6 replies to this topic

[iamthatcat]

These darts have surprised me with their durability and accuracy. They resemble glue domes but have less death potential, imo. Straight silicone is injected into a syringe to allow for precise application. A cavity must be burnt or drilled into the foam. It's pretty easy, which works for me, and is also fast. The main thing is to keep the silicone away from the edges of the foam no matter what. Any overlap will result in squibs. I show pool noodle foam and stock darts but I'm sure this will work with fbr. I used dap silicone rubber sealant from kmart. Give the darts 5 (ugh) days to cure. My janky makeshift hotglue gun/burning tool is not ideal but workable.

Here's the silicone and syringe.



Inject the silicone into the syringe. It's possible to get 20+ darts out of one filling. A tube of silicone caulk should provide 200+ darts



I made a cavity in the foam with a wonky makeshift tool. It's a dremel grinding stone shoved into my hotglue gun's nozzle and secured with copper wire. I sink it down to the 2nd coil into the top of the blank, being careful to align it and sink it clean. This isn't the most accurate method of course and needs some work.



I add some half moon cutouts of foam to the hole in the stock darts to get a good even weight.



Inject in the silicone from the bottom up, being careful to fill the cavity thoroughly. The syringe allows for precise application which should make getting consistently weighted heads easier. Keep the mound and any residue away from the edges of the foam.



I used a small square of moistened chamois type material wrapped around my finger to shape each head. You can let them skin a bit and adjust the head shape. I got almost no shrinkage.



These take forever to cure. I found that 3 days was not enough for this brand. 5 days resulted in more durable darts. The heads will still come out if ripped out but withstand quite a bit of abuse. Range is comparable to my hotglue domes. Accuracy is good although I have had more bad darts with this method than my usual. Durability is good if properly cured.

Edited by iamthatcat, 03 May 2012 - 02:43 AM.

[Ivan S]

Excellent thinking with the syringe, it looks like it makes application a ton easier, and eliminates the "air pocket" issue discussed in the vans thread.

What do you use to cut your foam out of pool noodles? I suspect silicone bonds better to noodle foam than fbr, since noodle foam has larger cells which give the silicone more to grab on to. I've found the bond between silicone and fbr can be be quite weak.

Oh, I just noticed that some of your foam is actually very small-celled. Have you noticed a difference between the two?

One more thing, I don't think dap is actually silicone. Shouldn't make a difference for these purposes, though.

Edited by Ivan S, 03 May 2012 - 02:52 AM.

[iamthatcat]

Ivan S wrote: "What do you use to cut your foam out of pool noodles?"

I use a punch made from a .50 bullet casing of all things. And then heat (ala Burr's calibration method to straighten them)



"I suspect silicone bonds better to noodle foam than fbr, since noodle foam has larger cells which give the silicone more to grab on to. I've found the bond between silicone and fbr can be be quite weak."

I noticed a better bond with the foam from stock darts (the other foam shown) when compared to the more open, pool noodle foam. I had assumed that fbr would be similar to stock foam as far as bond grip. I found the bond to be better, but still not 100 perfect everytime, with a longer cure.

About the dap brand. I'm not sure if it's the same stuff folks are using but it does say 100% silicone on the tube.

[Siarnaq]

I love the syringe idea. Does it get sticky after a while from having all that silicone injected into it, or is that not an issue? You could probably use it with oogoo as well, which would solve the annoyance of squeezing it into the darts via a plastic baggie.
These look pretty similar to Kane's original rubber darts, and the main issue with them is that they don't feed in hoppers. Too much friction from the silicone tip. I imagine yours have the same problem, but I figured I'd ask anyway. Or, wait, do you have any actual wyes? From your posts it looks like just homemade ones. Then again, it'd be interesting to see if there were any homemade wyes that they did feed in...

[iamthatcat]

Siarnaq so far dried silicone in the syringe comes off easily & without clogging the nozzle.

They feed in my homemade wyes perfectly but I haven't tried a real wye yet.

Here's how the darts sit before firing :



Not sure if the dimensions of the wye are helping with feeding.

Edited by iamthatcat, 03 May 2012 - 05:58 PM.

[KaneTheMediocre]

'Siarnaq', on 03 May 2012 - 1:30 PM, said:

I love the syringe idea. Does it get sticky after a while from having all that silicone injected into it, or is that not an issue? You could probably use it with oogoo as well, which would solve the annoyance of squeezing it into the darts via a plastic baggie.
These look pretty similar to Kane's original rubber darts, and the main issue with them is that they don't feed in hoppers. Too much friction from the silicone tip. I imagine yours have the same problem, but I figured I'd ask anyway. Or, wait, do you have any actual wyes? From your posts it looks like just homemade ones. Then again, it'd be interesting to see if there were any homemade wyes that they did feed in...

His domes are smaller than mine, so there are probably a few types of hoppers that work better with his darts than mine. But in general, any of the bent-RSCB style hoppers should work with either, but I doubt any homemade wyes would help unless the angle is drastically different.

It's worth noting that higher powered blasters are often able to fire off dozens of rubber darts between misfires, so test thoroughly before concluding that the hopper dilemma has been solved.

[taerKitty]

In general, any of the larger airguns (4B, UMB, MM, etc.) will be much more forgiving about hopper feeding. I'd suggest testing it in SNAP or something else spring-powered for a more representative test.