13 replies to this topic

[flashflint]

I recently discovered at a friends house a small revolver type gun, in it's current state it was designed to shoot confetti. It had 6 barells packed with confetti. My friend told me they had caps in them to propell the confetti. I clipped off the little rings that held the front on and to my great excitement I discovered the barrels held micro stefans perfectly, after pulling out the confetti I put in 6 darts taped the front back on and fired. Although it had a very large trigger pull I was delighted to find that it shot the darts about 30 feet with a slight angle. After I had used up the six shots I preceded to try to reload it. To replace the caps I cut apart a ring of standard 8 shot ring capsand put one on each peg on the back of the turret I put the darts back in and fired again. I was happy to find that it shot with almost the same preformance as before. after that I fiddled around with the caps adding the powder of 3 into one shell and it shot even better. I believe that the future of nerf lies in combustion.

I will try to get pictures up asap, although asap will be a while becuase I am on vacation. You can find pictures by googleing "Popping confetti gun", look at the product search results and you will find something similar. Mine is not quite the same but very similar.
I will be glad to awnser any questions you may have.

Edited by poo, 27 July 2006 - 08:37 PM.

[Yakkers]

I have something similar, it was a little gun that fired confetti or streamers out of a shell. It can just about fire stefans, but they didn't fit out the barrel. My friend and I sat down and goofed with it for like an hour and we got the dart to come out, but not far at all. I'd like to see those pictures!

[flashflint]

My ranges werent perticularly good but it was good considering that it required no priming short of reloading the gun before use. As I said before it will be a little while before pictures becuase I am on vacation.

[elf avec gun]

I dont belive that the future of nerf lies with combustion! I mean what saine parent is going to let their 6 yearold play with an explosive substance like gun-powder. And plus why would one use a combustion gun that only shoots 30 feet when they could use a spring nerf gun that shoots 60???

[flashflint]

And plus why would one use a combustion gun that only shoots 30 feet when they could use a spring nerf gun that shoots 60???

Becuase this gun requires no priming and is easly clip moded for multiple turretts.

I dont belive that the future of nerf lies with combustion! I mean what saine parent is going to let their 6 yearold play with an explosive substance like gun-powder.

I dont mean the future of hasbro products! I mean the future of homemades.

[Carbon]

I dont mean the future of hasbro products! I mean the future of homemades.

There was a discussion over on the Boltsniper.com forums about something similar; using rifle primers as the explosive charge in a self-contained Nerf cartridge. It works, but there are some drawbacks. (Some of the drawbacks don’t apply to caps, like you’re describing it, but the others do).

The first one is that it brings consumable ammo into the picture; each shot costs money. Yeah, it’s cheap, but Nerf guns are, for all intents and purposes, free to fire. That’s also one of the drawbacks of CO2 – a cost per shot, and once you’re out of fuel, you’re out of shots.

A bigger problem as I see it is the report. Some people are nervous enough about people running around playing with “guns”….how will they respond with sound effects?

Don’t get me wrong, I think it’s a cool experiment, but I see problems as far as widespread adoption.

[badger]

I have one simple question? Why isn't this topic in Modifications? It may not have been a Nerf gun you tinkered with, but you were toying with it to fire stefans, so it is a modification.

As for the topic itself, I have this to say.

Using gun powder, whether in pre-existing Nerf gun frames or in homemades, is a pretty stupid idea. Gun powder is safe in controlled conditions. If you add too much to attempt to get better ranges, you could cause the gun, the barrel, and quite possibly, your hand to explode. Some materials that are used to make homemade guns don't react well to certain chemical reactions, including fire. Think about it for a minute.

You just made a sweet homemade rifle. You used PVC as the main part of the blast chamber and the barrel. You used epoxy to seal everything together to ensure no leaks. You get impatient and decide to load a stefan down the barrel, place your caps in the blast chamber and ignite them however you have the gun set up to do so.

BOOM!!!

Because of your impatience to fire your nice, new gun, you forgot that epoxy fumes are flammable. Since they are in an enclosed area, like the gun itself, you did fire the dart farther than ever before, but you also created a shrapnel bomb. Now you know that this will somehow get on the news, and it will make all of you modders look pretty bad. The last thing any group needs is bad press.

One other thing to think about. The amount of gun powder per cap ranges from 20 to 30 grains for a reason. Anything in the higher ranges could label the device as a legal firearm, which is something we don't EVER want happening to homemade Nerf guns.

