21 replies to this topic

[TheOrk]

I am in the first stage of creating a shotgun backup blaster.

 

I want to shoot 2 or 3 darts at a time from a quick draw backup to defend myself while reloading. Rough-Cut and Sledge-Fire provide that kind of firepower but are way too bulky for that.

 

My idea is to mod a Triad - or Rebelle Messenger or Rebelle Triology (90 ft range wtf?!) - basically a 3-shot smart-barrel blaster.

 

I read that people accidentialy turned their blaster into a "shotgun pistol" that "sucked" by messing up the smart barrel system. However, the System does - from what I have seen in concept drawings not to be that easy to "mess up properly" and I found no claims of performance.

 

If I understand it right, 3 small posts at the end of the barrel push down the lid to allow air to rush into the loaded barrel and at the same time close a valve, restricting the airflow to the consecutive barrels. After the dart is fired, the barrel seals itself and opens the airflow to reach the next barrel.

 

Question 1:

What would I have to do to allow maximum airflow? If I drill a hole in the barrel sealing lids or rip them out, I will have a single shot blaster, because the valve restricts air to barrel 2 and 3 that will not fire the second shot, because barrel 1 is open. Is there a smart or easy way to accomplish what I want to do? If I empty out all the moving parts, there will be a lot of "dead space" and I have a good chance of damaging it. So, what did you do to get a "shotgun" pistol?

 

Question 3:

The performance shouldn't be that bad? with a good seal, lubrication, spring-replacement... the recommended Triad spring replacement claims +60% range. A rough estimation would be 1/3 range (because it shoots 3 darts) * 1,6 (for the better spring)? That leaves a 75ft blaster with 40ft of range, quite enough if someone comes around your cover and a very high chance of hitting with a spread of 3 darts (like the sledge-fire), right?

 

If you help my struggling brain on question 1 and question 2 isn't utter nonsense, then I will do this mod and upload images / results here :-D

Edited by TheOrk, 24 April 2016 - 04:33 AM.

[Kilomona]

In a triad, you would need a massive spring and perfect seal if you just removed the ARs. You mught as well make a small homemade that has a Nitefinder size plunger, and one barrel that has 3 darts.

[Cartaya]

3 Times the darts needs 3 times the air and twice the force to go the same distance, or vice versa...
Basically...geting an airgun tank and making an absolver is a much better option than a messenger or a Triad...  or yea, use a Homemade....
 

[The2ndBluesBro]

You could reshell a gen 1 panther into a jolt configuration and put a single barrel with 3 darts or an absolver. Either or, it'd get more distance than the triad.

[xXD3V1LXx]

Aeromech made an amazing design called the Parisite use that

[Kilomona]

An airtank woth a barrel and button firing pin* could work.
*term used loosely, can't think of the correct term for a button like the one on the XBZ.

[The2ndBluesBro]

An airtank woth a barrel and button firing pin* could work.
*term used loosely, can't think of the correct term for a button like the one on the XBZ.

blast button is the term

[TheOrk]

Hi again and thank you for the amount of feedback! I will answer this in one reply (and later than I intended), because I am still limited to 3 posts a day...

You mught as well make a small homemade that has a Nitefinder size plunger, and one barrel that has 3 darts.

 

Will it shoot all 3 darts at once, in a spread?

 

geting an airgun tank and making an absolver is a much better option than a messenger or a Triad...

Whats that absolver Design people are referring to?

 

Aeromech made an amazing design called the Parisite use that

I have seen that one. My main trouble with home-made is, I would have to convert all materials to metric and that I do not have the drills needed to drill holes or put screw threads in or on pieces of PVC or ABS. Also I do not know what People will say if it looks "home-made" in a war or hvz game.

 

Airtanks (with compressed air, anything more powerful than the pump-it-up Nerfs) are a different category, controlled under gun law and you need to be licensed to mod any of these. No way I could use something like an airsoft gun and Put Nerf Barrels onto it...

