January 10

Bullpup Conversions in Hobby-Grade Arms

When applied to firearms, bullpup configurations offer the power and accuracy of normal arms, but with a smaller form. This is because the action is set behind the trigger, allowing for a longer barrel or smaller form. But how do bullpups apply to hobby-grade items like airsoft guns or dart blasters?

Starting with the easy one, airsoft. Bullpups have almost no benefits with this type of gun. The in the case of AEGs, the barrel length has minimal effect on power or accuracy. Gas powered airsoft guns also see minimal benefit from a bullpup configuration. There are plenty off bullpup options and conversions in airsoft, but they have minimal benefit outside of style.

Dart blasters seemingly have nothing to gain from a bullpup setup. Added barrel length generally hurts velocity, and barrels provide no benefit to accuracy. So converting a blaster to a configuration with a long barrel even at minimum is a terrible idea. At least it would seem that way.

Bullpup dart blasters actually accept two-stage flywheel cage conversions particularly well. The added barrel length makes it easy to fit in multiple flywheel cages into one blaster. A bullpup configuration would allow the user to pack a lot of power into a relatively small package.

The big disadvantage with a bullpup dart blaster is the sheer rarity of them. There is only one bullpup conversion kit available for the Stryfe. Other than that, bullpup blasters have to be hand built. This can get very time consuming, as well as very heavy on the materials consumed. Most bullpup builds I have seen use up no less than three separate blasters just to make one. Bullpup conversions just aren’t practical for this reason.

When applied to hobby-grade arms, bullpups just don’t hold up. They offer few benefits outside of style, and in some cases are far less accessible. As far as bullpup conversions go, they’re better left to the real steel.

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January 9

Nerf Trilogy Shorty Build

What do you do with a blaster that is too large to be a secondary, but is too bad to be a usable primary? You either make it work better to be a primary, or minimize it for use as a secondary. The Nerf Trilogy is the perfect example of this debate going nowhere. That is until I came along.

Quick rundown of the blaster: The Trilogy is a pump-action, top fed, single shot blaster. It uses shells to fire 3 darts at one time before ejecting the shell. The whole system is slow. Shells are terrible, and having the blaster throw your only means of firing roughly on the ground is a recipe for disaster. One way or another the shells that come with the blaster will stop being usable from being ejected.

That’s if the blaster comes with them in the first place. The Trilogy I own originally belonged to someone that bought theirs from an unnamed online superstore. It never came with shells, so he complained to customer service. They sent him a second one for free. The original owner gave me the first blaster as a bunch of bits because he disassembled it. Shortly after I won a bet with the same guy involving a gummy pizza, and used the money to buy replacement shells.

So I had a free, fully disassembled blaster, that I had no attachment to. I tried out the other Trilogy that was still in one piece and realized that I hated the stock setup. From then on I was set on hacking up my Trilogy one way or another.

I started with removing the stock. It was uncomfortable anyway. The diagram below shows the cuts I made in red. The line above 1 is for simply removing the stock. Leave the plastic wall that connects to the rest of the internals alone.

For the next part I decided to make a shell catcher. Since I only owned three shells, I built it around that. To save money and time I decided to reuse the stock and rebuild it as the catcher. In the diagram above, the second red line is where I made the cut for the height of the shell catcher. The total height for the catcher should be around 5 1/4 inches. This puts the top of the catcher just above the ejection port. Highlighted in purple is a piece of trim that can be removed. Areas in green needed trimmed with a dremel tool. Ignore the top line for the moment. The most important part of the bottom line is to shorten the screw pegs to clear the area for shells.

Now look at the second diagram above. Parts in purple should be removed. The part in yellow is important, save that for now. Now start clearing the area represented by the top green line in the first diagram, and the area in green in the second diagram.

The barrel could also be shortened for a total minimization. But that was a lot of extra work for little gain so I left it alone.

You want the yellow highlighted panel to face towards the bottom of what used to be the stock, tri-pattern out. If cleared properly this panel should slot into the green highlighted areas, with the angled end facing the original rear of the stock. When you are happy with the fitment, trim the top of the panel to match the top of the catcher.

If assemble correctly, the catcher should look similar to the image on the above. I recommend putting a panel in the slots on the front and rear of the catcher to add strength. Plastic from cheap picture frames or something similar will work. Similar material can be used to make a top door for the hopper, and clean up the rear of the blaster. I used a combination of wood putty and epoxy to fix the new catcher to the side of the blaster.

Finally, a coat of industrial yellow paint was added. It was available and compliments well with orange and black. The blaster was then reassembled, and detailing was added. A sling was added to compliment use as a secondary, and the Trilogy was done. 

