Katachi

Okay, I've started working on my own stripped down, cleaned up version of the PPK since Hunter hasn't acutally done anything more with his.

Here's what I got so far, it's all cut n paste from the wonderful thread over at NHQ:



The first coating of Bondo Jelly went well. I said "too much is better than not enough" and I was right, since I had some pock marks and air bubbles to fill.

The 3 different colors are:
whitish green - the first coat sanded down with sandpapers and Dremel to a fine grit paper
brown - I mixed the parts wrong! Too much hardner and it hardned in about 45 seconds! DO NOT mix yours to this color!
dark green - I had to mix up some more since the brown stuff hardened too fast.

I also had some problems with removing the "nerf" knobs. Apparently, the air chamber sticks out a little bit past the frame/shell, so when you sand it down, you're actually exposing the orange air chamber a bit. On the first bondo sanding, I actually sanded right through to the other side trying to level it out.

Also, if you remove the knobs, you have to take out one of the pegs that holds the screws for holding on the air chamber >_< I'll gob some bondo or Gorilla Glue in and replace the peg after the outside of the shell is finished.

Also also, you'll notice that there's no space left for mounting the LED lens assembly. I actually drilled a hole where it should go, and I'll be putting just an LED in a bic pen housing in the gun. No lens. Hey, it's got a 15 degree radius and it's bright!

As per suggestions, I'm rounding the lower part of the trigger guard. More pics and helpful tips to come!

Of course I edited it. THIRST's a good guy, and his internal work is outstanding. He was in a bad mood, I was up late, stressed out from work and tired, so things got out of hand. We're both past it now and would like the same from you.

I sawed the dart holder off my Night Finder and I was left with a couple holes in the shell... what do we do with holes? FILL THEM!



Just mix up some Bondo and gob it on good and thick. Too much is better than too little. I didn't put enough on mine so now there's a couple little pock marks.

Let it dry, only takes maybe 30-45 minutes. Then take some files and sandpaper and just sand it down! No holes! Check it out:

http://nerfhaven.com...st=0#entry29705

Okay, so I picked one of these up at Toys R Us today to mess with, since I got my shipment of 10000 millicandela white LEDs last week and like finding stuff to put them in. It's bright. VERY bright. If you don't know how bright LEDs get, take a look at those pedestrian crossing lights at interesections or some of the tail lights on semis. Police cars use them too, and one police chief I talked to said you can see them from over a mile away! Of course, their light bars have lenses to make the brigter. But the Night Site does too!

I took the LED circuit board out of the NS. The LED itself isn't too bad, and if you can't get a hold of ultra brights, take those resistors out. All they're really there for is to take some of the voltage and heat off of the LED, which makes it dimmer. Some people say you need at least a 300 ohm resistor with LEDs or they burn out, but I've never had it happen. The current's the same since they're in series with the LED so it's not like there's going to be to much of a current draw since it would be the same with or without the resistors. Most LEDs max out and go into saturation at 3.4v or higher, so if you're only using two AA or AAA (1.5v each), you're only getting 3v so you still don't need to worry about keeping a resistor...

So now you can just desolder or cut that board off and solder the LED on. Just remember which lead's positive or you will have to put the batteries in backwards!

Now you'll notice that the original red LED had a black housing on it that kept it in place.

Way in the back also. This made it so that a concentrated beam of light hit the lens and stayed small, as opposed to putting it right up close and shining a cone of light on it, which gives you more light. I cut a bic pen to the length of that light tube and put the LED at the front. Then I jammed the pen and LED in the tube and pushed it up so that the LED was like 1/4 inch away from the lens. This way, it puts out a nice wide beam.

So ummm.... that's basically it. Reassemble it like it used to be and now you have a bright flashlight instead of a wimpy red dot! I'll have pics as soon as the bondo on my gun dries!

Hey all, I didn't see any other posts about this so I thought I'd start a new one...

Anyone use NON nerf stuff for their wars? I saw some laser tag clubs a while ago that had a cute little prop they had made to look like a soviet warhead, it had a panel to unscrew and wires to cut to deactivate. There was also one of those old WOW transponder/locators in it. FUN! So one team got the warhead and got to hide it. The other team got the locator, and a device with a light and audio player. They would set the timer and went it reached 0, the thing would flash the lights and play the sound of a Black Hawk landing, idling for a couple minutes and then taking off. So basically, you had to go deactivate the warhead and meet back at the "dropship" in the time it was there. Variants were things like: one guy on the warhead team has a card that says which wire to cut, multiple charges/warheads placed, dropship lands in a different location for pick up than for drop off...

Anyone else got any ideas or ref pics of stuff they think would be fun to play with? I'd love to build some fun stuff for games other than deathmatch and capture the flag.