Please pardon the cell phone camera pictures. It was that or my tablet, and the cell phone actually took better pictures. The camera has yet to be found/unpacked.
This thread is in response to some discussion in the wider nerf community of how to modify Boomco clips to be more efficient in their utilization of the energy provided by the blasters themselves. In particular, the clip-fed Boomco Dynamag has a tendency to launch darts at a significantly lower speed than the single-shot Boomco Farshot in spite of similar plunger volumes.
My Dynamag came with a 6-shot clip that featured screw assembly:
Removing these four screws allowed the easy removal of the backplate from the barrels:
Of course, I immediately dropped the backplate and lost the two springs that pushed on these red pieces. If anyone can explain what these red pieces actually do, I would appreciate it. They seem unnecessary for normal function (as you will see later).
At this point I was able to easily snap off the pegs. I was left with cylindrical barrel "stubs" of 0.47inch inner diameter. However, notice that there are some bumps deeper down in the stubs, I'm assuming to keep the Boomco straw darts (which are roughly 0.39-0.40inches outer diameter) centered.
Also, note that before removing the pegs I checked dart fit over them; there was very little resistance to the dart falling off the peg.
This brings us to the barrel portion:
A rubber gasket is easily removed:
It has rings molded into it with an approximate ID of 0.39inches
And it fits into the gasket support bracket, which is also easily removed from the barrels:
It has holes of ID 0.49inches
After removing these pieces, we can see that the barrels are perfectly smooth other than the air release holes:
Note that the first set of holes were actually used on some early Boomco blasters (the rapid madness and stealth ambush) to check for the presence of darts; if no dart was present, they would skip to the next chamber before firing.
While Boomco's straw darts are not particularly rigid, they still don't have the ability to compress in order to create an air-tight seal with a barrel the same way that foam (nerf) darts do. Therefore, the gasket shown ealier actually serves two purposes:
1. Create an air-tight seal between the backplate and the barrels.
2. Grip the dart in order to allow air pressure to build behind the dart (similar to the "springer fit" tighter barrels and telescoping barrels used with foam darts)
Because of this behavior, rebarreling Boomco clips for continued use of straw darts would need to re-use the rubber gasket or implement a substitute. For future knowledge:
The gasket can be flipped over and inserted into the stubs on the back plate; however, the circles of the gasket would need to be cut apart and rearranged in order to match up to the stubs.
Alternatively, the stock barrels could be left off the backplate and new ones added that will fit foam darts. In this way, the clip could be rebarreled for "nano"-size 3/8" diameter stefans.
As a test, I inserted the backplate into the dynamag without the barrels.
I had no replacement barrels to test performance (range, muzzle velocity, etc), but the backplate did seem to advance normally, as if it were a whole clip. This is without both the barrels and the red pieces seen early on in my post.
Unfortunately, all of my 20rd Boomco clips appear to be riveted together rather than screwed. Therefore, significantly more effort will be needed to dissect and/or modify those clips without destroying their functionality.
As always, any questions, comments, or flames are welcome.
