I also can't make the 28th. Tear.

Hey jolt, I've got a ton of extra plastic clothes pins laying around that I got from walmart. I'll bring you a couple that you can have for free. Though if you were looking to get rid of an old maverick or nite finder I'd bring a ton more.

Also Spartan, bring the nitefinder so I can take a look at it, but if it's as you describe you have yourself a deal.

Hey, so since there isn't a trading post for this war, I just thought I'd post this here. I'm looking to pick up two each of stock or near stock mavericks and nitefinders (please no clear series). If anyone is looking to unload some I'd pay 5$ apiece.

Sorry to bail on you guys like this, but I think if I'm going to make it to anything that weekend it will have to be HHNO. My weekends are overbooked with nerf this month and I need to cut down on the road trips. I'll try and catch you at the next one, have fun.

It won't be the same with out you!






It'll be better. (I kid)

Also, I'll be there!

I won't be able to make it until somewhere around 1pm now. Frowns.

Darn you real world!!!

I can only make the 23rd as well.

Keo, I've still got all of your stuff in my trunk. I'll make sure I bring it.

I love the very end of that video cause you are all like, "hmm, looks like they're trying something over there." And then we wreck you 5 seconds later.

Also, you need to get your blaster sorted out. You blew various parts of your blaster off three times in like 8 minutes of video.

Anyway, love the vids. Keep them up!

This war was awesome even after the bumpy start. I had a blast though I am going to be so sore tomorrow. I also somehow forgot that it was spring managed to get a massive sunburn. Damn my Irish, German and English heritage!

My favorite rounds were definitely CTF. They were so one sided it was hilarious. Also loved the pistol rounds and the one round were I used my sancho panza was amazing though I kinda almost felt guilty dominating with it. Almost. Now I know why everyone uses homemades!

Thanks Phree for the box o' parts. I'll see what I can do with them and post my results.

Over all, it was a beautiful day, and it was great to see everyone.

Keo and Chaos, you guys left all kinds of stuff at the war. Keo, I've got your coat and a pair of what I assume are your mobstacles. I also picked up an orange flag which I think is Chaos's. I'll make sure to bring the stuff to the next one, or if you need the coat back sooner Keo, just send me a pm and we can work something out. Cranky also has a bunch of your things Chaos.

That video is hilarious. Shortest duel ever.

I think both days will work for me. I'm excited to debut my first homemade/new primary.

I will be there for sure.

Feb 26th works for me, but the 19th is out of the picture. I've got an exam the next day.

I am a definate. Also, if people need a ride, send me a pm and I'll see what I can do.

Holy smokes! I may actually be able to make this one. There are still a lot of factors in play, but you can put me down as a firm maybe for once!

Hey, I'm a definite attendee. This being my first war of any sort, I did a lot of research on past APOCs and such. I've got a tricked-out LS, which I've been told should be a fine primary, and I may even be able to get my Maverick back online. However, it's the gunslinger pistol round that I'm worried about. If I can't get my Maverick back online, and it's an iffy business, would you count a creaky old Triple Strike as a pistol? I'd actually prefer it to a Mav. It can shoot either rockets (at a very modest distance) or 3-6 darts (suction, haven't tried it with stefans yet for lack of stefans...) or any combo of the two types.

Gunslingers heaven typically requires single shot springer pistols like the nitefinder, lock n load, etc. Neither a maverick nor triple strike would count.

Unless this war already happened, I think the date is supposed to be July 10th.

A few warnings based off of previous darts of war: most of the UMD players are casual nerfers and aren't used to modded weapons. This lead to some tense situations last year which was stupid. Also be prepared for some serious downtime between rounds.

All that being said, the arena is by far and away the one of the best indoor arenas you are going to find and I am sad I won't be able to make it.

Doom, I didn't know you were going to be living in gaithersburg! Thats awesome. You should look into the metro bus routes. I live near the washingtonian center and can think of four different bus routes that would get me there in a pinch.

This mod is pretty cool. I really like the internal extension spring idea and am pretty impressed with the increase. A lot of the people I nerf with aren't too serious into modding and use stock darts so this is the perfect mod to use with them. Thanks for the post!

PS. 12 paces to 16 is a 33% increase. Your math teachers weep.

