Bolt Action Sniper Rifle - C02 Powered, A nerf rifle composed of concentric PVC Options

[boltsniper]

Hello,
This is my first post at Nerfhaven. I have been working on a bolt action rifle for a few days now. The pics of what i have so far are here:

http://www.filebox.vt.edu/users/eneblett/Nerf/loser/

The rifle fires 5/8" stefans. The dart is loaded into the shells (seen below the gun in the pics) and then loaded into the magazine. The action works with a reciprocating rotating bolt. When the bolt is all the way back a shell falls into the chamber. As the bolt is pushed forward the shell is seated at the end of the barrel and is sandwiched between 2 o-rings on either side of the shell to maintain a tight seal. After firing the bolt is pulled all the way back and the spent shell is ejected out the bottom of the gun. At the same time another shell is falling into the chamber for the process to repeat. The action works perfectly with nearly zero jams. The v1 of the gun is the finished mechanism of the gun with no propulsion installed. The v2 of the gun has a airtank placed underneath the barrel and is a full functioning gun. The power with this setup is relatively low however. I just can`t atttain a high enough pressure with a pump airtank to achieve the velocity i want. I am now looking into C02 for propulsion of the darrs. The gun is about 4 feet long but is easily handled. Removing the screw on silencer greatly decreases the bulkiness of the gun. The silencer is constructed like that of a actual firearm silencer. There is a extension of the barrel drilled with holes in a sprial pattern. Foam surrounds the barrel portion and is sheathed with 1"PVC. y using the wonders of PVC i was able to make the silencer removable. The trigger is composed completely of PVC and feels very nice. The entire gun feels very nice in your hands. If the gun is relatively accurate i plan to mount a scope on it. Take a look at the pics and let me know what you think/suggestions.
If anybody wants more details on the rifle feel free to email me.Rifle PIcture

[Zero Talent]

Well, I've already said this at NHQ, but awesome job.

[Dan Cromer]

That is friggin sweet. My only critique, which was hard to come up with mind you, would be to use 1/2" stefans. They just work better all around. Although the 5/8" stefans would have more stopping power, the capability to blow holes through engine blocks with a nerf dart aren't exactly necessary.

[merlinski]

This is an excellent job. And I would have to add that the ability to put holes in an engine block with a nerf dart is most certainly necessary.

As for co2, your moving into some dangerous territory. The quick change of pressure that co2 entails means that you could reach fairly low temperatures. PVC gets very brittle when it gets cold, and if you have high pressures and brittle pipe, you could have a problem. If you really wanted co2, your best bet would be a bike pump inflator, which works at relatively lower (safer) pressures and is compact enough not to get in the way. If you want a system with a few shots before re-pumping, you can always attempt a 2 tank system, in which you have one large, high pressure tank that you fill with an air compressor or large pump. That tank is connected to a regulator, which is in turn connected to a smaller, lower pressure tank. This is the tank which supplies the air for the shot. Once you shoot, the smaller tank repressurizes at the regulator setting from the larger tank.

I'm curious as to how the bolt pulls the spent cartridge back without fail, yet slides forward over the cartridge seemlessly when you press it forward.

Once again, very nice job.

[DJ Hurley]

Dude, that thing is so pimped out. I'll be first to buy one if you start selling them!
Also, give me some tips on how you make your sprays on your guns so perfect! It looks almost as if you bought it that way, even better then how Hasbro paints theirs.

[boltsniper]

I`m using 5/8" stefans because they are a perfect (and I mean perfect) fit in the 1/2" PVC. This is good cause they won`t fall out of the shells when you are loading them or handling them. The ring around the rear of the shell is the key to pulling the spent shell back. Its kind of hard to explain in words. The bolt (the part that actually moves in the gun) is 2 concentric layers of PVC bonded together. The 2 layers starts at the front of the bolt and extends back to about 1" in front of where the rear of the breach is. So when the bolt is all the way back and a shell falls in (ahead of the ejection port) it lands completely on the 2 layer portion. As the bolt is pushed forward the shell slides on top of it and then the lip on the shell falls into the 1 layer region. Then when the bolt is pulled back the created ridge from the 2 layer to 1 layer catches the shell and pulls it back. You might be able to see it in the upclose picture I have of the bolt itself. See the link above. I dunno if that helps any....

I paint my guns with ordinary spray paint and then clear coat them to prevent the paint from coming off. I mask the parts I don`t want painted with masking and scotch tape. Nothing special really. i`m just a perfectionist.

Thanks for the info on C02. I`m aware of the material proerties of PVC and CPVC and I have been contemplating for a while how to deal with it. The air tank idea you have sounds good. But I am tring to avoid having a massive weapon to lug around. I want the gun to be easily handled yet very powerful. it needs to shoot like it looks. i`ll post again when I have any major developments.

