube with the black lettering. It's half the price of most other silicone caulks and cure time is accelerated with the addition of corn starch. It reeks - but it works and it's cheap.

*I completely agree with you on the sandwich bags! My Bans were failures (too light), but filling was fast and easy squeezing the silicone out of a bag.

My secret sauce just means that foam pulls off with the dart head, but dart heads still fall off after a few wars. I don't really care because slugs fall apart after just 1 war if the ground is wet at all (or sometimes fall off in the middle of the war) and glue domes have a lifespan drastically limited by trees.

I'm mixing GE Silicone II with DAP Alex Plus which seems to lower viscosity better than mineral spirits but contains such marvelous things as Formaldehyde http://www.dap.com/docs/msds/10002.pdf

Well, if you're pulling foam along with the head I'm convinced. Maybe I'll try mixing rubber cement in on a separate batch and see if that sticks without the formaldehyde.

I've noticed that if you don't scrape right, you can end up with messed up domes. One side of bottoms of the domes can have too much silicone and they'll be crooked on the foam or the scraper can stick to the silicone and pull material out of the holes, ruining the bottom and even the sides of the domes.

I've seen that happen to my gumdrops as well and just had a thought: What if a sheet of wax paper or parchment paper (since I'm all about kitchen tools at the moment) was placed on top of the mold and then scraped? It might be able to squeeze off the excess with out dragging un-due silicone out of the holes. It should be easy to peel the heads off the paper once cured.

The only thing I've ever done conceptualizing of, but never developed that is close to this, was having two hopper tubes that had a two way valve that could be alternated between the two tube magazines. Maybe there's a way of applying this electronically and having a motor switch over a panel that exposes the two tubes individually?

Mechanically, it sounds very much like the internals of a Razor Fin (derpy max force pistol, 2 barrels, over sized jolt firing mech, spines pop up when shot). It has a wheel  with holes in it plumbed between the plunger tube and barrels. The wheel increments with each trigger pull so air is alternated between right and left barrels. It's not as intelligent as a smart AR system. It doesn't care if theirs a dart loaded in the barrel receiving air, but it's also not AR dependent so it could work with longer barrels and more power behind it.