Well, I went ahead and gave myself a third degree shoulder separation during a game of HvZ so unless I heal up real fast I'm not going to make this one.

As was mentioned earlier, this gun is basically an NF and you don't see a whole lot of RSCBs on NFs

Two in one thread, OMG!!!1!

I said you don't see a whole lot of them, not you don't see any.

Anyway, Banshee totally overhauled those NFs by putting in stronger springs, extending the draw, and replacing the plunger tubes. He also saw a decrease of 30-40 ft in range when using the RSCBs.

So I'm sorry if I missed this anywhere but do you slap ina pvc breech or something.Oh and btw an rscb would be useful and look clean because of that open area above.

I highly doubt that there is enough air output for an RSCB to work in this gun. As was mentioned earlier, this gun is basically an NF and you don't see a whole lot of RSCBs on NFs

Also, he didn't breach it, he just slapped on a coupler.

Personally I think that this mod is really clean and cool looking. I do have an issue with the fact that the barrel doesn't seem centered in the gun. From the pics it is clear that it is sitting slightly the right. That would drive me crazy if I were trying to use it in a war setting.

I would be down for the 19th or 26th.

Ack! I just realized that this is the same day as the UMBC HVZ invitational!!!! Now I have a serious dilemma.

I'll move you to the "maybe" list until you have something worked out.

Nah, I'll be at Beltway Bedlam for sure. There's always the Penn State invitational in April.

Posting my stuff:

One of my first mods, NF with handyman spring, petg barrel and extra ammo holders from a disk shot.



The Zombie Hunter, a painted NF with handyman spring, petg barrel and laser pointer replacing the light.



My LnL. I picked this up stock at a yard sale for 3 bucks. Now its banded, has a petg barrel and a spring addition.



My original nite-mav. It is butt ugly but has the best range of the four.



Nite-mav MK.II, this one is slightly less butt ugly.



Then we have Mk. III: Aries and Athena.





And because I love to jam nite-finders into things, we have my take on the Nite Barrel Break Finder (god I hate that name). Pretty much a less clean version of Zack the Mack's mod with two cut down handyman springs for extra power. The barrels still fire independently. This mod was a huge pain but I'm happy with the end result.



Some pics of the breach.





Next up is the long range hickey, a trusty PETG'd 2k with a propensity to shoot people in the neck.



And finaly, we have an angel breached pump action long shot. I made the breach a couple years back with a steak knife and a whole lot of elbow grease. I just recently swapped its old blue shell with a new yellow one after realizing front gun integrations blow. The pump is all kinds of ugly, but it's functional.

I was totally digging this mod until I saw what you did with the pump.

One of the things I hate about the BBBB/UMB is the awkward pump placement. I'm shocked you decided not only to keep the pump in the back of the gun, but you made it even more awkward with the stock. Maybe the pictures are deceptive but it looks like you can't grip the pump handle while pumping without raking your nuckles across the stock.

I do understand that it makes things much easier to keep pump and airtank in line, but it seems to me that you sacrificed some of its war practicality in doing so.

Ack! I just realized that this is the same day as the UMBC HVZ invitational!!!! Now I have a serious dilemma.

Looks like March 12th is the first day of my spring break so put me down as a definate. It's going to be sweet nerfing with you guys again! Also, I may be able to get my brother to come along too.

I would totally be up for this, however, it is way too far away for me to have any opinion on the dates.

I saw the original non-clear NiteMav set at UMD Dart of War, and it's an excellent mod. Really well-done. I'm amazed that the NiteFinder piece doesn't snap off when you pull back the plunger rod.

On an illumination note, might I recommend some electroluminescent wire?

Thanks everyone for the positive feedback! Yeah, the nitefinder piece looks funkey, but it's solid as a rock. I guess thats what you get when you use 2 full hot glue sticks. If you are really nervous about it, I used plumbers goop on one of the oringinal non-clear ones and it works fine. You just need to make sure that everything works perfectly before using a more permanent adhesive.

Also, those wires look awesome!