[Carbon]

You make some good points there badger...hadn't considered the inherent flammability of the materials we're dealing with. Also, to clear things up a bit, the amount of explosives in a cap is about a hundredth of what you were saying (about .2 to .3 grains). Still, the safety concerns you raise are vaild.

Edited by Carbon, 28 July 2006 - 08:41 PM.

[flashflint]

As carbon said there is almost no explosive in caps. I have already considered the things you all said.
I going into this have the intention of not making these more than toys. Also you would have to light like 200 caps to get anything of any danger especaly with pvc being rated to such high preasures and the party popper gun being made to do this. I am not trying to make anything more than what could be considered a toy.

[Carbon]

As carbon said there is almost no explosive in caps. I have already considered the things you all said.
I going into this have the intention of not making these more than toys. Also you would have to light like 200 caps to get anything of any danger especaly with pvc being rated to such high preasures and the party popper gun being made to do this. I am not trying to make anything more than what could be considered a toy.

The thing is, where does that line come where it becomes dangerous? You'd need way less than 200 caps to be dangerous...100 caps would give you 20 grains of explosives, an amount comparable to actual firearms, and would shatter PVC. So you use fewer. A primer from a cartridge only contains a small amount of explosves as well, and wax bullets (as well as some smaller .22 cartriges) are fired using only primer. Operating pressures of firearms like this run into the thousands, also enough to shatter PVC. Where's the cutoff when using "only caps" becomes dangerous? I woulnd't want to find out the hard way...

The point is is that you're dealing with explosives, and any time you put more than one of them together, you can get unpredictable results.

Edited by Carbon, 28 July 2006 - 09:15 PM.

[flashflint]

Well mabey im stupid or you are to careful but I am going to continue to continue to experiment with combustion. If pvc can handle potato guns it can handle a few caps.


If any of the site admins or a large population of members dosent want me to post things about explosives then I wont. I just wanted to share my findings to to let people know there are options other than air.

Edited by poo, 29 July 2006 - 06:48 AM.

[Pineapple]

I think that Carbon's concern lies not only with the explosive potential of a couple dozen caps going off, but more the stigma that a cap-fired projectile shooter may pose in the eyes of the general public.

Why don't you think that other toy makers created cap-fired guns; cap guns have been around for almost forever (even when I was a kid, and that was LONG ago), but I've only encountered one other instance of a cap-fired projectile weapon, and that was an old musket-type rifle that fired a rubber bullet.

I think in this day and age where kids of your ages are handling real steel, legally or otherwise, the public in general (that includes me) is already pretty skittish about playing with things that go "bang" and shoot stuff. It's hard enough for old fogies like me to accept Airsoft, with it's way-too-realistic weaponry. My 9 year old son is already cutting his teeth on a Crosman 1077 air rifle, in preparation for a Ruger 10/22 .22 rifle I hope to get him by Christmas, so he can understand the difference between toys (Nerf blasters) and firearms, for hunting and other purposes.

My opinion; you're going to spend a bunch of money on ring caps with the hope of propelling a dart out of a PVC barrel. It would help tremendously if you would post both pictures and procedures as to how you intend to get the party popper device to handle more than a couple of ring caps. If you're going to fire off a whole bunch (I'm imagining 100 ring caps...that's a lot of plastic), I'd sure like to see how that would be done.

There are already enough dangerous things out there, and the potato and spud gun sites have them all, with disclaimers plainly there for anyone who wants to build something of that caliber (I myself have three air-powered spud guns).

I don't know about the other admins, but if you want to continue your R & D with your cap fired Nerf experiment, that's your initiative, but I agree with Carbon, badger, and the rest...I wouldn't wait on Hasbro to find it as a viable new way to propel Nerf darts, neither do I see the NIC rushin' off to build combustible Nerf weapons.

Except maybe the kid from Australia...what was his name...but he's already graduated to butane powereed mini-spud guns.

And with that said, it should be in Modifications.



-Piney-

[Sponge Nerfer]

guys, this idea probably would work and we probably could get a gun that uses gunpowder to shoot foam (lol it sounds funny just saying it) but why in gods name would you want to. Sure instead of pvc you could use some steel pipe and make a bolt action system that uses caps in shells to fire stefans and yes you could create a bolt action system that would use flint to create a spark and set off the caps. At some point durring this u have to realize, dam this isnt a toy anymore this is a fairly dangerous think that could kill me! So while it could work and while it might be great I think it is very far away from nerf.