Overall, this build cost $7 despite my best efforts. It was fun to work on this blaster since messing it up didn’t matter to me. At the end of the day I took a terrible primary blaster, and turned it into a mediocre secondary. I see that as an absolute win.

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January 9

Platform Overview – Out of Darts Jupiter

When it comes to the Nerf modding community, the people involved tend to draw out all the potential in a blaster. But what happens when people from the community decide to make their own performance-oriented blasters from scratch? Well, you wind up with crazy things like the Rainbow-pump, Caliburn, and the subject of this post.

The Jupiter is a machine pistol styled blaster (for lack of a better term) made by Luke from Out of Darts. Out of Darts is a company that specializes in aftermarket blaster parts, and the Jupiter is their in-house answer to sidearms.

Functionally you could think of the Jupiter as the Mac-11 of Nerf. It is a compact, full auto pistol, that is capable of emptying a magazine in under a second. The available fire rates from the store range from 3 rounds per second to 12 per second. That is not the max potential of the blaster though, I’ve heard of Jupiters firing as fast as 18 rounds per second. Though, almost regardless of fire rate, its infamously difficult to keep extra ammo in the magazine.

The Jupiter uses High Impact Rounds, and the largest standard magazine currently available only holds 12 rounds. There are rumors of a high-capacity drum magazine to be released in the near future. But there are other unusual options currently available if you are willing to strip the Jupiter of its sidearm status.

The Proton Pack effectively turns the Jupiter into an ammo hose. It is a large wearable pack that connects to the magazine well of the Jupiter. With this equipped you have access to 270 rounds without ever reloading. This is achieved with a hopper (its actually a cheese ball container) equipped with a blower that acts in place of a magazine spring. There was a prototype for a 1000+ round unit that seems to have never hit production, at least not yet. The “beta” model is currently out of stock.

This is where I have a problem with the Jupiter. The base model is $99, not including shipping, assembly, batteries, charger, magazines, or ammo. Granted, it has high quality parts. But the rate of fire is so high that this is almost unusable with normal magazines. Remember that Mac-11 comparison? That has a similar problem. Unlike the Mac-11, the Jupiter has a $99 pack that upgrades the capacity. That is just for the current 270 round beta version that is no longer available, not whatever might replace it. Compared to other blasters, you would have to be mad to buy the Jupiter as it stands!

For the same price from Nerf you can buy a Nemesis for $99, or cheaper of you bother looking around. But that includes assembly, ammo, and a battery tray (D cells with the option of rechargeable). With a quick rewire and Li-Po battery conversion the Nemesis can just about match the Jupiter’s performance and fire rate. The nemesis even has a stock advantage on capacity with a 100 round hopper. This can be upgraded cheaply and easily to hold tons of ammo. You don’t have to be an Adam Savage to pull off that kind of upgrade.

Overall the Jupiter is a bit misguided. Every time I try to write positive things about this blaster I just can’t get away from its flaws. It sits in a very small niche as a machine pistol, and an even smaller niche as a pack-fed heavy blaster. I love what the creator tried to do, but the Jupiter gets way out-performed by modified blasters for the price. There are other performance oriented blasters out there, but those are a blog for another time.

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January 5

Afterburners and an Intro to Two-Stage Conversions

If there is one running theme in the Nerf modding community, it is the quest for power. One way or another most blasters can be outfitted to hit like a truck. But individually modding each blaster takes a lot of time, if only there was a way to easily add power to any blaster with a barrel lug. Enter the Afterburner.

Afterburners can be an effective catch-all method of adding power to most blasters. To try to put this simply; you are essentially putting a second blaster on your barrel, and firing every shot twice. Allow me to explain.

The diagram above is an example of a stock flywheel powered blaster coupled to an afterburner. When you fire the dart is pushed through a set of flywheels and brought up to speed. Stock blasters usually hit about 65 feet per second with normal motors and batteries. In this case the Afterburner is a second set of flywheels. The initial power source for the dart can change depending on the model. When the dart gets to the second set of motors, it gets a boost in power.

The power boost you get depends on the initial velocity of the dart relative to what the Afterburner is capable of. If your base power is greater that what the Afterburner can output, you will lose velocity. If the base power of the blaster is less than or equal to the power of the Afterburner, then you will get a boost. In the case of equal power, the output is roughly doubled. (Ex: If both flywheel cages are capable of 70 fps on their own. When put inline they can output 130-145 fps, depending on other conditions)

The spacing of the Afterburner relative to the original power source can also have an effect on performance. Longer barrels allow the dart to slow down before getting boosted, which hurts overall performance. Ideally the initial power source and second flywheel cage are right after each other to prevent the dart from slowing down. But this is harder with removable Afterburners.