Nice job!
I've always thought of the night-mav near impossible to re-create,but you proved me wrong.
The only thing I think you should really do is change the plunger tube to petg tubing, it wold greatly increase range and make it more clear. Clear is good

I know that Dizzy was working on doing this, and I think it is definately a viable option. Some things would have to change for sure, such as getting the front of the maverick plunger tube to fit, but it should be able to be done. I don't know how much more in the way of ranges can be squeeked out of this gun because your barrels are only 3 1/2 inches long. At anyrate I know that I won't be doing this mod again or making any major changes to my nite-mav's in the near future because (1) i'm happy with how they are performing, (2) I'm broke, and (3) my limited modding tools (ie. a steak knife) make this mod much more time consuming for me than it should be.

PS, I forgot to mention it's possible to do this mod with just a steak knife!

Chaos Blades: I don't think this mod would work out well with the specter from what I've seen of it. The videos show that the barrels rotate when you use the specter's cocking mechanism, so choping that off and replacing it seems out of the question unless you want to hand rotate it. Of course I haven't seen the internals yet so something might be managed.

Abyss Mods: I think that adding some e-tape under the o-ring is definately an option. Again, I don't know how much more you can expect in the way of ranges given how short the barrels are. Also, I worry about the longevity of the blaster if you do add the e-tape. Once you glue everyting together, there doesn't really seem to be an easy way to open the gun back up so relubing the plunger can be quite a challenge (you can always rip the NF part off, but that sucks). Over time, the added friction could potentially decrease the ranges! If you have some type of spray lube I suppose you could try and spray down the opening of the plunger tube if need be.

Everything I've said in this post is just conjecture and I encourage all of you guys to try these ideas out. I love my nite-mavs and would be thrilled to see people improve on the mod.

I think I like Carrtoon's version here a little more because it keeps the Maverick shell and still gets decent ranges. However I absolutely love the LEDs. I think you should do a write up on just those as my experience with electronics is at a minimum at best.

There are many problems with carrtoons mod that mine eliminates. First of all, this mod actually works. It is also repeatable (I own four) and doesn't brake at the drop of a hat (I've had my first two nitemavs for over a year. They have survived 4 weeks of HVZ, and over 3 wars). While it may look slightly fugly, by doing the mod this way, you end up with a good catch system which carrtoon's lacked, you can use stronger replacement springs, and you get to use more of the nitefinder plunger tube.

P.S. I don't have much experience with electronics either, I just followed this guide.

My only criticism is for someone out there to try and keep the slide intact and on there. That would be a +100 sexiness rating. I don't like the chunk of Nitefinder on there.

Jerm already did this. The problem with his mod though is that it gets around stock maverick ranges if not worse. The problem with using only the maverick shell is that there just isn't enough room in there to really take advantage of the nitefinder plunger tube.

When all is said and done, the plunger tube should be able to fit in like so:



Step six: Spring replacement.

Take the plunger of the nitefinder and unscrew the plunger head. Remove the spring. Then take your handyman spring and cut off around 1 ½ to 2 coils. Put it on the plunger rod with the cut part facing the back and screw the head back on. Here’s how it should look: (this pic doesn’t have the spring cut down)

Before



After



Also, this is a good time to throw in a stronger catch spring. For this mod, I just took the maverick catch spring which is slightly stronger than the nitefinder’s. Put the plunger rod back into the nitefinder back. Screw the nitefinder back closed. At this point you can test to see if the catch is working by drawing the plunger back and pressing on it to release. Just be careful not to let it shoot forward without you slowing it down. If the plunger rod is catching but not releasing, what is happening is that the spring is pushing the plastic it is resting on against the catch plate preventing it from moving. I had a huge problem with this with the clear series. You have two options here, use a weaker spring (the lame option), or reinforce the hell out of that area (what I did). Unfortunately I don’t have any pictures of reinforcing this area so you are on your own.

Step Seven: The Hard Part (ie. getting the trigger just right).

Getting the trigger to work correctly is by far the most difficult part of this mod. What you want to happen is to have the trigger plate actuated and the very end of the maverick trigger pull so that the maverick cylinder is fully rotated and the barrel is aligned with the plunger tube. Easier said than done. This step is going to take critical thinking, some serious measuring and some good old guess and check. I will do my best to outline how to do this using only the nitefinder and maverick triggers, but because your cuts may be different than mine you will have to do a lot of your own measuring. Also, my camera ran out of memory so I only have a few pics of this part.

