Home Tournaments Calendar Weather Merchandise Sponsors

Go Back   Spearboard.com - The World's Largest Spearfishing Diving Boating Social Media Forum > Spearfishing Gear > All About Guns

All About Guns What's your weapon of choice, and why? Discuss the beloved speargun here!

Reply
 
Thread Tools Rate Thread Display Modes
Old 01-24-2014, 06:48 AM   #1
lordyaussie
Sam G
 
lordyaussie's Avatar
 
Join Date: Apr 2012
Posts: 151
Talking My 3rd Gun Build, Flame of Anor 105

Flame of Anor

I wanted my gun to look and feel like a South African pipe gun as they have been really proven to be a functional weapon of choice.
I wanted my handle to be integrated into the gun as the pipe guns do, not just be a purchased item and be assembled below a stock. I had a love to make things myself, handles&trigger guards, line anchors, line keepers and little did I know at the time that this would create a world of possibility in what I was creating. :-)

To ensure that I would use my gun over my others I had to ensure it would be better and the only way I could guarantee this would be to make it thinner than the Rob Allen’s barrel. I don’t care if it fails from being too thin, it is better that I try and fail rather than build a bulky gun that sits in the corner gathering cobwebs as my other 2 are doing.
The mechanism’s shape – its height, width, type and location of the line release. Really influences the shape of the gun. So I purchased a rabitec sheet metal mech.

I sourced my timber for free by doing scab-runs around my neighborhood while the hard rubbish collection was on. I found many nice pieces but out of them all I took some Meranti(A type of wood that is used a lot to thickly veneer window and door frames for its look, it was nice and light and had a vanilla smell(perhaps due to treatment)), Planed and sawed to develop some relatively nail-hole free pieces to glue up my stock.

The dimensions below aren’t correct ones with their associated errors I had to fix but to describe the method I used...
My trigger mech was about 18mm wide so my 4 laminates consisted of 9mm by 25mm(outside lams)and 9mm by 29mm(internal lams to raise the rail). The entire length of the lamination was 1230mm but to create the handle/trigger area the last 110mm was different......
The internal lams were cut out in such a way to form the appropriate shape of the pipe gun mech, this is why I made them 9mm each – 2*9mm=18mm=thickness of the mech.
The internal lams at the back consisted of the tennon of my handle’s block(made from pine ) and alittle bit of meranti at the top with small aiming sights(this small bit was added later during shaping but I’ll mention it here anyway).

The external lams were made higher to cover the mech.

Apologies for no photos of this part, would have made describing much easier

Except for the mech pocket everything still had an oversized and square-minecraft look about it, this is important as its difficult to get laminating exact and the shaping comes later.
I did all this one afternoon... which dragged on to evening ... and at midnight I glued it up with kinetix epoxy using BessaBlocks for clamps.
Firstly I did it on my table, had it all perfect which takes a while with bessablocks. THEN I realized that the table was bending like a recurve bow so while the epoxy was going tacky I had to quickly move my whole mess to the pavers.
I used the mech several times to position the lams correctly in the mech pocket.



Now I really wish I had a photo of what came out of that monstrosity in the morning. It was such a mess I didn’t even bother, thought it was a throw away.

But I went down to the Currumbin Galleon way wood crafters club which I had wanted to get involved in for some time and the legends down there really helped me with transforming it, A BIG THANKYOU to everyone there and I still owe them a big smoked Jewfish lunch which I haven’t been able to catch yet.

If ever you were thinking of joining a wood work club give it a go as it is terrific and you meet some great like-minded people. It does take longer than working in your own workshop and it will take some time to learn to use the bench power tools as it’s difficult to measure your compancey level on such dangerous machines, but its great and we don’t all have awesome personal workshops so these types of places are brilliant.
Ted there helped me clean it up on a table saw and router the track on a table router with blocks of wood raising the gun up to its mechanism’s height and allowing it to be routed right to the mech/handle.

I shaped the lamination into a gun mainly with an angle sander(Angle grinder with a flap disk) and a bloody good mask outside with a good breeze. I made a really strong bevel on the top of the gun closer to the muzzle and slowly flipped it to the underside closer to the handle so that my hand could hold it nicely when tacking.
I REALLY like the way I beveled it.

For the handle, I did what I always do with handles, take my rob allen handle, trace it on a 30-35mm thick timber(or on this case the handle laminate which was 30ishmm wide), jigsaw its shape out, turn the jigsaw 45degrees and do the edges very shallowly, then shape it with a 100mm anglesander testing it with a gloved hand all the time. If I feel a slight discomfort in a certain part I will sand that part a little more.

