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That said, my group is actually an official club at my university, and we play indoors (which also requires we only use stock nerf darts so we don’t break any windows, etc.). It’s great fun storming classrooms, and while the importance of range is diminished, RoF becomes of critical importance when a group of eight people starts charging at you from around a corner, or when u want to kick in a door and jut rain a storm of foam upon a group of unsuspecting combatants guarding the other door.
While my RF20 worked nicely for such combat, it’s damn near impossible to reload all the barrels and have it ready to go before another squad charges from a different classroom down the hall and wipes out my own. I decided I needed a way to reload faster, and that meant swappable drums. After studying other mod’s, (namely echo104b’s firefly, and Nerfmonkey’s RF20 CPVC write up; many thanks to you both.) I decided to just go ahead and see if I could do something on my own.
First thing you’ll need is a few of these wonderful things here:
I found mine at Wal-Mart, in the automotive section, where they make copies of keys. I think they were $0.97. I’m thinking most everyone knows how these work, but just in case; these are quick-release key chains, by pressing the narrow end down, it release the wide cylinder at the other end. Hold the button down, and it slides back in place, release the button and it locks in place. You can probably guess where this mod is going.
Fist thing was to modify the turret to accept the drum/key chain assembly. To do this, I had to cut off the front end of the center post of the turret. How far you need to cut off/grind down depends on what barrels you use; I’ve currently got 2” CPVC barrels, but with this mod, you can make drums of various materials, and try something different later if you wish. (I’m working on making a drum with PETG barrels, for example)
Cut the center post down so that when you glue the bottom end of the key chain, (without the button) the total length of the key chain base + button portion is the same distance as the front of the barrels. If you’re using the same barrels lengths as me, this involves a bit more work, which I would’ve preferred to avoid, since if you can’t get it right, the gun is worthless. (and no one wants to send their expensive toy to the garbage bin)
The metal rod was glued to the inside of the turret’s center post, so when that gets cut off, the white piece on the back, that holds the turret in place, goes flying away. This is usually a bad thing. There needs to be the spring there, on the back, which is not shown. The spring keeps the ratcheting mechanism of the gun working like as it should, and hence is of critical importance.
I found gorilla glue to work fine at holding things where they needed to be, but because I had to go to work, I needed something to hold the pieces at the perfect position for 8 hours while the glue cured. Enter zip-ties
The zip ties held everything perfectly, but I think I had to buy the longest ones Home Depot had (14” I think).
Now that the turret is set up, onto making the drums.
Because the barrels are not going to be permanently attached to the turret, I decided to align them this way:
The marker around the base helped me to align the barrels as each was removed one at a time, slathered in CPVC cement, then put back in place.
After that mess dries, we go make the faceplate. This will hold the button-end of the key chain, which will in turn hold the drum in place.
I made this out of plexiglass, because I happened to have a 4’x4’ sheet of it lying around. Place the drum on top, and using a permanent marker, trace the inner ring of the drum, and mark the center.
*note, if you too use plexiglass, you’re going to want to turn on a fan, open a door, and put on something around your nose and mouth, because sweet lord that crap stinks when u cut it. I think I ended up sing one of those masks used when painting, and splashed it with mouthwash so the smell of mint would overpower the melting ‘glass. But I digress…
Next step is to place the release button in the faceplate. Again, gorilla glue seems to work great. The Dremel tool worked fine for the cutting of the ‘glass.
Once that dries, glue the faceplate in place at the end of the drum, with the button facing outward, of course. Let it dry, and viola.
Repeat as desired until you have enough clips that you can reload in between matches, a your leisure.
There is of course a problem with the sub-par seal at the base of the drums, where they meet the turret. I place a sheet of craft foam on the front of the turret to fix this problem.
and with a loaded drum:
I know what you’re thinking…because I was having the same thoughts…
“But Twitch, sure being able to drop a drum and pop in another is great, but you still have to fill the air bladder.”
Well, before I saw Forsaken_Angel24’s mod
http://nerfhaven.com...?showtopic=9335
which just made me tear up, I found my own solution was to rig a small air compressor onto the back of the gun, integrated into a home made shoulder stock, but I found that to be more of a cosmetic thing, and I’ll post a picture of the finished product on the appropriate thread.
Ranges:
angled, fired from waist height, using Tag Darts: shortest distance is 14 feet, the longest was around 50, with the mast majority of darts landing at 30 feet.
I'm not sure how these compare to stock ranges, or with stefans simply because I've never fired the gun stock, and my group isn't allowed to sue modified ammunition.
Thanks for your time, sorry for the blurry pictures, and I hope someone out there finds this useful.
