cosmetic mods?

Its begun to dawn on me that the majority of the people in the nerf modding community are interested more in performance than looks. Me, I like a balance.

I had an insight about the Recon which is that possibly one of the reasons it sells is because it looks good. I'm sure there are other nerf guns like that. The recon as we know, shoots worse with the barrel attachment on because the extended barrel slows the dart down with added friction.

So I started to wonder: what if you wanted a cosmetic barrel extension but the extended barrel's inner bore was wider and thus created no drag whatsoever?

Silly, you might say, until you take a look at some of the Nerf guns on Deviantart and elsewhere which are painted up spectacularly and have faux-silencers on them. There's a version of a Recon i saw recently that is painted up to look like it was a German semi-automatic rifle from World War 2 and it had an extended barrel on it:



It looks great. However, if the extended barrel is wider than the functional barrel, would it really have no drag or is that just me being wishful? I have an alpha trooper and want to put a bit of a barrel extension on it and then paint it so it looks good. Think I'll run into any trouble if the extension is a few mm wider than the actual barrel?

thanks

P.S. please pardon the poor English usage. Its been a long day here in the US.

Depending on the style of blaster, a barrel extension can make a lot of difference, either positive or negative.

I've trialled using Recon barrel extensions on my LShot's, with stock barrel, and 20mm conduit barrel nested inside.

Both versions decrease range by alot, so it's all trial and error.

As for people focusing on performance over cosmetic's, take a harder look on here, and you'll find some very nice performance blaster's, that look rather nice.

Cheers,

spacephrawg wrote:However, if the extended barrel is wider than the functional barrel, would it really have no drag or is that just me being wishful? I have an alpha trooper and want to put a bit of a barrel extension on it and then paint it so it looks good. Think I'll run into any trouble if the extension is a few mm wider than the actual barrel?

It is rather close to impossible to achieve this under that method, as this must mean that the dart must travel practically dead parallel to the inner walls of the barrel for a significant distance before exiting.

You already have gravity and drag acting against the dart, after being propelled, leading to non-straight trajectory, making it likely to touch the inner walls and affecting the range.

If it is propelled fast enough, the section of the trajectory within the barrel could be considered near-straight, but highly unlikely, given the attainable velocities possible.

I'm not sure this thread shouldn't be in general Nerf but...
A dart moving though any barrel with a larger diameter than the dart itself will have to move the air within the barrel creating an air pressure that in turn creates drag on the entire length of the dart this is compounded by the compressed air trying to escape around it. End result...very poor performance. Sooo... extended barrels need to be snug fitting and air tight from the bolt to work.

For a performance blaster with looks I built this modded longshot which hits about 30m-35m flat.

Sorry about the thread location. I did not mean to cause trouble by putting it here.

About having to displace the air, good point. Lefty: your Longshot looks like its right out of some cyberpunk RPG. Well done!

What about a really wide barrel like this:


Note, you can find the rest of this guy's mods here: meandmunch at deviantart

@clunk07, I've never heard of a barrel extension helping a nerf gun's performance. Can you give me an example?

I'm talking about an actual barrel extension - making the barrel longer, not just pertaining to an attachment.

Take most air blaster's, generally a 60cm barrel will be give alot more range, than a 30cm barrel.
The 60cm barrel is longer, hence it's a barrel extension.

Sorry if my words were a little misleading.

A big wide barrel like that will have no effect whatsoever, except for aesthetic's.

Cheers,

thats a cool gun nice cocking system lefty

clunk07 wrote:I'm talking about an actual barrel extension - making the barrel longer, not just pertaining to an attachment.

Take most air blaster's, generally a 60cm barrel will be give alot more range, than a 30cm barrel.
The 60cm barrel is longer, hence it's a barrel extension.

Sorry if my words were a little misleading.

A big wide barrel like that will have no effect whatsoever, except for aesthetic's.

Cheers,

Thanks, gotcha. So if I had a longer barrel in my alpha trooper and more power in it, it would shoot further or is it that simple? The darts I have right now are streamlines with straws hotglued into them, which gives better performance, as the forums and youtubers said it would. The gun is stock, unmodified (I returned the modified one that i put back together wrong, at the urging of my girlfriend who has little faith in my modding abilities unfortunately.) I'm just trying to get a feel for how the modding logic goes.

Meanwhile, if I were to put a short muzzle break on the end of my gun's existing muzzle, and its internal diameter was a little wider than the barrel, would that hurt performance?

Longer barrels generally are best in air blaster's. I know that if I put an extra 30cm piece of 9/16" brass on my Longshot brass breech, range drops by around 40%. Also, the barrel I put on my recon reduces ranges as well.

Suffice to say, I leave barrel length alone with springer's.

It it's only short, then the muzzle break really shouldn't affect the range.

Cheers,

@ Spacephrawg The reason air blasters work better with a longer, snug, barrel has to do with the rapid expansion of compressed air released when fired. The longer barrel allows the air to 'develop' behind the dart with increasing velocity. Springers, especially reverse plungers just don't compress enough air. While that Recon looks great, it's still going to produce Recon results.

@ N.W.A.T Thanks, the pump section is from the Shotblast.

lefty wrote:
@ Spacephrawg The reason air blasters work better with a longer, snug, barrel has to do with the rapid expansion of compressed air released when fired. The longer barrel allows the air to 'develop' behind the dart with increasing velocity. Springers, especially reverse plungers just don't compress enough air. While that Recon looks great, it's still going to produce Recon results.

@ N.W.A.T Thanks, the pump section is from the Shotblast.

Gotcha thanks. Doesn't explain why the alpha trooper with built in longer barrel gets better range stock than a recon with barrel attachment off though.