I also shaped the gun thinner underneath, the gun’s final dimensions are 25mm high by 36mm wide, here’s a picture of it next to my RA after its afternoon of sanding.



Now I just needed to slowly add some things,
Firstly the aiming sights above the handle which were shaped after gluing.
The mech demanded more depth where the line release was, so a piece of Meranti was glued and shaped.




The line guide I feel quite proud about, I made it out of wood and glued it on next to the higher rail at the muzzle, weak yes UNTILL I put on some Carbon fibre over it. It’s really great and suits my gun.

A big thankyou to Daniel for inspiring me to try carbon fibre, it really opens a whole new world of gun building ways, not just wrapping.
I put some carbon inside the band slot to reinforce it, very difficult but necessary as there was very little wood due to the gun being so thin.
The underneath of the handle/trigger area was carboned and taped down with electrical tape, I like using electrical tape with Carbon, its readily available, stretches and comes off easily(unless the epoxy gets over the top of it).

Once it was dry I used a rat tail file and drill to give room for the trigger and line release.
The trigger guard, another thing that I’m even more proud of was made from Carbon fibre. I first cut a piece of aluminium sheet about the right size(20mm wide), bent it into the shape of my Rob Allen trigger guard while keeping the geometry of my build in mind. Put wax on one side using a burning candle (yes I’m sure there’s a better way :P ), few layers of carbon fibre(I use surf board rail tape) and epoxy on it in about the right shape, then tape it down to a bit of wood with humble electrical tape.
I bolted and epoxied a shark clip into a hollow in the handle I created, forgot how I did it but the best way is with a drill then rotary tool mini-routing bit/sanding drum.




The side that has the wax on will receive a bad finish, get all the wax off and then put some carbon on it and tape down. (sometimes best to do it when it’s on the gun)
I cut it to size and assembled it onto the gun with more carbon, the joins between the handle and external lams were open a bit so I just fitted the trigger guard into them nicely and added more carbon where needed.




I made the line anchor myself from 316 S.S, I installed it mainly with epoxy although I did put carbon though the hole for reinforcement.




It was starting to look like that gun I wanted.





Then I got some new gear




So then I set into the finishing touches, sanding, drilling mech holes etc
I developed a way of carving out words and imagines on my guns with accuracy. I get the image or word in the font I want on the computer, resize it to the shape I want then trace it very lightly on paper with the image in the background. I strongly recommend printing out the image and tracing it on a window or even using the printout itself, I will not be held accountable for you drawing on your computer screen :-p. I just imagine it now “ arrghh some dickhead on the internet told me to draw on my monitor, now it won’t come off”

Hold the paper with the image very firmly on your (preferably soft) timber gun and begin running a pen over the image with alot of pressure.
Now trace with a graphite pencil over the image on the gun, and then carve it out with a rotary tool bit. It’s impossible to do on very small images. Then colour it in, acrylic is best but I find you will not be murdered for using oil pencils occasionally on small images. I used red marking pen on this gun. Also get an off cut of the same timber and see how different pens colour it.
So that’s my method, I think after doing this on 3 guns there are much better ways about it. The carving doesn’t show up very well either once the gun has been coated with epoxy.

I carved my name on the handle but it didn’t come out well with the water color on half the handle( was expecting it to suicide with epoxy but still wanted to see). The water color however came up very good on the rail of the gun and I love how that looks, how the gun looks different once shot.
lordyaussie is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 01-24-2014, 06:49 AM   #2
lordyaussie
Sam G
 
lordyaussie's Avatar
 
Join Date: Apr 2012
Posts: 151
Re: My 3rd Gun Build, Flame of Anor 105

I christen this gun ‘Flame of Anor’ , you win a smilie for guessing where that and its font are from .




Coating with kinetix purple surfboard fast epoxy was a tough job, it has a lapping effect which I still don’t understand( sometimes happens with west system). So I had to sand back with steel wool several times including after the finishing one. Also got some white blemishes in someplaces during its first dive (epoxy blushed I believe, as I was doing coating at night with moisture and also didn’t wipe the wax off with hot soapy water after each coat)).




Ok open this in a new tap, skip to 1:15 then continue reading
------http://www.youtube.c...h?v=xOOY1qrRsOI

It came up nice in the end though , I am actually still fascinated on the final finish I got on this gun, the photos don’t do it justice.





