arfink

I picked up a Hammershot at Target because it looked like a really fun gun, and I have to admit that in stock form this is a very respectable little 5 shot revolver. It seems to get typical elite ranges and the green darts are made of the same foam as the blue elite darts. Of course, I wanted more, so I opened it up to see what could be done. First, just remove the 11 screws holding it shut, it's really easy and straightforward.




The shell is composed of 3 pieces which are held together very firmly and makes for an impressively heavy and solid feel. I didn't attempt to get them apart, but it looks like they will come apart for easier painting.



The cylinder lifts right out, and removing the pegs would be a piece of cake. I didn't remove them yet, but will get around to it when I'm ready to rebarrel this. Also note the screw inside the cylinder indexing mechanism. You can remove this screw to gain access to a spring-loaded mechanism that causes the indexing mechanism to slip if you twist the cylinder while the blaster is cocked. On the Maverick people liked to glue this kind of mechanism into one solid piece to remove slop. However, I found that this mechanism has hardly any slop at all compared to the Maverick, and given how slim the indexing tab looks, I wanted to leave that functionality in place so I don't accidentally bust the indexing tab off. YMMV, but hey, the screw is there, so you can play with it on your own blaster.



The AR is built into the plunger tube, and is remarkably easy to get off. You first need to remove the main spring from the handle of the blaster, which you can get off by wiggling the arm it's attached to. It should slip right off. Note the orientation of the spring: one end is fatter, and that is the end which must face downwards when you reinstall the spring.




Once the main spring is removed, you can remove this white cover. This cover holds the trigger and sear in place, as well as a small spring to return the trigger. The sear has a projection that bumps into a white rubber bumper on the cover piece you just removed. This bumper is very cool, and will prolong the life of your blaster once the AR is out, by helping to stop the plunger head before it smashes through the more delicate front portion of the plunger tube. Remove the trigger, trigger spring, and the sear assembly. This will also remove the plunger head from the tube, allowing us to remove the plunger tube.



The tube is held in from the back by a small white tab. You can squeeze the outer white plastic shell or pry with a screwdrives to give this enough clearance to slip out. There is a second tab which will also get stuck on this same spot, just squeeze or pry again to slip the second tab out as well. Once the plunger tube is removed, you can remove the front of the tube and the air restrictor.



I found that it is very difficult to remove this part without cracking or leaving stress marks on the white tabs holding it in place. However, the front part doesn't actually bear the brunt of the plunger head, so the connection doesn't need to be rock solid. Once you have it off and remove the spring and AR piece you should probably glue it back on, unless your tabs are not totally smashed to heck, in which case you can just use the clips. There is a white thing inside the plunger tube that holds the AR assembly, however, I chose to leave this in place to preserve some of the structural integrity of the plunger tube, since it seems rather thin. Also, it is very important that when you put the orange part back onto the plunger tube that it is facing the same direction that it was when you removed it. Make a note of the correct orientation or the seal with not line up with the cylinder!



To finish, assemble everything again in reverse order, and insert the spring last. Again, make sure you put the fat part of the spring facing the bottom of the handle.

Ranges did not really seem improve that much by removing the AR in this blaster, however it did provide me with a couple of nice advantages. First, you'd need to remove it anyway to fire slugs. Secondly, the AR makes the cylinder rotate less smoothly, which can cause the indexing mechanism to not quite perfectly align with each shot. I find that with the AR removed, dry firing is not as great a risk to the blaster internals, due to the rubber nub which stops the sear from moving, rather than stopping the plunger head against the plunger tube. The stock seal seems very good, and I have no plans to modify it. I'll post more information when I have successfully rebarreled the cylinder, which will probably provide the most significant increase in usefulness for this blaster.

There is also a good amount of space behind the cylinder which could conceivably allow for a rear-loading modification, however, given how short the barrels are and this blaster's role as a secondary, front-loading shouldn't really be a draw-back.

I'll keep this simple a short: I want to make mongos, and I'm having difficulty finding 1" FBR. McMaster seems to have it in 7/8" but not 1". My local Ace and Menards only go up to 3/4". Anyone know where I can get some?

Some of you know that I recently jumped through a bunch of hoops to obtain a Mortar Pistol. This is an unusual foam flinging toy from China which is not made by a major company and is also completely unique. (not a bootleg)

A quick picture for those of you who don't know about it yet:



-many thanks to SG Nerf, your photography skills are crazy good-

I recently received mine, and while I won't say how much I paid for it I can say there is a good reason why nobody in the US has bothered getting these- it's spendy. Maybe if there is interest someone will do a group order, but it's not gonna be me. Sorry guys. Anyways, on the review:

First of all, in China this toy sells for around $16 to $18. Don't let the price tag fool you- this blaster is made of quality plastic, with the exception of one critical part, which I will get to in a moment. The design of the shell, while somewhat bland from a molding perspective, is at least comfortable and very sturdy. The turret rotation is fairly solid, with the only weakness in my mind being the slightly "creaky" sound it makes. Despite the somewhat alarming noise that rotating the turret makes, it is rock solid and indexes quite well. Puts the Maverick to shame.