 

Will post an update if I get anything worked out

[Kilomona]

Hi again and thank you for the amount of feedback! I will answer this in one reply (and later than I intended), because I am still limited to 3 posts a day...
 
Will it shoot all 3 darts at once, in a spread?
 
Airtanks (with compressed air, anything more powerful than the pump-it-up Nerfs) are a different category, controlled under gun law and you need to be licensed to mod any of these. No way I could use something like an airsoft gun and Put Nerf Barrels onto it...
 
Will post an update if I get anything worked out

Your first question, yes, a small one, for your second question, what's wrong with a tank you pump up?

[TheOrk]

As far as I understood our gun law: up to 0.5J projectile Energy it's a toy (and all local Nerf guns stick to it, we have reduced power mega-blasters and the nerf rival line will not come to our market at all because of too high energy). A 1.5g Foam Dart at 85 fps exceeds 0.5J. From 0.5 to 7.5J it is an age 18+ free "sports weapon" wich has to be tested, certified, etc. this category is not allowed to shoot full-auto and you are not allowed to tinker with it yourself. This is further complicated by definition like "does not store kinetic energy" (Bow = Sports, Toy) and "does store kinetic Energy" (Crossbow = Gun)...

 

To be on the save side I would have to build a single shot (multi projectile) weapon with a projectile energy of less than 0.5J. I have no way of measuring that and as I said above, I lack most of the tools for home-made stuff.

 

I could get one of the airtank Nerf guns and put more barrels / more projectiles into it I guess... everything bigger or home made is likely to exceed 0.5J.

[xXD3V1LXx]

Pvc is in SAE not metric so it shouldn't be a problem.

[The2ndBluesBro]

Pvc is in SAE not metric so it shouldn't be a problem.

Not in countries like SG and AUS that almost exclusively use the metric system.

[TheOrk]

Most PVC over here seems to be in millimeters, but some is not, I think tubing for your aquarium and stuff like that seems to be non-metric some of the time.

 

Can't separate the 3 barrels from my triad, will therefore glue 3 pieces of PVC and try to come up with some kind of adapter from 3x16 mm (roughly 34mm) to the 20mm(?) or a mega barrel...

 

Any ideas on the adapter?

[FineDwarvenMods]

Having personally done a Triad Shotgun modification myself last night, I can tell you right now the results are gimmicky but still promising and even useful, due to the incredibly small size of a Triad. I may do a writeup on it later, but it's frankly very simple and the only thing I did that others didn't was intentionally break the smart AR system and reinforce the spring with a spacer and a second spring (from a slingfire), making sure they both get to full compression. 

 

There is the issue of airflow, as people have mentioned, but opening up the air restrictors actually creates more space for air to be pushed out, due to the design of the Smart AR cage, sort of functioning as a slightly larger (at most 1.5x) air tank. I'm wondering if popping in some PETG would also help, although the triad barrels are already quite tight on koosh darts,to the point that it will refuse to fire the tightest dart in the barrel, giving you a salvo of 2. If you use kooshes, you have to specifically find 3 of identical width with no malfunctions in glue, etc. so they all fit in loosely.

 

In the end, I was able to get 3 darts shooting an average of 37 feet. Close range, small spread, and very good potential for use as an underbarrel shotgun due to the size and the fact that people use triads underbarrel anyways. I intentionally use elites and not koosh, due to the spread that elites can give you (we finally found a use for the things.)

 

It should be noted that the only tactical use I can see for this is shooting around corners or other situations where aiming isn't an option and you need an emergency shot, it's a one-shot underbarrel shotgun that takes a few seconds to reload, and only gives you 3 darts. I've been working on underbarrel shotgun options for a while and this is the simplest i've come across.