Meanwhile, over on www.therpf.com, there is a thread about cosmetically modified Nerf guns and I found this Longshot by Johnson Arms:


the "silencer" is pretty wide at the mouth and has a vent in it. would that cause enough back pressure to decrease performance or not?

Meanwhile, Not sure why but I'm more a fan of the springers than anything air powered at this point.

Dude, this is the rule: if the dart touches the inside of any barrel 'attachment' it will decrease the range. If it is an actual barrel, it's a different story and you have to do your own tests depending on the power the blaster puts out. My LS does excellent with an 11" barrel. Haven't tried anything else, but.

Also, try an air gun. Titan or 4B. You'll be literally shocked into loving it. Air guns put out so much power with minimal mods, it's ridiculous.

any other questions, bust 'em out!

Cody

Mozart wrote:Dude, this is the rule: if the dart touches the inside of any barrel 'attachment' it will decrease the range. If it is an actual barrel, it's a different story and you have to do your own tests depending on the power the blaster puts out. My LS does excellent with an 11" barrel. Haven't tried anything else, but.

Also, try an air gun. Titan or 4B. You'll be literally shocked into loving it. Air guns put out so much power with minimal mods, it's ridiculous.

any other questions, bust 'em out!

Cody

Yeh, good advice there Cody.

And generally, we tend to post pics of our own modded blaster's, not every Tom, Dick and Harry off of the interweb!!

Cheers,

spacephrawg wrote:

Gotcha thanks. Doesn't explain why the alpha trooper with built in longer barrel gets better range stock than a recon with barrel attachment off though.

The reason behind this is due to the Alpha Trooper being a better blaster than the Recon is when they are both new out of the box. I'm not 100% on why, but I am believe (IMO) it has something to do with the different construction of the AR's in the newer designed alpha trooper compared to the older recon. Also there might be a slight difference in the loads of the springs but again I can not confirm this.

About the spectres attachment, indeed it is very wide the hole length and I don't believe a dart would get much of a chance of hitting the wall of the faux barrel.

As for back pressure, it would only be an issue if any at all on the higher powered springers and air powered blasters.

I have thought about putting some "vent" holes to the ends of my barrels to aid in the stability of the dart to eliminate the fish tailing I get out of some of my high powered air blasters.

Gooni.

Mozart wrote:Dude, this is the rule: if the dart touches the inside of any barrel 'attachment' it will decrease the range. If it is an actual barrel, it's a different story and you have to do your own tests depending on the power the blaster puts out. My LS does excellent with an 11" barrel. Haven't tried anything else, but.

Also, try an air gun. Titan or 4B. You'll be literally shocked into loving it. Air guns put out so much power with minimal mods, it's ridiculous.

any other questions, bust 'em out!

Cody

Thanks for clarifying. Please pardon my sload (tm).

Soon as they make a nerf style air dart gun that is magazine fed, I'll be all over it. That or if it were possible to make an air powered single shot one that looks for all the world like a sniper rifle. I'd be ok with that. Looks are important to me.

@clunk, I apologize for violating the etiquette. I will keep it in mind for the future.

spacephrawg wrote:

Soon as they make a nerf style air dart gun that is magazine fed, I'll be all over it. That or if it were possible to make an air powered single shot one that looks for all the world like a sniper rifle. I'd be ok with that. Looks are important to me.

Air blasters are surprisingly easy to make and produce crazy ranges with enough power to blow darts apart on impact. This is a BBUMB based longshot (the longbumb) which I pretty much copied from Goonie's longtit mod. Both of which you will find a write up on if you search this site. All you need is a little imagination and the will to do it.

I agree that cosmetic mods are largely overlooked... it's most of what I do, actually, and most of the reason that I'm posting here instead of NerfHaven. >.>

Here's an aesthetic Recon I did about half a year back. Bored out the extension and dug around in there until it shot a bit further, then went to town on it.

Lovely! I'm glad you didn't try to make it go the "IMA REEL GUN! XD" look. I've been advised against painting my gun to look too real and as I sit and think about it, I am beginning to realize something less realistic and more colorful would be more pleasing to my eyes. Although so too would be the addition of a powerstock, for better or worse.

Loosely related: would vinyl dye work on the clear part of the drum mag? Here's hoping it doesn't actually but I'd still like to know.

Back to the main topic, most of the paint ups of the AT that i've seen make the thing look really real. Some I've seen are light gray and look like they're from a video game but here in the US that would still get me shot by a cop if I took it outside. Then there's the black and green Aliens style paint job, the black with scratches look, a tarnished dark steel look, and possibly one or two others that aren't coming to mind. I'd paint it to look like a District 9 gun except it doesn't have the aesthetic for it since it resembles an assault rifle and a pump action shotgun exclusively. I've seen Longshots and even Raiders painted up to look D9 before but they look less real with that paint on them so it works. I tried looking to Warhammer 40k for inspiration and found it would suit a Spectre or Barricade better. There is one paintup of an AT i saw where the mag drum had a stencil of a skull painted on it and it looked awesome. I made a note and moved on though.

I'm open to suggestion.

Meanwhile, I'm also open to suggestion for ideas for a muzzle break or cosmetic extension. on any other gun I'd just put something like a Spectre silencer on it but the AT is already full of vent holes like some kind of LMG so there's got to be another option.

Thx again

Pretty much every barrel extension is just a faux barrel which doesn't really do much except decrease range. There's no seal around the dart in these barrels. The seal only exists in the small portion of the breech where the dart rests. In order to have an effective barrel extension you'd have to redo the breech system like a brass breech that would create an airtight seal with a long barrel that would be nested inside of the faux barrel.

Lately, a lot of people have been sticking the spectre "silencer" on their longshots. The reason for this is that it does not
decrease range because of the large ID of the barrel.