-sponge

[badger]

You make some good points there badger...hadn't considered the inherent flammability of the materials we're dealing with. Also, to clear things up a bit, the amount of explosives in a cap is about a hundredth of what you were saying (about .2 to .3 grains). Still, the safety concerns you raise are vaild.

The gun that he is talking about, I believe, is the disposable six-shot party popper gun that is manufactured by Ja Ru Toys. We tried them out at the RHPS for the Transies. The package actually says 25 grains of black powder. I will check this tomorrow to make sure. There is a dollar store in town that sells them.

As carbon said there is almost no explosive in caps. I have already considered the things you all said.
I going into this have the intention of not making these more than toys. Also you would have to light like 200 caps to get anything of any danger especaly with pvc being rated to such high preasures and the party popper gun being made to do this. I am not trying to make anything more than what could be considered a toy.

I hate typing out wordy posts to get my point across, but I am wide awake right now and I have some free time.

Here is an example of simple physics and chemistry.

First the physics part of it. For this example, we are going to cut the grain count down the middle between Carbon's and my figures and say about 10 grains per cap. In the instance of the party popper gun, the powder load used is propelling a chamber full of either mylar confetti or mylar streamers, depending on what barrel is in position when you pull the trigger. When the confetti leaves the barrel, it fans out into the air and flies about 8-12 feet. We use another version of the gun at the RHPS and that is about the distances we get. The materials of the barrel chamber are simple plastics. The energy from of the cap's explosion is not nearly enough to destroy the chamber and alot of the energy is diffused through the confetti itself. Probably more than half of the energy is wasted when it filters through the spaces in the confetti, hence the short ranges. Please make a note of this fact. The gun is disposable, meaning it was not designed to fire more than one round out of each barrel, whether for cost or safety reasons. If you use a micro stefan, you, of course, will get better ranges since it is a more solid projectile. Most of the blast's energy will propel the dart since there are no spaces in the projectile for it to escape through. Though the chamber may still be able to hold up to the pressure of the blast, it is beyond the original intention of the dseign of the chamber. If you increase the amount of caps, you risk a breach of the chamber. The popper gun is most likely not rated to handle such stresses. If it was, it would cost alot more to make them and they wouldn't be found at dollar stores. They would also probably be reloadable. In addition, the extra force of those additional caps will propel the dart farther, but at the added risk of causing possible injury to anyone hit by it. If you were to build your own gun to accomplish this, you may avoid the problems of the gun exploding, but there is no guarantee. PVC's pressure rating is based off of fluids, not gases or explosive pressures. While it may withstand it at first and maybe even after a couple of shots, it will lose its structural integrity after a while and become a hazard.

Now for the chemistry end of my observations. Let's once again look at the original gun specifications. The materials are a single-shot cap which is the propellant and produces a tiny explosion, the shell casing or chamber which is made of plastic, and the mylar confetti. The amount of fire and heat produced by the gunpowder is quickly comsumed. There is not enough heat or flame produced to cause the chamber or the mylar to melt. I am not sure of exactly what type of plastic is used in the popper gun, but I do know that the melting point of mylar is 500 degrees Fahrenheit. I looked it up to make sure. If you were to build a homemade gun, you are adding an additional factor into the reaction area. You are adding, most likely, a sealant to adjoin the sections together, most likely epoxy. So if you were to use, once again, more caps to launch your dart, the caps would explode and their checmical reaction time would still be minute, but the possible added fumes from the epoxy, plus the fact that epoxy changes the checmical structure of the PVC slightly during the bonding process, could very well enhance the explosion. Since the dart will not let barely any of the energy and force of the explosion escape through itself, unlike the confetti, and add into it the fact that the integrity of the PVC has now been comprimised by the epoxy's sealing characteristics (in case you didn't know, epoxy "glues" things together by melting and fusing them on a chemical level), you have a greater chance of an explosion. The epoxy fumes can make the cap explosion increase in magnitude.

I am done with my rant. You can do whatever you want. You have the freedom to completely ignore me. You can heed my educated warnings and steer clear of your idea. I just hope that I don't see on CNN one day about how some guy blew his hand off with a homemade Nerf gun.

Piney, I seriously need a brain enema now. I really had to think on this one and now it is after 1 A.M. here in NJ. I didn't mean to reiterate my previous comment in novel format, but I felt that it was necessary to try and help someone see the light.

God I feel old.