OMW: New Massacre kits available now!

I'm a little late on the uptake for this one, however Orange Mod works now have their long awaited "Massacre" mod kits available for the Nerf Alpha Trooper, Longstrike, and Raider. These are the kits with polycarbonate parts that are stronger than the original Nerf plastics, and will give your blaster a serious performance boost, reaching around 90 feet per second muzzle velocity.

Alpha Trooper kit - From the OMW facebook page

All kits are $36.99 U.S +shipping and include the following:

-Trigger catch
-2x Strength trigger catch spring

-Reinforcement plate

-2x Strength min spring (6kg)
-Polycarbonate bolt sled with pin
-Polycarbonate breech with o-ring
-Polycarbonate plunger

-1 tube of silicon grease
-2 OMW stickers
-Instruction sheet

They have also have A to Z  mod guides available for FREE download for the Nerf Recon, Alpha Trooper, Longstrike and Raider, along with video assembly guides for the Massacre kits on each of the product pages.

For more information and purchase of the new or existing kits, visit Orange Mod Works.

Air cannon project: Upgrades!

It's a rainy Thursday afternoon, and I have nothing better to do other than work on my cannon a little. I decided that the simple design I built the other day was far too long to be practical for transport and trying to aim it was awful. So, I made two changes that has fixed that and should give me a little more power too.

First, I changed the chamber to an over-under layout, so that the length of the chamber is essentially halved. Using two 90 degree bends gives me a flat area to put my shoulder to achieve better aim, and the added volume of the bends slightly increases the overall chamber volume. not only that, but I can now stand the cannon on it's end for storage without risking damage to the fill valve, which is now under the main valve instead of at the end of the cannon.

Tin foil burst panel to be seated between the
back of the barrel and the o-ring on the other half

Secondly I wanted to be able to remove the barrel for storage and breech loading capabilities. I was originally going to cut the barrel and add in a simple male/female threaded fitting, but I was lucky enough to find a union coupling of the correct size at Bunnings, which means I can also add in a tin foil burst disc, sandwiched in the coupling. The burst disc won't break until a certain amount of pressure has built up behind it, allowing more time for the ball valve to be opened which will increase flow and increase initial acceleration of the projectile. Having the barrel removable also means I could build different barrels for it, possibly a Nerf dart barrel? A vortex mortar? Or even a paintball bazooka barrel? Oh the possibilities... Testing with projectiles might happen on the weekend, if the weather is good.

VERA: another video!

What does the world's largest, most powerful "potato cannon" look like? It's bright yellow and sits on the back of a truck trailer, of course. If you've been reading this blog since the very early days (over a year ago now! missed my own blog's cake day, whoops!), you may remember the initial testing video of project "VERA" or "Variable Energy Research Accelerator". This was only a video of the testing stage and was eventually taken down, so I removed the post the other day when I found out there was to be updated details.

Basically, VERA is a research tool developed to test projectiles that are of an odd shape with less violent acceleration forces. It uses the same technology used by hybrid potato cannons, that is, compressed flammable gas and air ignited by electrical arc, which in turn expands and builds pressure in the combustion chamber until the burst disc ruptures, unleashing the burning pressurized gasses upon the projectile. It's 19" bore x 40 foot long barrel might be a bit large for a potato though, so as in this video, other projectiles are launched with the aid of a sabot (a shell to guide it out the barrel) which is caught by a sabot catcher after the projectile has left the barrel.

Anyway, since this video was posted on the spudfiles forum today, I thought I should share it. After all, potato cannons can be park of this blog too, and I promise you, you will be stunned.

A simple air cannon

Remember how I said I might build an air cannon this weekend? Well I did, for less than $30 AU. This design is probably one of the cheapest, simplest and most reliable potato cannon designs you could possibly build. All parts are rated to at least 12 bar (174psi), which is a ton more power than needed for a bit of fun.

You should have seen the looks I got when I pulled this out of the garage...

This thing is over 2 metres long, has a 30.25mm I.D barrel, 50mm I.D pressure chamber, simple ball valve operation and a schrader valve as the fill valve (car tyre valve). So far, I've done test shots using potato ammo at 50, 60 and 75psi and the results so far have been AWESOME. This cannon at 75psi is as powerful as my old propane cannon of the same caliber. I'm pretty interested to see the results of taking it up to 150psi, but I need a decent compressor to test that. I may need to add barrel rifling to stop the potatoes from going out of control too...