First you have to estimate where your trigger plate is going to be. To do this take the left half of the maverick shell, put the plunger tube and plunger assembly where they are going to go and mark where the trigger plate is. You are going to have to do some more trimming to get the catch plate to sit down inside the maverick. Here are some pics of where I cut.



Take the nitefinder trigger and roughly cut this part off. Yours may need to look different depending on your previous cuts.



Use zap a gap to glue it to the maverick trigger so that it should hit the trigger plate at the very end of the trigger pull. This is what mine looks like:



Next, because we are going to be increasing the friction on the cylinder later when we improve the seal, we are going to need to put an extra spring on the trigger so that it will return and finish rotating the cylinder. Take the maverick extension spring I told you to hold onto earlier and attach it as in the picture above.

Step Eight: Put everything together then glue it! (Edit: After some bitching and moaning from other members of the NIC about how unclear this step was, I've added some more pictures I took after some routine maintenence.)

Screw the maverick together.
Put in the plunger tube, pushing it as far forward as possible. Hot glue it in place. Then lube up your plunger head, and put the whole plunger assembly into place. While holding the plunger assembly in place, cock the gun and see if the trigger works. If it doesn't, you are going to need to mess with the trigger some more. If it is too short, you can just put a line of hot glue on top of the ramp. If the trigger works, glue the crap out of it! I used hot glue because it is easy to take apart if you find out the trigger doesn’t work properly. Feel free to use your glue of choice though.

Edit for those who don't understand. I'll try and use small words:

Take this:



Put it in like this:



Test and fiddle with trigger until it works. Then glue it.

Almost finished product:



Step Nine: Improving the seal.

At this point, if you’ve loaded the gun and tried to fire it you will most likely be lusting for my blood after witnessing the puny ranges. But fear not for there is one more step. Take a sheet of your craft foam and cut off a 2 x 1 inch rectangle from it. Open your cylinder like you would load it, and press the craft foam firmly against the plunger tube lip. This should leave a nice imprint in the foam. Cut out the inside of the imprint and use some zap a gap to glue it into place around the lip. Press the cylindar against the foam and rotate it around 50 times. After that it should rotate when you pull the trigger.




Congratulations! You now own pure awesome.

Ranges = 60+ feet flat (you want to use darts with a springer fit)
Rate of fire = blistering fast

Now some sweet pics:



Of course I made two because real men dual wield.



And the two together:



Some updates from 5 months later!

1. Pad the plunger head with craft foam!!! Mine broke after someone dry fired the gun a few times, and let me tell you it is a pain to replace in this gun.

2. When I went back in to replace the plunger head, I went ahead and put around 3 layers of e-tape under the o-ring. Things went pretty much how I said they would on page 2. The performance definately increased, however this decreased over time. Fortunately I have some spray silicone lube which I sprayed down the plunger tube opening, fixing the problem. If you are going to put some e-tape under the o-ring I recommend getting some spray lube and lubing the plunger up before each war.

3. This happened the other day:



After only a couple months of light use, the back of the Nitefinder piece shattered! As stated earlier, the clear plastic is much weaker than the colored! With nothing for the plunger rod to rest on in the back the blaster stopped catching. You can see my solution in the picture. If this ever happens all you need to do is slap on some epoxy putty to keep the punger rod elevated enough to catch. To prevent this from happening to you I can think of three things to do.

1. Pad the back of the Nitefinder piece with craft foam.

2. Cut the Nitefinder piece a little bit smaller at the front or have it sit farther forward on the maverick. This would stop the plunger from hitting the plastic piece but also would decrease the draw of the gun.

3. Preemptively cut where the Nitefinder plunger rod slams into the shell.

Step four: Dealing with the plunger tube.

This is pretty much directly ripped from Carrtoons mod, but I’ll go through it here just for completion’s sake.

Open up your nitefinder, and take out the plunger assembly. Nerf has recently made our lives harder by gluing the barrel to the plunger tube, so let’s deal with that first. There has been much discussion about this lately and the general consensus is to use a pipe cutter to cut right across this line.



But if you are like me and don’t have a pipe cutter you can do what I did which is dunk the glued part in boiling water for around 30 seconds. This should loosen up the glue a bit so that you can muscle it apart. Just be careful because it can soften up the plastic as well. Also, cut along this line so that the tube is flush.



Cut out the air restrictor.