The stock ammo does not fit well at all in the barrels and does not fly well, tumbling out of control because it has no significant weight. When you tip the blaster towards the ground the "shells" have a tendency to fall out. However, at point blank range even these poorly fitted projectiles pack a serious punch. My brother and I conducted the mandatory "buttocks shot test" on a test subject (my cousin Brad) who reported it had some sting to it. So of course next in line was the "duct tape a hunk of barrel to the valve outlet and see what happens" test. Slugs were clearing around 100 feet flat (min 85, max 128) with a ~3 foot barrel that had basically no seal at all, just held against the valve by hand. This was with 5 pumps, by the way. Duct-taping the barrel in place helped the seal slightly and brought the bottom end up a bit. When I get around to modding this I expect it to be extremely powerful, perhaps so much so that it'll be non-war-legal.

Now on to the major weaknesses of this blaster, most of which I think can be overcome with modding:

Firstly, there is NO OPRV. Of any kind. Aside from the obvious problem of most wars banning air blasters without OPRVs, this has serious problems from a structural standpoint. The entire blaster is made out of some pretty nice quality plastic, with the exception of what I'd consider to be the single most important part- the air tank. The tank body (grey/white part in the picture above) is made of a much softer, more flexible plastic material. As a result this piece is capable of deforming when it's pressurized and de-pressurized. On my tank it happens to deform around the base of the pump, meaning that the handle does not come out quite straight, but at a slight angle. This doesn't adversely affect the operation of the blaster in my experience, but it is ugly and annoying to have a handle that seems slightly out of place. Also, after firing a shot the plastic of the tank "relaxes" and makes a protracted creaking sound by rubbing against the shell of the blaster, which you can hear in SG Nerf's videos.

Secondly, the lack of OPRV means that if you choose to overpump the blaster the tank will eventually rupture. This happened to my blaster when an overly enthusiastic relative decided to pump it about 15 times, until it made a loud "POP" sound all of a sudden. The front orange piece of the tank contains the valve, and is actually two pieces, though you can't tell from the pictures. This broke cleanly along the seam, thankfully, and I was able to glue it back together and resume normal operation. However, this could be a serious problem in a war to be having a tank rupture because you weren't counting pumps.

Possible mods to correct this problem would include adding a McMaster OPRV and replacing the main tank body with 1.25" PVC, which I think would be pretty doable. However, at that point you're basically in homemade territory already, which leads me to the final part of my review.

If all you want to do is mod a blaster that has an air tank similar to this you should use one of the Marshmallow Blasters, which have the same kind of tank design. I chose to get this blaster for a few reasons which many people here will probably not agree with: I liked the funky, colorful, chunky shape of the blaster, and that the turret will be pretty easy to make into a 6-shot shotgun turret. I liked that the air tank was easy to take apart and tinker with. And lastly, I wanted to be able to replicate its function as a homemade by studying its internal components, something which is very difficult to do with the Marshmallow Blasters, which are glued together in a very inconvenient way. Finally, I just really wanted one.

TL:DR Summary

Pros:
-It's big, colorful, comfortable to hold, and pretty sturdy.
-Shoots haaaaaard. Large volume of air at high pressure with very few pumps.
-Gigantic turret.

Cons:
-No OPRV
-Tank is too flexible.
-Expensive.

I was looking around at the SG Nerf blogs and found this:

http://modworks.blog...nals-guide.html


The tank and valve are a very cool design, one I have never seen before. Looking at SGNerf's pictures I believe this would be fairly easy to replicate in a homemade, except for the blue sealing part.





What you're looking at is a sealing thingy which has a catch on the stem, much like a plunger rod, but it's designed to press against that seal when at rest, and then the catch is released the blue part moves away from the tank front and towards the barrel, releasing the air. I've been thinking that blue piece is the only real challenge of replicating this. Do any of you lathe owners/users think you could fabricate something like that out of delrin?

I haven't really hosted a real war before, just a wintertime flop, but I'm willing to give it a go in September. The park I'm interested in is called Lomianki Park in Columbia Heights. It's very close to my place.

http://maps.google.c...rXGAoKINKrJ4dwO

I'm thinking of doing this sooner in the month to possibly leave room for a second war in September at the usual Highland location. Dates that could work for me might include Sunday Sept. 11th, Saturday the 17th or Sunday the 18th.

The park is not particularly large, but is arranged nicely for most of the game types we like and has plenty of trees (and a baseball backstop) around an open grassy area. I'm thinking it would be a particularly nice setup for a traditional two-flag CTF. Velveeta and SonReese have seen the park too and may be able to provide a little bit of input in that regard. The park is kinda small and unpopular because of it's location near the rail yard, so we'd have the place to ourselves. If for some odd reason a huge number of people show up we can move a few blocks up the road to Huset park, which is a gigantic park we should certainly be able to find space in.

Anyone interested?