Quick mod: shortened Spectre stock

For myself and many others I've spoken to, the folding stock that comes with the Nerf Spectre feels a little too long to be comfortable, so I've come up with a way of making it much shorter that just requires a bit of cutting, filing down, and glueing. A Dremel tool would be pretty handy, but you can get by with a small hacksaw and sandpaper or a round file, but you will definitely need either a hot glue gun or epoxy if you're following my method. By all means, I'm sure there is someone that will or already has come up with a better way for doing this mod but this is designed as a starting point for ideas.

Anyway, step one take the back half of the stock apart. once the yellow parts are off, you may screw them back together straight away, it's just to take them off their mounting point.

 Cut the stock where shown either with a Dremel and cutting wheel, or your small hacksaw. I guess you could use a large chainsaw if you really wanted, but that's probably overkill and I definitely wouldn't suggest using an instrument meant for cutting down trees to mod your Nerf gun.

You need this piece that was originally forming part of the mount for the yellow pieces at the back to fit the section where the middle brace was, as the flat piece sticking out gives you some more area to glue to later on. to make it fit, though, you will need to file or Dremel down the two little tubes circled, as they're too big for the sockets in the stock. You can also use sand paper but that will take a while, but it can be done. Grind them down until they are gone, and also get rid of the little peg that the red arrow is pointing at.

Screw back together with the original back piece from the middle brace and your stock should look like the picture above (take note that the T piece sits on the inside). Glueing the yellow parts to the new shortened setup is fairly easy, just add some hot glue or epoxy to the spots pictured below (a bit messy, but you get the idea) and align the yellow stock pieces to fit.

Wait for it to dry and you're done! you now have a much shorter Spectre stock, which is probably a bit more practical for a "stealth" blaster. Hope you liked the guide, leave a comment or email pictures of your own ideas to cfb_rolley@hotmail.com if you've come up with a better way!

Urban Taggers: on a roll!

Delivering the goods once again, Nerf blog Urban Taggers have scored themselves a Nerf Rayven CS-18. Urban Taggers is generally a great source for all upcoming Nerf blasters, usually having their finger right on the pulse at all times but this time I think they've really outdone themselves. Not only have Nerf not even announced this new blaster, but within a mere 11 days they've sourced what seems to pre-production or even final model of the rumoured N-Strike Rayven CS-18, and even BETTER is they've done a full pre-review (I guess that's what you'd call it). It is a very good review as always from Urban Taggers so I do highly suggest you head over and read up. It also clears up tons of the speculations that people have had, but still leaves me wondering, "what's in the front bulge?". Anyway, Preview: Nerf N-Strike Rayven CS-18

Nerf Rayven: One exists!

Popular Australian-based blog Urban Taggers got a hold of another picture of the "rumoured" Nerf Rayven CS-18 and posted it up today, asking their community, "does it still interest you?". This post (which can be viewed here) has attracted tons of comments speculating about it's function and internals, and some have criticized this blaster already over the main speculation of it being a flywheel powered blaster.

Picture from Urban Taggers

The main thing I got out of this is that if a real version exists, and the image landed in the hands of Urban Taggers, that means at the very least, Nerf has completely finished a working design for this blaster, sent it away to a rapid prototyping company that works with plastics (or more likely, their usual manufacturer), and a prototype or even final concept has been made. Now, a lot of time, money and effort goes in to progress like this so, it's likely that if the Rayven has made it this far that it will probably make it to store shelves.

Now, of course there'll be those who will tell me I'm wrong, but after seeing a photo of the blaster as well as the box art, here are my predictions about the features of the Rayven CS-18:
-It's a flywheel blaster. Think about it, it's semi auto, and there's no space behind the darts for a plunger, nor is there a priming handle. Furthermore, there's what looks like a toggle switch for spool-up present under the trigger, similar to that of the flywheel powered Vortex Nitron, and there are some interestingly placed bulges in the shell under the scope rail.
-Battery box on the clip is used to power some kind of light to charge glowing streamline darts. The box art states that it uses "firefly tech" and "clip charges 18 glowing darts". That one is obvious.
-Battery box on the blaster powers the flywheels. what is interesting however, is that it requires 4 batteries, unlike the Barricade's 3. This could mean it's feeding more power to the flywheel motors for more power, or there is some lights in the blaster as well.

One thing that has everyone stumped, including me, is how the darts move to the front set of flywheels? The bulge in the case under the front of the scope rail I'd say almost definitely houses a flywheel, but if this is the only set of flywheels it would be almost impossible for the darts to make it that far from the clip via the usual "pusher rod" mechanism, so is there another set of flywheels inside that bulge at the back of the scope rail? seems like a strange system for flywheels, but perhaps it's a way of gaining power without sacrificing accuracy? Who knows. Either way, it looks really good and I'm sure when it's released we'll see plenty of repaints, mods and re-casings.

