imaseoulman

Gotta agree with Ice.  Deal 2010 was pretty slick.  The field was pretty good, it wasn't unbearably hot, everybody was having fun, and my sm1500 never ruptured an air tank.  I also felt hipster being one of the only folks not rocking a +bow/xbow.

Very nice aggregation of information. I never thought that there was this much misunderstanding about "air guns" but from reading the comments it's clear that there is. As for reasons people aren't making many air guns, there are a couple of other factors at play.

First is that for a long time, homemade air guns have not been allowed at many NH advertised wars. This was because of safety concerns. The possible hazards of poor construction have already been discussed, and dart speed/pain inflicted was also a concern. It's very simple to up the pressure just a little bit or make the tank just a little bit bigger and be shooting darts so hard it's unpleasantly painful.

And then there's the +bow. It was a veritable air gun killer. I recall playing at a Deal war in NJ a few years ago and being the only one not using a +bow/modified xbow. With the advent of the hopper (1/2" PVC wye) a pump action springer had almost unbeatable range and rate of fire. I had to play very athletically and carefully to keep up while using my old school SM1500.

I still prefer the slight pop of an air gun over the slam of a springer any day, but it's hard to find a "war legal" air gun that competes with a well built hoppered springer. In fact a lot of the currently accepted war regulations are based on the use of hoppered springers. Hoppered springers really changed the way the game was played.

I just modified one of these a few days ago, but I did it slightly differently. Using pipe cutters, I completely cut off the seat he recommended dremmelling carefully, which enabled me to attach the coupler directly to the face around the dump valve opening. This precludes the need to plug any holes.

Beautiful work. Seeing this makes me happy I still lurk. I still hate homemades, but that is a beautiful piece of machinery.

Just as I was starting to make darts and prep the blasters, I got word that I'll be doing training exercises all weekend, so I'm not going to be able to make it. Hopefully I get to make another war before I get transfer orders. If not, well, it's been fun nerfing with you guys while I had the chance.