So I took a walk around Bunnings the next day and grabbed some bits and pieces and came up with this. I call it “The Stick Breech”
So I started with a normal PETG/20mm orange conduit breech. Here’s a quick write-up:
Materials:
1 x 16” length of PETG
1 x 16” length of 20mm orange conduit
1 x 2” length of 10mm aluminium tube
E-tape
Alrighty then. Mark out a dart sized opening 1” from the end of the 20mm conduit and use whatever tool you like to cut the opening (I used a Dremmel with a cutting bit).
Now get your pipe cutter (hacksaw/whatever) and cut a small amount off the end furthest from the dart opening (make sure the piece that you cut off is long enough to fit into your hand. About 4”-ish).
Take the piece of aluminium tube and wrap e-tape around it until it fits snugly into the end of the conduit. Make sure you leave 5-10mm at both ends of it free of tape. Once this is done, shove it into the end of the conduit closest to the dart hole. Hot-glue it in.
Okie dokie, almost there. Grab the piece of conduit that you cut off and attach it to one end of the PETG (I e-taped the PETG until it fit snugly, then glued it). Put a bit of e-tape on the rest of the PETG so that it slides nicely into the conduit.
That’s kind of it for that part.
Now on to the spring loaded part. For this you will need the following:
Materials:
2 x 20mm conduit end caps
2 x screw eyelets
1 x c-31? Spring (you could use either a c-311, c-313 or c-315. maybe a c-319. but they all vary in length and strength a bit)
1 x length of 16mm grey conduit (bit longer than the spring)
1 x length of 20mm grey conduit (same length as above)
All of this can be obtained from Bunnings.
Let’s start with the end caps. Drill a small hole in it (large enough for the eyelet to screw into). Now screw the eyelet into it. Then cut the tip of the eyelet screw off so that it doesn’t go round hurting people (I tried using a Dremmel with a cutting disk for this but it heated up the eyelet so much that it melted the end-cap. I suggest using a pair of side-cutters). Do the same for the second end-cap and then we can move onto the conduit.
Like I mentioned in the materials list, the 16 and 20mm conduit should be pretty much the same length and this length should be longer than the spring by a couple of inches so that the spring will always be in tension, therefore, when the spring attachment is attached to the breech, it will hold it closed.
Once you have your 16mm and 20mm conduit cut to length, then cut a 3” section off the end of both lengths.
So now we are ready to put the spring loader together. Start by attaching the spring to one of the eyelets. Next slide the 3” piece of 16mm over the spring and into the end-cap attached to the spring. Then slide the larger piece of 16mm over the spring. Now get the larger piece of 20mm over the top of the 16mm. Lastly slide the 3” piece of 20mm over the end of the 16mm.
The next bit is like the trickiest part of the whole thing. I used a piece of coat hanger wire with a very small hook bent into it to get the end of the spring from down in the conduit. Once I had stretched the spring far enough I grabbed it with long nosed pliers and attached it to the other end-cap.
The final step in making this is to glue it up. I used a bit of Selleys Gel Grip around the end-cap and glued the end-cap to the piece of 16mm and 20mm conduit closest to it. And I did the same for the other end-cap.
Now. You can use glue to attach the spring loader to the breech, but it was getting late so at the time I just used e-tape. I haven’t replaced the tape with glue yet, and I don’t really plan to.
Just a couple of things to note with this setup:
This will add a bit of weight to the end of your barrel.
I am sure that smaller springs can be used, but I didn’t see one at Bunnings that I liked.
Maybe someone wants to experiment with bungee/elastic cord type stuff.
The spring I used was not cheap, coming in at just under $14.
Here are a couple of pics of the breech attached to blasters
-Dan