25 replies to this topic

[Sponge Nerfer]

Presenting the B-VAR (ball valve assault rifle), it is a very similar design to the wolloper exept a larger tank, and a slightly more "tacticle" look.

Here it is, the whole gun:



Here is the valve set-up:



And here is the stock:



Here are the specs when not using the secondary valve:

Range: 300+ feet
ROF: Awful like one shot per minute.
Number of shots before having to re-pump: 1

And when using the secondary valve:

Range: roughly 100 feet
ROF: pretty nice, I can get a shot off every 10 seconds.
Number of shots before pumping: 10, until range drasticly decreases

If you do not understand what I mean by using the secondary valve, here is a description:

After having pumped up the entire tank, I open the secondary valve (valve furthest back), this fills the space between the two valves with pressure. I then open the first valve and the gun fires. I put another bullet in the barrel, close the first valve, open the second valve, pressure fills the space between the valves, close the secondary valve, fire. Repeat. Doing this greatly increases ROF for obvious reasons.

Conclusion:

This is a very adaptable gun, if I need to take a very long ranged shot I can do so, but if I am in the position to fire multiple rounds at close range I can also do that. Using this gun along with a sidearm such as an nf, I can become a very formidable opponent. Tommorow I will give it a paint-job and probably put up some damage pics.

(I take very little credit for this design, I know it has been done many times before)

-sponge

[Rambo]

It's impressive. 300 feet accuratly?

Don't beat yourself up that it's not 100% original. I can only think of a few people who are 100% original. Simple can easily be more effective than complicated and original. I give it an 8/10. Nice job.

[six-five-two]

That is awesome! I think I am going to finally complete my walloper and use a bike pump instead of a check valve. I think I may have to make the air tank bigger though. How much pumps does it take? And does it have a breech or do you have to ramrod it?

[trogdor65]

Pretty nice, can you connect it to an air compressor? If you can it is fun to use with the compressor. No pumping required.

~the burninator

[Meaker VI]

Sponge_Nerfer, on Nov 5 2006, 04:11 PM, said:

Range: 300+ feet

Somehow I'm skeptical.

Can you post how you took that range, what your conditions were, what angle you fired at, etc. etc. ?

[King Of Butt Land]

Sorry meaker, but thats just dumb. Have you ever seen the ranges potato guns of smaller or equal size gets?

-Butt

[Sponge Nerfer]

-Meaker, ok as kingofbuttland said, there are tons of similar guns out there that get these ranges, if you dont believe me fine, I will have some damage pictures up soon enough that might convince you.

Now, without further ado! Here is what I did today:



That is the newer, sleeker, nicer, and less cumbersomb B-VAR. I am sure you guys will agree that it looked pretty crummy, but now it looks pretty cool, is easier to hold, and has a much cleaner look to it. Before it had a few minor leakes due to design flaws, now its leak-free and works great. I made it a bit smaller so max range has gone from 300ft to around 250ft. However when you are in a nerf war you dont really need a gun that fires 300ft so I might be better off having it be a bit smaller. I am very happy with the result of my gun, I will paint it asap (when I get some paint) and have pictures of it shooting into some styrafoam before the end of the week. I would like some suggestions as far as painjob so please help me out!

-sponge

[blinkycc13]

First post: Thats one of the more ergonomic-looking guns I've seen. I really like it because it actually has some shape to it.
Second pic: How long is that barrel? How long is the overall gun?

[Rambo]

Would I be right in saying that the gun is exactly the same, just the pump is repositioned?

[Uncle Hammer]

So? He made it look better, nice job dude.

[six-five-two]

How much pumps does it need to be fully primed?

[Sponge Nerfer]

Blinky: the barrel is just about 2ft long.

Rambo: I did more than just reposition the pump, I re-positioned the entire tank so that way it would distribute its weight to stronger joints stoping the thing from leaking and making it easier to hold.

Six-five-two: If I really need the full 250 feet it will take about 50 pumps, but just for you average nerfing purposes around 20-30 pumps would suffice.

Thanks for all your feedback, please tell me what you think about a paintjob.