While at the moment it remains in an unpainted, rather crude look with bootlace to attach the shoulder strap, this cannon can easily be changed to an under/over layout with a threaded barrel for breach loading, so in the near future I might either upgrade this, or build bigger and perhaps go to a 45mm I.D barrel with a 65mm I.D chamber. Even then, I doubt that kind of setup would take more than $40 and 30 minutes work. So, I guess now you know that I don't just screw around with Nerf blasters, I also try to put vegetables in to low orbits!

Better than a whole lot of coffee!

Do you have a work mate that comes in every day looking a bit tired even after a few cups of coffee? Want to wake them up a bit? A Nerf gun ambush just won't cut it these days. You need to think BIG. Like, giant air cannon big! These scientists conducting science have done just that, and applied their abilities in such a way that will sweep your tired work buddy right off their feet!

That is one seriously awesome workplace prank, though I do not suggest firing an air cannon at people at home. That said, I do love air cannons. I may just build one this weekend and post the results here. It's definitely not going to be THAT big, though. Anyway, thought my readers might enjoy a little change from Nerf every now and then.

Supporting the sport

I spotted something on the Nerf Mods and Reviews blog this afternoon regarding a new company called Random Hat is looking for some backing to produce their first run of aftermarket parts and accessories for dart blasters. Their first project is a mag holder that attaches to Nerf tactical rails. Unfortunately, projects like this take A LOT of money to get off the ground, so more often than not, without some kind of external investment many companies don't even make it off the ground. There is, however, a kickstarter site has been set up by Random Hat to allow people to get involved to help get the project off the ground.

In my opinion, companies manufacturing aftermarket dart blaster parts are important for developing this little sport in to something bigger and more awesome. Without them, the only real driving force behind developing anything is Nerf themselves, and being realistic, their primary goal is to make more money. Third party companies run by Nerfers FOR Nerfers have a slightly different view, their best interests are the interests of Nerfers so more powerful blasters, cool aftermarket gear and making this stuff accessible to everyone is the primary goal.

Dart tagging is at the same stage as an industry I am already heavily involved in was about 5 or 6 years ago, and that is BMX. As soon as rider owned companies started building the industry got some pretty awesome things that riders wanted for a long time. stronger bearings, lighter bikes, variety of sensible geometries in frames and a freecoaster hub that could actually be used for freestyle were all results of the most recent BMX boom. So, it's up to the Nerfing community to now stand behind what they do and take control of the future of the sport.

Not gonna lie, looks a bit odd, but would be extremely useful!

But anyway, back to what I started with, Random Hat need $20,000 to kick start their project and have a variety of packages for backers ranging from a tactical rail mag holder for people who pledge $25 or more, to a reseller deal which gets you 30 tactical rail mag holders and priority for shipments for pledges of $1000 or more. For more information see this link.

Messing around with the Rayven

Wednesday I *finally* was able to get my hands on the recently released Nerf Rayven to put some shots through. I didn't have a whole lot of time to spare so I only took the one photo from my phone of one decked out senseless. I will do a battle test one day soon, but as for a review I'm not going too in depth, as others already have that base covered (links at the bottom). I will say, however, the Rayven is a little shorter than I expected. I feel that it could potentially be the ultimate blaster for the people who like to dive in to the thick as fast as possible. It's a definite out-of-the-box performer (once you add batteries, of course) and though it won't take out anyone from huge ranges I still think it will induce a bit of fear upon anyone.

Highly impractical, but extremely fun.

The above example feels great to hold, but small aperture barrel extensions really kill the power from this blaster so if you want to use a recon barrel it might be wise to gut it and re-barrel it with some larger diameter PVC. And to think, a few months ago I was upset that there were no bullpup Nerf blasters!

For reviews, check out the following links, in no particular order:
Urban Taggers preview
Nerf Mods and Reviews: Jerm's Review
Nerf Mods and Reviews: Drac's Review
Foam From Above review
(at the time of writing this blog I was pretty tired, so if I've missed any, let me know!)