Flame of Anor Stats

Band to spear notch is 105cm, total length of the gun is 122cm.
Dimensions: Barrel 25mm high by 36mm wide.
Spear: 7mm blunt pencil point, 30cm overhang.
Rubber: 14mm black 50cm loop.
Mech: Rabitec/Mako sheet metal mech
Handle: Homemade
Band hole capacity: 1 rubber
Balance in the water: floats patiently waiting face down, not heavy in any way to hold, it’s terrific.

First dive graphics and impressions.... I love it!




I can aim it very well when my arm is out stretched, can’t do so well off the hip but that’s just me.
I’ve caught many fish with it and it is now my go to gun mission accomplished!

The mechanism isn’t the best as it’s a little hard to engage. The coating isn’t very tough, I’ll refurbish it someday anyway since it’s such a great gun.
6 months later and it hasn’t warped one bit.

One day I was chasing Mangrove Jack, an elusive but great fish that generally requires me to dive murkier water such as eddies and dive with long bottom times of staying still in the murk. Slowly the small fish are replaced with bigger fish, small jacks appear and if you can just stay relaxed enough to stay a little longer you begin to hear thunder! And Larger 50-55cm Jacks cruse through, thundering away at the slightest movement.
I dove a spot several times feeling that they would pass by, after many 1 minute dives of staying still a large fish came past on my right, moving the gun slightly towards him he swam away, I just was about to begin a chase that I know I would lose when he turned around and came back. My gun was in position already and time taken to make slight slow adjustments was less than that of the jack making another turn away. I pulled the trigger and swam at the fish quickly landing a great fish on a great gun.




Later I stupidly took the rig line off, and dove down again at a different spot. Holding on to what looked to be the transmission of a large insurance pay out I sat and patiently waited still



Those moments when I realized what happened were absolutely horrific, seeing my work that took me a month to create disappear into the murk at the speed of light left me utterly horrified. I was sure it was gone! You have never seen someone madly swim so fast, the camera was ripped back by the drag and was only holding on by a small piece in my hood, I didn’t care about that! Once I was thundering over the sandy bottom wondering which way to turn in the green haze the jack raced in from my left dragging my rig behind, grabbed the rig! The jack then made a dash for the car and in behind the wheel, I pulled my 400lb mono along with him out and surfaced into the light. Thankgod, thankgod, thankgod

Almost losing that gun made me realize just how stupid this whole gun building idea is, but I’m addicted
Such a great catch that day


lordyaussie is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 01-24-2014, 06:50 AM   #3
lordyaussie
Sam G
 
lordyaussie's Avatar
 
Join Date: Apr 2012
Posts: 151
Re: My 3rd Gun Build, Flame of Anor 105

Since I had 2 of the best eating fish I did as I saw Kirby do on spearboard, and I couldn’t agree more
Quote “And because we are having a party this weekend, I saved the fillets and ate the carcass...Highly recommended!”
Had a great tasting lunch after filleting and made use of the entire fish, nothing went to waste. Highly recommended indeed!




Jason and I swam out to kingscliff not long ago, there’s not much unless you swim out far but it was one of the best days out there. I was swimming along in 4m deep water after some snook/pike when I noticed a strange looking fish midwater. When I approached closer I realised it was a squid(I’ve never seen one in my area before so it was pretty special to me). I always spook fish if I am close to them and then dive to their level but still went ahead and dove down, upon coming horizontal it was still there and I began to close the distance trying to get the best shot, I really didn’t want to miss. Took the shot and black ink went everywhere, I was thrilled!
I’ve always found that if you Really want to get a fish your dive skill and accuracy is strongly enhanced! But I think I can really aim this gun well now when looking down the gun. God that calamari tasted good!




I’m almost tempted to go back to blunt pencil points on all my guns after this one, time and time again I would hit rocks, never sharpen the point and always catches every fish.

Please read on

My FlagShip gun
http://spearboard.com/showthread.php?t=169927

The WeekEnd Warrior
http://spearboard.com/showthread.php...=1#post1915990

Last edited by lordyaussie; 01-24-2014 at 08:20 AM.
lordyaussie is offline   Reply With Quote
Reply

Bookmarks

Tags
diy, gun build, home made, how to

Thread Tools
Display Modes Rate This Thread
Rate This Thread:

Posting Rules
You may not post new threads
You may not post replies
You may not post attachments
You may not edit your posts

BB code is On
Smilies are On
[IMG] code is On
HTML code is Off

Forum Jump


All times are GMT -5. The time now is 05:39 AM.


The World's Largest Spearfishing Diving Social Media Forum Powered by vBulletin® Version 3.8.1
Copyright ©2000 - 2024, Jelsoft Enterprises Ltd.
Copyright ©2002 - 2014 Spearboard.com