18 replies to this topic

[Norther of Heaven]

If a gun which is using (some) homemade internals but uses a few (stock) parts and is fitted into a stock shell, is it considered a mod or a homemade?

I'm talking about a gun i'm currently working on, the trigger mech. as well as the air tank are homemade. However the pump and shell for the gun come from store-bought guns. I'm a little confused as to how such a project would be categorized.

I'd like to think that its a homemade, but isn't the shell a big piece of what separates mods from homemades?

Edited by Norther_of_Heaven, 22 January 2009 - 04:20 AM.

[kdizzle1533]

I think your right, the shell does play a big role in determining a homemade from a mod. Though a modification is tweeking a gun, if you're using all homemade internals and it's considered a mod, would that mean that the shell is the gun itself? I would consider slugs 3k mod a homemade even though he used 3k internals he still created a new housing and pump system.

Edited by kdizzle1533, 22 January 2009 - 04:47 AM.

[Norther of Heaven]

Now if only i could get a Mod in here to help settle this . . .

[Carbon]

It's sort of a grey area, but it seems that the shell determines where it's categorized. As examples, there's the SOBR and the C (respectively based around AT3k and AT2k tanks) in the homemade directory, and Nitefinders and Crossbows with replaced plungers and plunger tubes in the Mod directory.

This seems backwards to me; I would think that the power source would ultimately determine placement, but that's not how it's worked up until this point.

Edited by Carbon, 22 January 2009 - 09:17 AM.

[VACC]

It's sort of a grey area, but it seems that the shell determines where it's categorized. As examples, there's the SOBR and the C (respectively based around AT3k and AT2k tanks) in the homemade directory, and Nitefinders and Crossbows with replaced plungers and plunger tubes in the Mod directory.

This seems backwards to me; I would think that the power source would ultimately determine placement, but that's not how it's worked up until this point.

I generally categorize anything with any nerf/lanard/etc. parts as a modification while items with entirely homebrew componants are homemade. Has this always been how people group them? No. Does it really matter? Again, no.

VACC

[Carbon]

I generally categorize anything with any nerf/lanard/etc. parts as a modification while items with entirely homebrew componants are homemade. Has this always been how people group them? No. Does it really matter? Again, no.

It matters somewhat, if only because some wars ban homemades. Saying “any” Nerf parts makes it very broad. Taken to an extreme, it could mean a ball valve airgun would be fine, so long as it was in a Sawtooth shell. Personally, I’ve felt that a blaster is Nerf so long as it uses Nerf parts in its power supply (plunger tube and shaft, or air tank). Once those are replaced, it’s a homemade.

It’s something that has always been an interesting question to me: when does a blaster stop being Nerf, and start being a homemade? Some of the Crossbow mods we’ve seen come very close to crossing that boundary. If you replace the plunger tube and the plunger shaft (both of which are posted mods), the only thing that is left is the shell and the trigger. When that’s all that’s left, can that still be called a mod?

Sorry if it appears that I'm playing with semantics. This is something I've honestly wondered about (particularly with regards to Crossbow mods), and am curious about what others think.

[Norther of Heaven]

Nevermind.

Edited by Norther_of_Heaven, 22 January 2009 - 08:36 PM.

[VACC]

It matters somewhat, if only because some wars ban homemades.

I feel that the designation between modification and homemade on such a level is really only a serious consideration when it comes to the forums. If someone is attempting to use semantics to find a loophole in acceptible weapons policies at wars, I'd rather them just stay at home. Nerf, as a sport, is reliant on the honor system. If we have to create stringent safeguards against it's violation, the fun is probably gone anyway.

As for the boards, I stand by my comment. If the weapon's designation is so unclear as to cause confusion about where it should be posted...than it probably doesn't matter where it is posted.

If you are set on creating a hard line designation, though, the one you mentioned was the one originally discussed for larger wars some years ago. If the air chamber (be it an air tank or plunger tube) is not of the manufactioner's make, the gun can be considered homemade for warring purposes. This, however, is troublesome on a discussion forums where the designations are not designed to limit the power of a weapon but to categorize the work done to it for ease of research and review. A crossbow with a new punger/plunger tube may be more similar to a homemade in power, but likely still retains more nerf parts and contains more modifications than straight up fabrication.

VACC

[Carbon]

I feel that the designation between modification and homemade on such a level is really only a serious consideration when it comes to the forums. If someone is attempting to use semantics to find a loophole in acceptible weapons policies at wars, I'd rather them just stay at home. Nerf, as a sport, is reliant on the honor system. If we have to create stringent safeguards against it's violation, the fun is probably gone anyway.

And that's the take-home message of the day. Thanks for your perspective.

Anyway, I don't have interest in making rules to define what's what: it's more a side effect of keeping the homemade directory up to date. That, and having a degree in Biology. I don't work in the field, but the desire to slot things into taxonomic catergories remains strong.