I highly doubt I`ll ever sell these things. It took WAY too much dremel work to do over and over. The tolerances are so small and took so long to get right. I might draw up some plans and sell those however. Just curious, how much would someone pay for one of these guns????? or the plans????

[MILLENIA008]

It sounds cool, but how much did this badass thing cost?

[boltsniper]

Total PVC costs: ~$10.00
Vinyl Tubing: ~$2.00
5/8" FBR: ~$3.00
O-rings: ~$1.00
Design & Labor: Priceless

So I`ve spent probably around $20.00 on this gun so far. Keep in mind I already have a lot of stuff in the area of tools some supplies. A dremel tool is a necissity to make the cuts I did. I used balsa for the magazine which is somewhat cheap but I already have a crap load of it. All the bonds were made with CA, JBweld, or PVC cement.

The supplies are cheap, it's the manufacturing costs that are through the roof........

[cxwq]

Selling them is probably going to be out of the question. People may have some interest in the plans however.

I've found that selling modded guns just doesn't make sense for me anymore. I spend 4 hours slaving over a $10 gun and people (understandably, I guess) don't want to pay much over $30 for it. That's a pretty awful return for my labor since it's much more difficult than my $35/hour day job. I have a feeling you'd run into the same problem just on a bigger scale. People may be willing to pay $50-60 for the gun but it's just not worth it.

As far as the plans go, you could almost definitely make a little money selling those. Though as soon as you sold them once you'd have some piracy problems given the close nature of the online Nerf community.

Or you could gain instant fame and adulation by having us host the plans for free

[boltsniper]

I had/have NO intention of selling the guns and I hadn`t thought much into the plans. I was jsut curious...

[boltsniper]

She's alive and she's a beast....

I finished up my bolt action C02 rifle today. The pics of the final painted hun are here:

http://filebox.vt.edu/users/eneblett/Nerf/...f/loser/Final/

There are still a few very minor kinks to be ironed out. Nothing that can`t be handles and nothing that hinders the guns performance. I have not range tested the gun yet. But, from 40ft I can put a dart THROUGH a cardboard box with PINPOINT accuracy. I`m gonna take it outside one of these days to do some range testing: zero deg inclination shots. I`m also going to calcuate the muzzle velocity jsut cause i`m curious. The silencer makes a very noticable reduction in firing noise without hindering performance. Right ow I can get about 10 shots per cylinder of C02. This is a bit low but with this gun you aren`t going ot be cracnking shot after shot off. I hope. The low shot/cylinder is due to the trigger setup i have that lets more gas out than a paintball gun would per shot. In addition to the 5/8" stefans the rifle shoots micros as well. It doesn`t shoot them as well as the stefans but, it's still damn hard..... As always let me know what you think and ask me whatever you like about the rifle. I`m planning on mounting a scope for precision aiming. The gun is accurate to where it is pointed but there is no real way of aiming right now. I also though about using a laser sight. I haven`t thought much into that yet. Sorry about starting a new thread.......

[boltsniper]

OK....I`ve made a few modifications and added a scope. I`ve also done some minor range testing as well. I added a cheap 4X air rifle scope. It is cheap but it works VERY well. After a few shots for aligning, I was able to hit a 1/2" dot on a box from about 40-50 feet away. I did it a few times in a row some I`m pretty sure it wasn`t a coincidence. I also redesigned the trigger to make it easier to pull.

Now for the performance results. I fired the gun outside in a field. The numbers I got are likely flawed because it was extremely windy today. Each shot was taken standing up with the barrel paralell to the ground: a zero incindence shot. With the silencer on and using a 5/8" stefan I got ranges of nearly 150 feet. Using a Nerf micro dart I got ranges of around 110 feet. I think these numbers will go up in situations where the crosswind is not so strong.

I`ve thrown up so pictures of the rifle with the scope and also a pic of me shooting it.

http://www.filebox.vt.edu/users/eneblett/N...f/loser/Final/

[Raiden]

ok first, that looks awesome and thoese are very nice resuslts, secondly i have 2 questions for you, you say that the trigger is made out of pvc, do you mean the whole valve etc is home made or just the trigger? Secondly can you explain in more detail how your shell loading/ejecting system works?

thanks and once again nice job

[rawray7]

that bolt idea is very nice. i am now inspired to change the way i have been going about attempting bolt-action.

[Switchblade]

That is truly a engineering marvel. However, I pray to God that you will never use that on a person. Seriously, dude. That is a death machine (in a good and bad way). "With great power comes great responsiblity."