Before:



After:



Now, grab the plunger tube piece from the Maverick I told you to hold onto earlier and cut off the front of it.





Then glue that piece onto the front of the nitefinder plunger tube with some plumbers goop. Let it dry and then go over it with some zap a gap to make it rock hard (like my abs). It should look like this when done.



Finally, cut off those tabs where the plunger tube used to screw into the nitefinder.

Step five: Cut a bitch!

Here we have reached the point of no return. If you mess up this step, say good bye to around 20$ of nerf guns.

The first thing we are going to do is cut off the back of the maverick like so. Conveniently there are already lines along where you want to cut so it’s pretty hard to mess up.





Things get a little funky on the left side because that is where the rotation mech anchors. Here is a close up.



After cutting the back off of the maverick, it’s time to do the same to the nitefinder. Because your cuts will probably be a little different than mine, I recommend eyeballing it to make sure the back of the nitefinder will fit in well with the front of the maverick. Here is roughly where you want to cut:



These are my pieces:





Again, the left side is a little funky because of that rotation mech.

Finally, you are going to have to trim and sand down the interior of the maverick shell so that the new plunger can fit in. Here are some pics of where I cut:

How to make a nitemav/mavfinder:

First and foremost, this is a very long write up. Sorry about that. I had to do a lot of stuff to make the maverick not suck. If you are an experienced modder, much of this write up will look familiar and many individual steps can be found in the nerfhaven mod directory. The final product would not have been possible without the brilliant mods and write-ups of Capt. Slug, Carrtoon, and many others. I would also like to give a shout out to alex6432 for this post and his utter inability to spell nitemav which inspired me to do this mod.

I will be detailing every step that I took to make a nitemav in hopes that even someone like Talio’s mom would be able to do this mod (like she did me last night).

Here is what we are making:



Things you need:

Nitefinder
Maverick
Handyman spring (these are the ones from home depot)
About two feet of Barrel material (I used thick wall PETG because it fits my darts well)
Zap a gap (I love this stuff. It dries relatively fast and binds incredibly strong)
Amazing goop
Hot glue and gun
Cutting tools (something that can make straightish cuts is good)
Screwdriver
Silicone lube
Craft foam

Disclaimer:

I have now done this mod on both the yellow guns and the clear series and even though this write up is done using the clear series guns, I would highly recommend not using them. The plastic is softer and bends more easily making it harder for the catch to work when you add in a stronger spring. I had to cut my handyman spring down a couple extra coils and heavily reinforce the area where the spring rested against the catch with my clear series nite-mavs where with the yellow ones I did not. That being said, the clear series does look totally bad ass with some leds (see very bottom).

Step One: Fix the Rotation Mechanism

This mod has been outlined before by the likes of Capt. Slug, but in an attempt to make this write-up as complete as possible I’m going to go ahead and detail it here. First, open your maverick. You do this by first unscrewing the cocking handle, removing that, and then unscrewing the rest of the screws. The inside should look like this:



For this part of the mod, we are going to focus on this part:



Remove those four screws and take the rotation mechanism out.



Take off the screw at the end and take apart the rotation mechanism. This is how the parts should be ordered.



To prevent the rotation mechanism from skipping when you pull the trigger, glue the two teethed pieces on the left together with some zap a gap. Let dry then reassemble.

At this point you can also rip out the plunger parts, but hold on to this piece and the extension spring from the cocking handle. You will need them later.



Step Two: Replace the Barrels

While you still have your maverick open, remove the barrel cylinder.



Grab your claw hammer or prying tool of choice, put it under this piece and pry it off.



Be careful not to let the pieces go flying as you are going to need all of them shortly. Now, remove the screws from the barrel cylinder there should be 3 on each end. Pull the cylinder apart. Remove all of the air restrictors and pegs, but keep one of the springs for later.



Take the right piece and cut along this line:



Throw away the left side of the peice you just cut.

Then, take the 3 1/2 inch segments of PETG and insert them into what is left of the barrels where the cylinder attaches to the rotation mech (this is where the air restrictors were). They should fit very tight. If you are paranoid about air escaping or them coming loose, feel free to goop or hot glue them in:



Once all barrels are in, reassemble the drum and screw it back together. Finish reassembling the barrel cylinder with the restrictor spring inserted like so.



