telekinetic

So I wasn't going to do anything for Halloween this year, and then, at 10 o'clock on the 30th, my friend talked me into promising to go bar hopping after work with him to help him pick up a chick (I'm an excellent wingman--mission accomplished, btw). I had to work all day halloween day, so all I had was a couple hours that night, with whatever I could come up with from Wal Mart for a costume--had an unlimited budget, though. Oh, and just to avoid a big long build up and then blue balls when there's no finale, there's no pics of my whole costume, unfortunately...was only wearing the whole getup after work at the bar, and didn't have a camera.

I decided to be the Punisher.

I bought black BDU's, black army boots, fingerless gloves, and a black t-shirt. Very grumpy that they didn't have a trenchcoat. I decided that, since we were going out to bars, it would be best if I was an ironic Nerf punisher, instead of a real actual looking guns punisher (I didn't want to get my shit confiscated by the bouncers). So, here's what I came up with.

Shirt:

I printed out the punisher pattern on some transparencies, cut some stencils, and spray adhesived them onto my shirt. With some bleach in spray bottles, I carefully sprayed the shirt, creating a halfway decent Punisher skull. Not bad for half hours work and $4.





My photographer had gone to bed by this point, so here's me looking menacing holding a longshot shell in my crappy built in Mac webcam. Grrrr!



The rest of the costume is really what y'all are probably more interested in: Ammo holders and the BBB!

BBB first:

I already had an unmodded BBB I wasn't doing anything with, so I dug it out of the closet. I was in too much of a rush to even use the dremel, so I literally one-handed a reciprocating skill saw (think sawz all) and cut off the front handle, the barrel tip, and the scope. This took me all of 4 minutes, and half of that was finding the skill saw.

This left big gaping ugly wounds on the top and bottom, (and man, I'm not kidding...UGLY). That will be dealt with. To make it shoot micros, I wrapped a dart length of PETG in electrical tape until it barely fit in the barrel stub, cramed it in, and tape wrapped the little bit that stuck out.

To deal with the ugly gaping wounds, and make it look a little more shotgunny and a little less nerfy, I slapped on a shotgun shell holder! Yay!





I cut some PETG to slightly shorter than the tubes (so the darts would stay in, picture later). I also bought a strap so I could hold the 'shotgun' over my shoulder. That just got ziptied on.

OK, now I had a pretty decent looking gun. Now, I just needed some bandoliers. Bought two 20 round ammo belts for .223 ammunition...it was the biggest they had in the store. If you can buy some meant for 12 gauge online, that would be way easier...getting PETG into these was a BITCH.



To get the darts not to fall out, I made the PETG sleeves slightly shorter than the elastic, so that there was a little bit of elastic to grab the dart. It didn't work totally, as I kept finding darts all over the bar that night, haha, and some chick went home wearing my bandolier...went home with a buddy of mine, though, so got it from him the next morning. Whoops, sidetrack.


Anyways, yeah, be careful with that elastic, though, as it's strong enough to deform your darts if you leave them in for a month and a half like I did. For a few days, you won't have any problems, though. Whoops. That's 40 micros down the drain....oh well.



So yeah, that concludes the only nerfing I've done since the semester started in August. Oh wait, I also had a pair of CF's hacked down so they fit in holsters that I sewed to my BDU's. Wonder where they are? If I find them I'll post.

Am I done modding? Probably not, it's a ton of fun, but doing school full time and working full time leaves no time for modding. I might sneak out a few projects before school starts again, we'll see. A lot of my creative energy is being funneled into my job, now that I have a good boss (who is sending me to CES in January, yay!). I still have good ideas, I have just have had fuckall for time the past couple months.

Anyways, post up any questions about anything in this thread if you want. I'll try to check it often (added it back to my Opera speed dial in place of my college website!).

Oh yeah, and no, not dead.

-telekinetic

So, as I was taking pictures for one of the million larpers who have tried to buy my Scout (this one sucessfully), I noticed that the scout's barrel stub has a reverse bayonet fitting on it.



Have there every been any official Nerf Scout barrel accessories?

I think I might make a short run of purely aesthetic easy-on silencers to sell to LARPers, since these pistols seem to be popular with them.

So I finally started on my Hornette. It is currently halfway done: The internals are completed, and it fires (no range tests yet) but I've only barely started the body work. I'll update the thread when I finish the bodywork, I've got big plans for this...Custom 2-stage silver with a pink pearl, all text shaved, body smoothed and gaps closed with filler puddy, and of course some Swarovski crystals It is for my wife, after all.

However, all that 'pimp my gun' external work will have to wait until I finish it.