-sponge

[Sponge Nerfer]

Sorry to double-post, but I just finished the paint-job, here are some pics:





Enjoy!

now here is the damage picture:



BAM! right through a 1.5" piece of styrafoam. I love this gun!!

-sponge

Edited by Sponge_Nerfer, 07 November 2006 - 11:18 AM.

[Meaker VI]

King Of Butt Land, on Nov 6 2006, 02:15 PM, said:

Sorry meaker, but thats just dumb. Have you ever seen the ranges potato guns of smaller or equal size gets?

-Butt

Yes, I'm quite aware that a potato gun could get 250'+ easily. My friends used a giant slingshot to fire water ballons about that far, and that was without any kind of pressurised system. However, I am skeptical because you're firing nerf darts, right? Those have a maximum range before being torn to shreads by the shooting device. Potatoes can take much greater force and are much better projectiles because they are much heavier for their size.

Sponge_Nerfer, on Nov 6 2006, 02:35 PM, said:

-Meaker, ok as kingofbuttland said, there are tons of similar guns out there that get these ranges, if you dont believe me fine, I will have some damage pictures up soon enough that might convince you.

Sponge_Nerfer, on Nov 7 2006, 07:51 AM, said:

BAM! right through a 1.5" piece of styrafoam. I love this gun!!

-sponge

Ummm.... I could easily put many things through a 1.5" peice of styrofoam. I'd like to see how you measured your distances (very few people I know have 300' measuring tapes), and what condiditons you measured them in, and whether or not you angled your gun when firing. And what type of darts you used, I looked through the first post quickly and didn't notice anything about that.

All I'm saying is that I'd be much more willing to believe you if you post more information about how you calculated your ranges, and about what kind of "bullets" you are using.

[edit] Here is a link to another long-range cannon built by Dr. Nerf, which got 250' using insanely heavy darts (he said he used bolts as weights). BoltSniper didn't believe him on his ranges initially, because, baised on his experiments, he could not get a regular dart to go over 200'.

Edited by Meaker VI, 07 November 2006 - 02:57 PM.

[Sponge Nerfer]

"Ummm.... I could easily put many things through a 1.5" peice of styrofoam."

What can you put a nerf dart through a 1.5" peice of styrofoam? Your titan? Yes a titan can blow through a piece of styrofoam about that size, I dont know about you, buy my titan fires around 180ft. My claim for the gun now is 250ft after having made it slightly smaller. The titan has a MUCH smaller tank then my gun and while it may have a faster opening valve, I am pretty sure that we can say my gun can get off around 250ft. Now, as to how I am measuring it, I use a fairly crude yet effective method. When I tested this gun I fired it down my street, every house has a yard that is around 100ft long so I simply count the yards and do the math. I do not claim that my gun went exactly 250ft buy just that it was in the generaly area or around 250ft, could have been 220 feet or even 270 feet who is to say? Dr.Nerfs gun did not have a tank half the size of mine so his home-made is almost irrelivant. I did fire the gun at an angle, if you realy need degrees then I would say something like 50-60degrees. I hope this has answered your questions and if you still dont believe me, fine.

-sponge

[Meaker VI]

Sponge_Nerfer, on Nov 7 2006, 01:43 PM, said:

I did fire the gun at an angle, if you realy need degrees then I would say something like 50-60degrees. I hope this has answered your questions and if you still dont believe me, fine.

-sponge

Yes, that answers my questions. Firing at an angle and measuring by house-yard width would explain everything. The link to Dr. Nerf's gun was mostly because it had in it an explination of why stock darts cannot go farther than 200' fired flat; as per BoltSniper's experiments. He said in a post on that topic that regardless of the pressure used, he couldn't get a dart much farther than 200'.

But firing angled would explain all that since I'm fairly sure that both Bolt and Dr. Nerf were testing range fired flat, or as close to flat as possible (so less than 10 degrees above horizontal). You've got a ballistic trajectory, which isn't all that usefull for nerfing (I don't usually shoot a dart upward to try to hit someone, I shoot it at them, maybe adjusting for distance with a slight upward angle). I'd like to know the range fired flat, which is typically more accepted as the maximum range around here.