The point of this is to help push the cylinder back against the plunger tube, making it harder for air to escape. (I don’t really know how well this works, but it doesn’t hurt)

Step three: Roulette mod

This is a mostly cosmetic mod but it does have some benefits. Firstly it allows for easier reloading. Secondly, it will make things easier when you increase the seal with craft foam later.

Cut off these plastic parts.





Also cutting here will help later. (they can rub against the craft foam seal when opening and closing the barell)

Doom, I would so be up for mod parties. You have no idea. My current modding tool set consists of some screwdrivers a steak knife and a mini hot glue gun.

No joke.

At anyrate, I had a complete blast. Its been 4 days and my legs still aren't fully recovered.

Onto the recap!

I used my dual nite-mavs during the entire day and couldn't have been happier with their performance! Their rate of fire and range were perfect for the arena and they were consistent the entire day. So far they have survived 3 wars and 2 weeks of HVZ. Expect a write up in the near future!

I know most disagree, but my favorite round was by far the capture the flag round because it was over an hour of solid nerfing. I didn't even care that the game was completely unwinnable for either team. Riding the in crate elevator to the third floor and raping the orange team was hilarious. Vacc, you were totally robbed.

The zombie rounds were also amazing. I love this type of game play because even when you are out you still get to play. It was great reuniting the sundial strikers... and then turning on them shortly there after. At one point my team purposefully got trapped on the stairwell in the atrium (we thought it would be fun. It was.) and I had a pair of Effeminate shots hitting both Vacc and Split throught the small gaps in the glass railings. Definately one of the highlights of my day. I also realized that I make a terrible zombie. I think I only got one zombie kill the entire day (sorry John, but your brains were delicious). Doom, I envy your amazing brain munching skillz.

The worst round by far was VIP. The game's rules weren't well thought out, my team's strategy wasn't well thought out, and it ended up being really lame. About 2/3s of my team (pink i think) had no idea were the VIP was and we got owned. Hard.

I also got my first nerf welt from this war which I feel is a nerfing rite of passage, like a bar mitzvah. Unfortunatley it was from friendly fire, so as far as rites of passages go it was more like eating a couple bran muffins.

I have to agree that this war was not as well run as it could have been and this is a problem that comes up again and again when I go to UMD events. Sometimes it seems to me that the people who come to these things are more interested in hanging out and talking than nerfing which is increadibly frustraiting. That being said, the fun outweighs the frustration... usually.

This war is definately intended for people outside of the school. I know that it is complete garbage that information about this event is always so last minute, but I think that this is in part due to how insanely bureaucratic it is to get anything done through the university.

Just trying to rent a room for a couple hours is a long and arduous process frought with peril, but for a student run organization who is already on the rocks with the university to reserve a whole academic building for a day with the intent of having 30+ people running around shooting each other with fake guns and then to have to get the campus police to approve on top of that boggles my mind.

To me, the fact that Dart of War 3 is happening at all is remarkable. This is going to be an amazing nerfing experience and if there is any way you can get there on such short notice, I recommend making the trip. You won't regret it.

Let me preface this post by saying that I'm not involved in any planning or decision making associated with this event. However I have been coming to UMD nerf events for over 3 years.

So let me get this straight. We can use any nerf gun as long as it's firing nerf darts correct?

Also in regards to bandannas. If you give me one will it be clean? I sweat enough for 10 men, I don't need the essence of some unwashed 19 year old all over my head.

Talio.

No worries, the club doesn't really use true bandannas. They just use strips of red fabric which they do not reuse. That being said, yours will be dirty.

As far as the blasters are concerned, the rules page says that paintball, airsoft and titans (they probably mean singled) are banned, but I'm sure that other insanely unfair guns will be banned on a case by case basis. The club takes safety very seriously so don't bring anything that will hurt people.

I am so pumped for this. I've never been able to make it to a Dart of War due to always being out of the country when it happens. That being said, I did nerf in the Art/Soc building once years ago before all of this reservations nonsense and it was sick. Can't wait to do it again!

I think it's been confirmed that the University of Maryland will be hosting their Dart of War on the 18th, so two weeks from now is covered!

Though it breaks my heart to say it, I can no longer make it. Curse you short notice changes in my work schedule!!!