[TheOrk]

Thank you for the feedback on modifying the triad. I got myself some stainless steel and some PVC barrel and will glue 3 of them together (triad configuration) and fit them as replacement for the original mega-barrel on a BigShock. I am counting on more plunger volume and less dead space (no AR system) to give it a little better performance. Will keep you updated on my progress...

 

How did you disable the smart AR? Drill it out?

[FineDwarvenMods]

Thank you for the feedback on modifying the triad. I got myself some stainless steel and some PVC barrel and will glue 3 of them together (triad configuration) and fit them as replacement for the original mega-barrel on a BigShock. I am counting on more plunger volume and less dead space (no AR system) to give it a little better performance. Will keep you updated on my progress...

 

How did you disable the smart AR? Drill it out?

You can use pliers, a drill, an exacto knife, or whatever you can think of that can fit in there, destroy the plastic piece, and leave the shell in tact.. The smart AR system is pretty simple once you get it out of the blaster and get a chance to look at it, you can learn how it functions just with your eyes.

 

In short, the easiest way to convert it from firing one shot to firing 3 is to take out the air restrictor pegs AND the orange cylinder they are part of. Underneath that orange cylinder is a tiny spring, just like other air restrictors. You just need to remove the orange piece and the spring, in any way you can, without damaging the shell of the Smart AR system itself, as the shell is what allows the air to flow to all 3 barrels. Do this same process for the other 2 barrels. After that all you have to do is reassemble it and the air pressure is sent to all 3 barrels instead of one at a time.

 

I hadn't thought of using the bigshock as a sort of ready-to-go upgraded jolt and converting it to shoot 3, although i'm not certain how much stronger the stock bigshock spring will be compared to the stock triad spring. Mega darts get greater range due to their weight and aerodynamics, so the big shock in reality is probably just... another jolt.... with the same spring and everything, but with a different barrel size. I'll have to try the same thing myself one day and compare the two.

[xXD3V1LXx]

Another thing you can do is cutting down a [k26] putting it in a nitefinder and putting the triad three dart system in that.

[RandomUser]

The spring in the Triad and Bigshock are close to the same weight.

[TheOrk]

The plunger on my Bigshock seems to be a lot bigger (somewhat longer and about 1/4 thicker, meaning a lot more volume) compared to the tirad side-by-side and my idea was bigger plunger -> more displaced air by (mod) spring -> more pushing the darts. Just a side by side look, didn't measure it.

 

The Triad Air restrictor is not complicated to understand, I was wonderin how to disable it without creating too much dead space. Each volume of space that is not part of the plunger or barrel will make the blaster loose power on the way, because all this "dead air space" has to get compressed, too? Easiest mod would be removing Triad AR completely and gluing on a new back-plate, but that would be a lot worse... this is why I asked, how he disabled it.

 

Will cut&glue the pvc and aluminium barrels today, will keep you updated on how I connected them.

[Snoop Doggy doge]

I think an absolver would be best for you, put a coupler on something like a nitefinder or panther and make a 3 shot absolver. you can reload quick too, with multiple absolvers.
I would reccomend an XBZ too but I don't know if it meets pistol requirement. A sledgefire cutdown also meets this requirement too, so there is that. 

[TheNerfZilla]

I understand that air blasters might be out of reach for you, but my personal go-to for this application would be a re-barreled Lightning Blitz. I bought one already modded, so I can't personally speak to the difficulty, but to do what you want it shouldn't be bad. Depending on whether or not you plug the pump you can have decent ranges, or almost 70 foot ranges with good darts. It might be slightly hard to get a hold of as it is a bit older, but it is SO worth it, and SO much fun.

[TheOrk]

Yes, the Lightning Blitz (marketed here as hurricane) is impossible to get, basically it resembles what I am trying to build with 3 barrels and a Mega Bigshock. I also tried to get some Hornet AS 6 (they are quite cheap on ebay, but only available in the US), this is not an option, shipping is more expensive than the blasters themselves (unless some on USA territory would mail them to me economy?).

 

The absolver Design is close to what I am doing right now...