Blasters, Tac Vests, New Shit, Oh My!

[Briguy52]

Those were for the Air zone longstrike thing right?

[Ozymandias]

Huh, might have been, yeah.

You can buy them as a refill now, apparently.

[skullface1818]

I don't know if this has been posted yet or not, but AirZone has new streamline-esqe darts.

http://imgur.com/a/BKAmm (Not my album)

If their cheaper, Id like some. Look liked theyd do good in a Rayven

[steve_the_slim]

I found one on the ground a couple weeks ago and kept it.  I'll see if it works in any of my CS guns.

[Tye Power]

I found one on the ground a couple weeks ago and kept it.  I'll see if it works in any of my CS guns.

Thank you, I am curious as well

[Ozymandias]

It does. Check the album.

[torukmakto4]

These tips seem to be an excellent substitute for a streamline tip. I don't know about the stock foam they have, because the shorter length will nerf the ranges of pushback breech springers and possibly cause flywheel feed issues - but I can see buying a case of W1 code sonics, swapping the foams between the two tip types, and getting both slightly-shorter sonics for necked dart apps and W-code-foamed, full length, ultra-stable non-necked darts for mag feed.

A few questions:

1. Do they HURT? The tips look SOLID!

2. Are the tips sticky/grabby? I have some guns (swarmpede) that don't like grabby/soft streamline tips, and these look like a big rubber wadcutter and I can see them causing major hell, though a tactic to make E-codes, etc. run in this gun is to paint the tips with liquid CA. It de-tackifies them, won't come off, has a side effect of making my Sharpie marks permanent and doesn't harden the tips any.

[RandomShadow09]

Can anyone verify that they sell refill packs of these?  I haven't been able to locate such an item either online or in stores.  Also, the ones that come with the "new paint scheme" Airzone blasters are grey foam with a blue tip.  They look great, but I'm not paying $30 for 25 darts and a crappy blaster.

[icyblaze13]

My friend got the new airzone darts in a punisher he bought a few months back. They don't hurt as much as you might expect, but you definitely know you got hit. They are greatly improved in accuracy and weight. I have yet to see one fishtail. We have been on the lookout for refills ever since but have had no luck.

[Ozymandias]

The guy who found them is in Australia, so... yeah. Don't know when they'll get here.

[Pointman9]

This is sort of off topic, but if you are tired of reaming out hopper barrels for hours with a pair of scissors, http://www.harborfreight.com/3-piece-stepless-drill-bits-66463.html<--  This drill bit set will do the work in much much shorter time.

[torukmakto4]

Those don't look like the correct taper for a hopper barrel throat. It's way too slow a taper IMO, and could produce efficiency problems due to throat depth being way too great before the bore tightens up. I use a 82* countersink to cut them, and then clean up with a knife, takes minutes.

[ilikefish58]

ishmael8765678 (nrev) suggested using a deburrer. I might have to look into that or a countersink bit, because my hoppers are God-awful. Like to the point where I would rather use turrets.

[torukmakto4]

I get excellent results out of the countersink as a hopper throat reamer.




These barrels take 5 minutes from raw materials to finished product. PVC sleeve is hogged out with a drill to 5/8" excepting a small section of tight bore for press fit, CPVC barrel blank is welded in flush with the end of the PVC, the throat is cut to 82* straight taper with the countersink in a hand drill until the cut hits the edge of the PVC, and then the edge of the bore is cleaned out and rounded over with a knife blade, and it's ready to go. With practice, you can shave internal round PVC objects very smoothly by hand with a knife, takes a low angle to avoid chattering and making a huge mess. It's best to avoid grinding unless you plan to spend a good long while sanding your rough surface smooth afterward.

Not the best images but they all feed just fine with UMB tank and piston guns at various pressures down to barely any muzzle energy at all... on a homemade 50* (yeah, more aggressive than standard!) wye with darts ranging from 3/4" to 1.25" foam length on stock foam and FBR of various types, slug and dome tips, and differing barrel fits. I can even get a full length dart to somehow get through my aggressive wye once in a while.


Man, I really need to paint that thing. That blue weld is ugly as hell.


Doesn't even notice the hopper. Thinks it's singled.

The important detail here is to understand how hoppers feed. The throat angle is not just a feed ramp so darts don't get hung up on the edge of the barrel. Rather, it is how the darts are guided into a sealing position prior to firing. Darts from the magazine fall into the throat where the tip should come as close as possible to sealing the bore. On firing, pressure rises, the tip is forced into the barrel and the dart is drawn out of the magazine. If the dart tip cannot seat against the throat and has a large clearance at rest, efficiency and reliability will be harmed.

Thus, the throat taper should roughly match the angle of the mag tube so that dart tips entering it will fall all the way in, and come to rest just at the entrance of the bore where they will block the barrel as well as they can. Imagine darts exiting the mag of your wye, and make sure that they have a clean shot into the barrel from there. You people with 45* wyes may need to knife a little more than I do, and if this is a low-angle hopper, the throat may need to be a lot deeper for optimum performance.

[Pointman9]

I usually start off my barrel throats with a 60 degree countersink, then using scissors on the bore itself for a really long time and I haven't had a single jam out of that hopper yet.  My latest batch of darts were fat though, so that could have made a difference.