Edited by Carbon, 22 January 2009 - 12:27 PM.

[VACC]

I feel that the designation between modification and homemade on such a level is really only a serious consideration when it comes to the forums. If someone is attempting to use semantics to find a loophole in acceptible weapons policies at wars, I'd rather them just stay at home. Nerf, as a sport, is reliant on the honor system. If we have to create stringent safeguards against it's violation, the fun is probably gone anyway.

And that's the take-home message of the day. Thanks for your perspective.

Anyway, I don't have interest in making rules to define what's what: it's more a side effect of keeping the homemade directory up to date. That, and having a degree in Biology. I don't work in the field, but the desire to slot things into taxonomic catergories remains strong.

No, I understand what you mean. I'm not so much opposed to the creation of a more clear deffinition, as much as I am to the idea that I have to think about its creation, or enforcement......which probably should have precluded me from getting all oppiniony in this topic......oops. Sorry, guy.

VACC

[Langley]

It's also important to note that when this forum was new, homemade nerf guns were more of a theoretical topic, and no one had ever really built a gun that was practical, fair, and useful in a nerf war. It's only in the last year or two that anyone has built a homemade that was widely accepted at most wars. The same goes for major plunger/chamber replacements on spring guns. Conversely, there are a lot more modified nerf/lanard/etc guns than ever before that are being banned at wars. I guess what I'm trying to say is that it's hard to pin down a solid definition when homemades are still undergoing pretty major changes.

It used to be a pretty solid rule that if a gun was bought and modified it was allowed at a war, and if it was build from scratch it wasn't. You can't really apply the term homemade to the plusbow in the way that we used to think of homemades. If someone builds a plusbow, they're going to get more consistent results than they would from the average modification. We can say that plusbows are allowed at wars for that reason. Likewise, if you replace the plunger or the chamber on a crossbow, you can still hypothetically switch back to the original parts if they're in working order, so the performance increase is still pretty limited. But if someone replaces their at2k's air tank with something homemade, or they chop off the front of a nitefinder and hook up the handle and trigger mechanism to who-knows-what, then you can't really judge whether it can be allowed, because who knows what it's capable of. Those are still homemades in every sense of the word.

[UpperHand]

It's also important to note that when this forum was new, homemade nerf guns were more of a theoretical topic, and no one had ever really built a gun that was practical, fair, and useful in a nerf war. It's only in the last year or two that anyone has built a homemade that was widely accepted at most wars. The same goes for major plunger/chamber replacements on spring guns.

That's really interesting, I figured functioning homemades like the snap have been around since biblical times. I'd say though, to categorize a homemade, the actual part of the gun that fires should be mainly composed of homemade items (PVC, CPVC, etc), and borrows parts from existing blasters that are hard to re-fabricate (such as the turret, shell, etc). Modifications are usually the opposite.

[Carbon]

That's really interesting, I figured functioning homemades like the snap have been around since biblical times.

Which gives the really interesting mental image of Moses coming down from the moutaintop with a SNAP and a handful of stefans.

In a less historic frame of time, the SNAP design is three years old this month.

[Glint]

Just throwing my two cents in here... but for me a Mod is when you base the work off of the Nerf brand parts and do/add stuff to them to make it more powerful, while a Homemade is [sometimes] adding Nerf brand parts onto a base of completely different.

[CaptainSlug]

It's simple. Is more of the finished product made from scratch? Or is most of it altered, reinforced, or otherwise customized?

If you made most of the functioning components from scratch, then it's no longer the blaster you bought. While often times the shell is required for the components to function, the shell doesn't make it a particular blaster. The internals do.

Edited by CaptainSlug, 22 January 2009 - 04:34 PM.

[rork]

As has been mentioned, homemades have come so far that it's really a vague dabate. I mean, I think of most of my work as mods based on Carbon's platform. The difference is one of fluidity; there are far fewer limits to how radical the tweaking process can get, when you're fabricating the gun yourself. The commonality is mechanical, rather than physical.

EDIT: I hope we'll be getting some goodies for that 3rd anniversary...

Edited by rork, 22 January 2009 - 06:27 PM.

[Gyrvalcon]

I would say that the crucial difference between homemade and modified blaster should be whatever system is actually propelling the nerf dart.

You could build a custom shell and action, and as long as it uses a air system or plunger tube from a Lanard/Nerf/Buzzbee blaster, it's still a mod.

If, on the other hand, you take a shell and action from a stock blaster and replace the internals with a SNAP plunger tube (for example), it's a homemade.

It still comes down to exercising common sense for wars. I think all blasters should be taken on a case by case basis, homemade and modified alike.

[Norther of Heaven]

It's simple. Is more of the finished product made from scratch? Or is most of it altered, reinforced, or otherwise customized?

If you made most of the functioning components from scratch, then it's no longer the blaster you bought. While often times the shell is required for the components to function, the shell doesn't make it a particular blaster. The internals do.

I have to agree. You're right.