For now, here's what I believe to be the current state-of-the-art of Hornet minimization:



Now, it isn't just minimized externally. The Hornet has an absolutely disgusting amount of useless pressure volume. This is due to three seperate 'blast' buttons (two on the sides, and one for the Titan activator), and in a smaller part due to the long hoses. I personally hate having the blast buttons on the side, almost as much as I hate pumping a 6 shot gun 20 times...If you want to hear how inefficient a Hornet is, hit a blast button after you've fired all six shots, you can hear how much pressure is still left in the system.

I decided to eliminate almost all of the extra volume. However, the blast function is neat, so I kept it, but relocated it to be more convenient to actuate one handed.



Intrigued?

On to the guts!

For reference, here's the Before internals from a different gun (already got big plans for this one, too, and ones of it's friends...I love these guns!)



And here it is after minimization:



Here's a comparison shot of the largest area of 'wasted' volume:



And here's a closeup on my custom blast button job:

I'm extremely proud of the fact that the dremeled and epoxied guts held pressure on the first try The blue lines are the split pieces. The blast button is the one from the right side, the angled part used to lead off to the Titan button, and I honestly can't remember where I cut that 90° endcap from.

Stay tuned for an update with completed body works.

I've got about 15 hours into this mod so far, and I'm sure I've left some parts out, so feel free to ask about anything.

And, as always, thank you for your interest in Telekinetic Labs.

So, I learned today that I need a video camera badly before I attempt this sort of adventure again. Sorry in advance about the quality.

Anyways, here goes. You need:

1.
Two Mavericks

2.
Two Lanyards

3.
Some String or Elastic or Another Lanyard

Procedure:



Clip the Lanyards to the cocking handles



Tie the lanyards together.

Now, I have big giant gorilla length arms, so I look mildly retarded doing this, but for anyone of smaller (or younger) build, these lanyards should work fine. You don't have to pull them both at once, it just looks cooler that way. Well, as cool as two nerf guns strapped to a white nerd with lanyards can look, anyways.



Enjoy

So, I lost the chargers to BOTH of my cameras...ridiculous! A friend has the same battery as one of them, though, so I charged it up and snapped some shots of my mods and works in progress.



Here's my workshop at the moment. As we all know, nerf guns are a really awkward shape, and hard to store, so I came up with this solution. I haven't put all of my guns up yet, but I'm sure the entire wall will eventually be filled.



First up, AT2K Scope. I shortened the pump by an inch or two, plugged the overpressure, and added CPVC. The astute will note I don't have a trigger...any good ideas? I got distracted before finishing.





A little triple-CPVC barrel Titan shotgun action. I plugged the in-between gaps with FBR strips.



This wasn't crooked before one of my cousin's in law dropped it...I should have used epoxy instead of hot glue.



A little paint job action. Kind of sloppy, it was really just a technique test before painting the Hornette (spelling intentional) for the wife. She picked up some smaller crystals to spell 'Nerf' but hasn't glued them on yet.



A sneak preview of my incredibly ugly, work-in-progress 20-ish round drum magazine. I'm still figuring out the exact geometry. It's made with 2" ABS nested in 4" ABS nested in a 5" ABS coupler. The 5" coupler and the 2" abs are epoxied to the sheet of Lexan, and the 4" will be free floating with a couple scoops on it. Ruberbands wrapped around the 2" center will provide rotational springy power.


On to dart making...


I made a big batch of these fun Plastidip darts. I think they're called Matchstick Stefans, but I'm not sure. They're dipped in 5 coats of plasti-dip, they don't fit down barrels, so you can't use them in long-range breech applications, but they are absolutely painless to get hit with, and you can use them in short barreled stock-like applications. Fun fun fun!


Having one titan dart isn't as much fun as having a bunch!


I'm not sure how useful this knowledge will be for most of you youngins, but champagne cork is the perfect plug for a hollow pool noodle.


The other end I hollowed out with a serrated knife. Not the cleanest job, but just a prototype.


I've been working on a feline-based dart retrival system. Progress is slow.


The retrival units have begun to recognize darts as objects to pick up, but post-pickup the proceed in completely random directions. More training definitely necessary before they will be ready to be used in a war.

I haven't been around the NIC long enough to know which (if any) of these various little projects are of interest enough to post about in more detail, so feel free to give comments, criticisms, or questions, and I'll happily snap more shots and give more explanation.

Thanks for all the inspiration, everybody!

P.S. Mods, if you feel like this should just be in the Mod Pics thread, feel free to merge it...I was thinking it had enough content to stand alone.