Front View
I was in negotiation with a friend of mine to purchase a Hornet when he got his N-Strike set. The N-Strike was back-ordered, so I went without a “shotgun†for a bit longer. I really liked the idea of a cloud of foam headed towards an opponent; after all, one cannot dodge buckshot no matter how ninja-like one’s skills are.
Eventually I got around to making a Toys-R-Us run to get a Christmas present for a friend of mine, and there it was…Four barrels of foam spouting mayhem that is the Lanard Big Salvo.
There’s not much about this gun on this site, but after a quick restrictor mod with the help of a flathead screwdriver and loading a few stock megas I had lying around into the barrels, it was apparent that either I got lucky or this gun is one of the best kept secrets in Nerf.
I had recently done my first barrel replacement mod on an AT2K that I purchased from Baghead, and felt that the Big Salvo would work better with micros, as those are far more common than megas. After playing around in the dorm with this gun, I decided to be the typical greedy American and not to be satisfied with what I already had. Four darts was simply not enough to satisfy my desire for a shotgun-like weapon.
That’s where this comes in:
It’s simply the ½†CPVC barrel I was going to insert into the stock barrel to make micros fit with a ½†tee on the end, with two ½†90 degree street elbows on either end of that, and then two more barrels.
One of these bad boys into each of the four barrels of the Big Salvo and suddenly my four mega darts at once becomes eight micros, which are enough for a decent shotgun blast.
I hot-glued all the parts of the Y-splitter together, but left them separated from the barrels for three reasons:
1. I might decide that I want to fire megas at some point, they go farther, or to use the original arrows for a stock (well, mostly) war.
2. So that I might make extra Y-splitters for a faster reload, it’s faster to preload several of these things and drop each one into a big barrel rather than trying to reload every smaller barrel.
3. So that I could change the initial form of the spread if I find something that works better, I’ve found one so far that spreads things pretty far, and one that keeps them fairly tight.
On to the full writeup:
Materials needed:
4 ½†CPVC T-joints
8 ½†CPVC 90 degree Street Elbows
½†CPVC cut into four 4†segments and 8 segments of your preferred barrel length.
Hot Glue sticks
Lanard Big Salvo
Tools needed:
Hot Glue gun
Hack Saw
Chisel
Flat head screwdriver
Modification directions
1. Remove the air restrictor in each barrel using the flathead to pry it out, or by using the hacksaw to cut the barrel off below the restrictor. Either way make sure you get all of it because it’s a fairly tight fit without any excess plastic in the way.
2. Take one of your 4†segments of CPVC and drop it down a barrel to make sure it will fit without too much force. Remove when finished dry fitting
3. Assemble a Y-Splitter by coating one end of a 4†CPVC section, being careful not to into the bottom of a ½†CPVC T-joint, and adding a street elbow to each side. There is a large and small side to a street elbow, coat the small end in hot glue and insert it into the T-joint. Then glue your barrel length sections of CPVC into the large ends of the street elbow. Repeat for as many splitters as you desire. Cautious or inexperienced modders should dry fit everything before gluing.
4. Drop a Splitter into each large barrel in an arrangement that will create the kind of spread you are looking for.
5. Insert a dart into each CPVC barrel
6. Pump the gun about 10 times
7. Fire
8. Gaze in awe at the destruction you have just dealt.
9. Giggle maniacally.
Ranges are better than I had guessed, rather than forty to fifty feet, it's fifty to sixty feet.
Ranges were fired from the waist (about four feet up), no more than a 20 degree angle, with both Tagger Micros and the sonic megas. The gun was pumped ten times for both kinds of ammo.
Taggers
1. 48'
2. 50'
3. 51'
4. 51'
5. 53'
6. 54'
7. 56'
8. 61'
Horizontal Spread: 9'
These were done with the Y-splitters as described in the mod above, to compare against stock ranges I also used stock megas in the four barrels without the splitters.
Megas
1. 57'
2. 59'
3. 64'
4. 68'
Spread: 8'
There's a significant difference between the micros with splitters and megas without, but not enough for the mega's to be considered advantageous in my mind. I'll take a more even spread over slightly longer range for a shotgun style gun.
Edited by Cmdrmack, 19 July 2007 - 07:32 PM.