Keep in mind that I don't mean to bash on your accomplishment, it's pretty amazing that you've done all this and that other one in such a short time. I've been trying to help you make yourself sound more believable.

[AssassinNF]

50-60 degrees? This is 50-60 dgrees:

__/
_/
/____

That's practically firing straight up. If you are really firing at that angle, you'd probably get better ranges firing straight

Anyway the gun's awesome, good work!

[Rambo]

Hammer - I didn't mean what I said in a sneering tone like, "Well, that's nothing special." I was just asking what all he changed.
ANF - I'm pretty sure 90 degrees is straight up.

I like the paint job a lot.

[sam]

well at 50-60 degrees I'd think you'd be losing distance. Isn't 45 degrees the maxiumum angle befoer you start to lose distance?

[Rambo]

I could be wrong here, but I would think that somewhere around 30 degrees you would lose distance. This is affected by wind, stefan thickness, stefan weight, and a number of other factors, but I don't think much above 30 would allow you to get a good measure of how good your range is.

[Meaker VI]

I have sitting in front of me the experimental results of this idea, using a launcher with 3 power settings fired from 0 degrees and from 40 degrees. The average numbers for the various power settings (with velocities of 2.936 m/s, 4.56 m/s, and 6.48 m/s respectively; very roughly 1.8 m/s apart each) were 1.47 m, 2.26 m, and 3.21 m for the 0 degree launch, which corrolate roughly given the rough power differences. And for the angled run the averages were 1.636 m, 3.314 m, and 5.133 m respectively. These numbers do not corrolate the same way at +.2 m, +.874 m, and +1.9 m. This should show that the optimum range for each power setting is at a different angle for each setting. In the next exercise we set the medium power setting up to land our projectile on a target 3 m away with a 26 degree angle. Oh, and our launcher was 1.16 meters above the ground.

Without accounting for air resistance, the equation for firing level is: Range = Velocity * ((2 * Height of projectile out of the barrel) ^ (1/2)) / (32.18 fps, which is the force of gravity on earth).

To make a long story short; I think the angle that will give you the optimum range depends entirely on your gun. And Sponge gave approximate angles, not exact measurements, for us to speculate on. I'd still like to see level ranges; because those are more regularly given and easier to work with (the formulas for angled projectiles without accounting for air resistance are much more complicated).

[bigpinecone]

I figured that if you wanted to get good distance and height, you would use a 45 degree angle. The furthest up you would angle it before losing distance would be somewhere around 22.5 degrees. Any further and you start to lose distance but gain height

Edited by bigpinecone, 09 November 2006 - 11:03 PM.

[Falcon]

It is a proven fact that the optimum ranges for any projectile are achieved when it leaves its starting point at 45 degrees. Any lower than 45 degrees, and less force is applied in the vertical axis, and the projectile will come in contact with the ground sooner. Any higher than 45 degrees, and less force is applied to the horizontal axis, resulting in not as much flat ground distance covered, because too much energy is used in pushing the projectile UP rather than OUT.

At 45 degrees, there is a perfect balance between vertical and horizontal forces, causing the dart to recieve the maximum amount of force both up and across at the same time. This causes the dart to go very high (giving it more time to travel before contacting the ground) but still gives it a great amount of force to get the dart to travel that horizontal distance.

Cthulhu, we can discuss this in person on Saturday during a break at the So-Cal Turkey Day war if you'd like.

[Deja Vu]

200 feet is actually normal. That sounds amazing in the Nerf world, but in the potato gun world its nothing. Mine gun is about twice the size, just different design and using a modified sprinkler valve, it shoot a weighted plastic cylinder through 3/8" plywood + a thin sheet of metal grating. As for distance, with a 3/4" piece of potato it gets roughly 350-400 feet. Imagine what a stefan would do. It would probably make the dart disintigrate.

Edited.

Edited by Deja Vu, 26 November 2006 - 03:24 AM.

[SHADOW HUNTER ALPHA]

Nice gun, sponge. Falcon, you are correct in your statement, proven both by logic and the ballistics and trajectories program on my laptop.

P.S.: If you abandoned you other gun, you ought to scrap it for the barrel and tank at least.