Blaster rumors: Nerf Rayven CS-18

Not too long ago I made a post ranting about how there aren't any bullpup blasters out there made by Nerf or anyone else for that matter, but now it's possible that the call may about to be answered! Spotted on the Urban Taggers blog, the rumoured "Rayven CS-18" looks like it could make it to store shelves!

I am actually really keen to grab one of these as soon as possible, I think it looks great and interestingly, it looks like uses glowing streamline darts, charged by the clip itself. Looking at the box it, the Rayven seems pretty feature packed. Attachment rails on the side, a stampede-like grip and sight rail, bullpup design, semi auto (assuming flywheels), 18 dart mag, and even the adaptor to accept add-on barrels (i'm already visualising the recon barrel with foregrip).

I'm going to keep and extremely close eye on this one, but if you want more blaster rumours that have been appearing lately, hit up www.urbantaggers.blogspot.com. They are always right on top of all the rumour mills!

New Nerf gear: My take.

This afternoon I came home from work, and as I do, casually checked my blog reading list for things I've missed to discover that it had been virtually filled will posts about the latest press release from Nerf. I'm not going to repost it AGAIN, since it can already be read on other blogs, but I will provide the links to those posts since the blogs I follow are, in my opinion, all very good.

I saw this on the Nerf Facebook, and couldn't resist posting!

In short, Nerf has announced tons of new non-blaster products, including USB devices, night vision, and a helmet cam ranging in price from $19.99 to $59.99 (I'm assuming that's in US dollars). Now, don't get me wrong, some of these items are pretty cool, but I do feel it's all a bit of a gimmick now. I can't really see a 2Gb USB flash drive being worth 20 bucks US, considering well established factories in Taiwan produce these for mere cents each, and you can pick one up at Office Works in Australia for about 10 dollars. I also am pretty skeptical about the quality of the helmet cam, being $59.99, since the GoPro helmet cam system sells for almost $300. I'm actually looking at purchasing the GoPro system already, for the purposes of Freestyle BMX and incidentally, for Nerf Wars. 

So perhaps I'm a fence sitter on this one, while I think some of the products they intend to bring out are really cool, and quite useful additions to a Nerfer's kit, I doubt the quality or value of these products will be all that great. I also doubt they will even hit Australian shores, and I'm not so sure that all of them will actually be released at all. I guess we will see what happens what happens in the next few months, and also what comes out at the Dallas Toy Fair. No doubt I'll pick some of the gear up for review if they land on our side of the globe.

Links:

SGNerf - New Nerf Tech Gear - Press Release

Urban Taggers - Toy Xplosion

Foam From Above - New Nerf electronic gear coming out!

New Nerf N-strike: Jolt EX-1

This has popped up without warning in the last couple of hours, a new Nerf blaster appearing on store shelves as the "N-Strike Jolt EX-1". By the looks of things, it's going to end up being the replacement to the Nerf Secret Strike. What's awesome about this, is that it is a direct plunger system, and apparently hits ranges of 40+ feet. not bad for something so small!

On the packaging reads: "This blaster packs a powerful punch in a super stealth size. Hide it in your pocket to get the drop on your unsuspecting target!"."So, does this mean Nerf are finally listening and giving their dart blasters more power? I sincerely hope so, because if they are, that will make the next major releases of N-Strike blasters more interesting. Perhaps in the near future the won't be much need for modifying Nerf blasters, unless you're taking to the extreme. Who knows, but what I would like to see is Nerf catering for a more grown up market as well, say, larger, more comfortable stocks and grips, and maybe a lot more power to entice the older crew to get on board?

"NiteSniper" - Modified Nerf Nitefinder

Alright so this is basically a total reworking of my very first Nerf mod, which I posted up here a fair while ago. Unfortunately after I mad that post, the plunger on it broke so I had to throw in new internals, and while I was at it I added a new light and battery terminals. It sat around for a while until today, when I had the time to repaint it and add the faux barrel back on.

This time, I went for a different camo look, using a technique that I will do a guide on how to do at a later date. This turned out really nice, and it's probably my most powerful Nerf gun I have at the moment, hitting 100 feet or more. It's because of this that I added the faux barrel back on, because it slows down reload time to make it a little more fair and challenging to use in a Nerf war, and also because the wide aperture barrel helps reduce the flailing that streamline darts do sometimes without having much impact on range.

Loading is done by sliding the port tube forward, pushing a dart in and closing the port again. Of course, you don't have to close the port tube, but for night games it covers the bright orange tip of the dart, and makes the whole blaster almost invisible until you activate the light. Personally I'm eager to get in the action with this blaster to see shots I can make from a decent range.