Two-Stage conversions and blasters offer better performance in this situation. Two-Stage blasters are like Afterburners in the way they work, but differ in that they are integrated into an individual blaster. Three-Stage blasters have been done but at 3 flywheel cages you start to see diminishing returns of power.

Two-Stage blasters are particularly interesting as Bullpup blasters. With the right integration one can make very powerful, compact, shoulder-able blasters with Bullpups. But that is a blog for another time.

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December 31

Platform Overview – Nerf Hammershot

Maybe this should be a retrospective, but this is still fairly recent history. Not that it matters, old favorites die hard.

A while back the Hammershot was a darling of the Nerf modding community. You couldn’t go a day without seeing another Hammershot build online for some time. But what made it so special?

The answer is in the name, Hammershot. It was one of a few hammer-action blasters to come out around the time of its release. Unlike the smaller Doublestrike or bulkier Lawbringer, the Hammershot was a solid balance of size, capacity, and comfort. The hammer action meant that the Hammershot was one of the few spring-powered blasters that could be shot one-handed. Better yet, they could be dual wielded.

The modding community ate these blasters up. With the advent of 3d printing around the same time aftermarket parts flooded online stores. The below average 5 dart capacity could be brought up to 8 with an aftermarket cylinder. Barrel and body kits were made available in massive variety. Even the power limitations with the hammer action were soon sorted out, albeit with steel parts.

So how did something like this fall out of the limelight?

Well, over time people exhausted just about every new idea for this blaster. Shortly after the Hammershot went out of production and they became much less common. By the time the Hammershot’s popularity started to fade, the Rival line had been introduced.

Anymore the newer Kronos model is the secondary blaster of choice for people that want a springer. Even with minimal mods the Kronos dwarfs the Hammershot in power. But that is a blog for another time.

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December 29

Platform Overview – Nerf Retaliator

When it comes to learning how to modify anything, dart blasters (do not call them guns, the entire internet will throw a fit) will always be a solid starting point. Fairly loose tolerances and relatively strong plastic make for malleable platforms that stand up well to modding. But there are such a wide variety of blasters that it can be hard to know where to start. Enter the Retaliator.

The Retaliator is one of the closest things you will get to a basic, catch-all blaster. As standard it is a no-frills, carbine style blaster. It comes with a 12-round magazine alongside basic looking stock, barrel, and grip attachments. The mechanism it uses is a top priming slide with a slightly mushy trigger. Nothing about it is too bad, but there is nothing special about anything this blaster has to offer as standard. However, that is the Retaliator’s greatest advantage.

The Retaliator is an incredibly unassuming blaster as standard, which is why the modded community loves these blasters. Internally this blaster uses a direct plunger system. It’s not overly amazing but its not bad. There is enough space for a brass breach, big bore plunger tube, and even much chunkier plunger springs. (big side note on the springs; in order to reach maximum potential for springs you need to reinforce or replace some parts to keep the blaster from blowing itself apart) This means that Retaliators are capable of making some very powerful shots with the right setup. The Retaliator is not known for power though, its real reputation lies in what can be done cosmetically.

The Retaliator is visually not that special. But that means that the core blasters lends itself well to fitting into other body styles. Pretty much any carbine is fair game for choosing your Retaliator’s  looks, although M4 lookalikes are probably the most common that I have seen. Don’t mistake this as a one trick blaster, the Retaliator is not limited to carbine styling. Some time ago Arctic Warfare styled kits were making their rounds around the web. With the right kit one could have a fairly convincing bolt-action sniper rifle lookalike. This is all what can be done with kits.

Outside of kit built mods the Retaliator is just as versatile. The accessories that come with the blaster lend themselves well to other blasters, along with parts of the core blaster. The plunger system is occasionally transplanted into older Recon shells to bring special units up to modern specifications. Retaliator barrels have been used for everything from cosmetics to Afterburner mods (Afterburners are a blog for another time.) Even the Retaliator’s grip is sometimes used in Bullpup conversions. (Bullpup conversions get weird, that needs its own post) If there is a build you want to do, there is a chance that you will need at least part of a Retaliator.

Overall, the Retaliator is a bit like a hamburger. It starts off very basic, but lends itself well to almost any kind of customization. Ideal for newbie modders and experts alike, the Retaliator is easily the most versatile blaster for modification. This is a great place to start.

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