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Old 04-15-2021, 02:19 AM   #1
spearq8
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Salvimar Hero & Hero Storm test

Tested 3 Salvimar Hero guns ... 95, 115, 125. Gun design is really well made and looks like Salvimar did their homework. Looks like they sorted out the problems with their older Metal Roller Trigger. Also build quality seems very good as some of the older Salvimar would seem to fall apart very quickly. These guns are very solid. Super high handle and almost perfect handle shaping that pushes recoil into palm. They must have been watching my handle mod videos

Had problems with the 95cm gun and it took me some time to figure out what the problem was. Turns out their 7mm shafts are just terrible. I think it is just inconsistent heat treatment of the 17-4 SS or maybe just poor quality metal that is not uniform The 7mm shafts were whipping even with the short 130cm size and the very light load of the default setup. A good quality 7mm 17-4 PH should be able to handle shaft whip up to 165cm. It is a shame as the MIM shark fins and wrap around laser welding is very nice. Hopefully they will sort that out. I had wanted to test only default setups but with the 95 the default setup was not usable IMHO so I decided to trouble shoot the problem and come up with a good setup by simply changing the bands and shaft. Results were amazing as that really transformed the gun into a laser with tons of power that actually managed to pass the King Mackerel Penetration test at 5 meters! This showed that the gun design itself was very good as even when I pushed the band stretch very high the gun still shot straight and accurate. Obviously I could have also optimized the 115 and 125 guns ... maybe another day.

https://youtu.be/B0WsbyEGiYo

Last edited by spearq8; 05-04-2021 at 10:03 AM.
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Old 04-15-2021, 03:02 AM   #2
Mikel_24
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Re: Salvimar Hero & Hero Storm test

Great review!

Right now I am more into wood guns but if I ever come across one of these models in the second hand market... I might just get it to replace some older aluminium models I have lying arround.

Mikel
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Old 04-15-2021, 08:01 PM   #3
musubi
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Re: Salvimar Hero & Hero Storm test

Quote:
Originally Posted by spearq8 View Post
Tested 3 Salvimar Hero guns ... 95, 115, 125. Gun design is really well made and looks like Salvimar did their homework. Looks like they sorted out the problems with their older Metal Roller Trigger. Also build quality seems very good as some of the older Salvimar would seem to fall apart very quickly. These guns are very solid. Super high handle and almost perfect handle shaping that pushes recoil into palm. They must have been watching my handle mod videos

Had problems with the 95cm gun and it took me some time to figure out what the problem was. Turns out their 7mm shafts are just terrible. I think it is just inconsistent heat treatment of the 17-4 SS or maybe just poor quality metal that is not uniform The 7mm shafts were whipping even with the short 130cm size and the very light load of the default setup. A good quality 7mm 17-4 PH should be able to handle shaft whip up to 165cm. It is a shame as the MIM shark fins and wrap around laser welding is very nice. Hopefully they will sort that out. I had wanted to test only default setups but with the 95 the default setup was not usable IMHO so I decided to trouble shoot the problem and come up with a good setup by simply changing the bands and shaft. Results were amazing as that really transformed the gun into a laser with tons of power that actually managed to pass the King Mackerel Penetration test at 5 meters! This showed that the gun design itself was very good as even when I pushed the band stretch very high the gun still shot straight and accurate. Obviously I could have also optimized the 115 and 125 guns ... maybe another day.

https://youtu.be/B0WsbyEGiYo
Do you know if the 7mm shafts were bent?

Great review of the guns. Also helps to have consistent shooting like you do. For some reason I have issues target shooting vs shooting at a fish.
I've always like the way the Salvimar handles looked. I didn't realize they had roller triggers in them.
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Old 04-16-2021, 03:52 AM   #4
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Re: Salvimar Hero & Hero Storm test

Thanks so much for the review, I had my eyes on the hero for quite a long time, but of course - the current crisis put a spanner into the works. Would be interesting to know if you have had a bad batch of shafts and if Salvimar are planning a “recall”. After all I think a review on this board may convince a lot more people to pull the trigger on them. I’d be keen and now more so than ever, but getting 17-4ph shafts is close to impossible in my neck of the woods, so don’t know if I can commit to it just yet (looking at the 95 too).
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Old 04-17-2021, 02:32 AM   #5
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Re: Salvimar Hero & Hero Storm test

I don't know what's up with those 7mm shafts but they shot like crap. Out of the 20 shafts I tried 5 and they were all spraying shots all over the place ... not usable IMHO. Of course I checked them for warping on a granite table but they were perfectly straight. It took me a while to figure out the problem as in my experience 130cm shafts are too short to have shaft whip problems. I had thought maybe the line release was snagging the line and causing deviation ... or maybe the reel or muzzle was snagging line (both of which are very common problems). But it did turn out that the 7mm shafts were the problem. I had bought 20 of those shafts as with MIM shark fins and wrap around laser welding and full bore floppers ... they seemed perfect. Of course it is possible that this was just a bad batch that I got. My guess is that the heat treatment was not done uniformly or the metal was not uniform and thus with heat treatment it caused uneven metal structure. I have seen this with shafts that bend badly and then you repair them and make them perfectly straight ... they just don't shoot accurate anymore. The thing is that this type of problem usually only happens with longer shafts ... say 160cm or above. I never thought things could get so bad with 130cm ... especially @7mm which is considered a heavy shaft for 130cm. I am sure that if Salvimar would look into the problem it would get fixed immediately.
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Old 05-01-2021, 04:19 PM   #6
Markio
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Re: Salvimar Hero & Hero Storm test

It is amazing how the vast majority of big brands .can not get their shit together.

How much longer does the consumer have to endure with poorly assembled of the box set up when buying a speargun?

How hard is it to have a QA team that ensures the damm gun shoots close enough to the target.

Thanks god for costume gun makers, at least they work with you to get it right.

If I was you, I would write them a letter telling them how their product set up is
sub-standard and thru your consulting services you can help them to put a solid reliable productout of the box.

Enough with the rant.

Good job as usual.
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Old 05-06-2021, 01:24 AM   #7
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Re: Salvimar Hero & Hero Storm test

To be fair the Salvimar Hero guns are a huge advance in "Pipe Gun" design. I took it out spearfishing last week and out of 14 shots landed 14 fish. Sure it took a while to get used to ... the trigger was heavier than I would like ... and the lateral movement felt like I had a parachute at the end of my tip. All my initial shots where way behind the fish. But I was using the longer 115 gun and switching to the 95 made lateral movement much easier. It definitely would be a much better gun if Salvimar could figure out how to make the gun into a cuttlefish shaping and narrow the front end ... but I guess that would be dramatically more expensive. The only gun that has a cuttlefish shape in aluminium that I know of is the Sporasub One speargun ... that really has to be the best pipe gun on earth (except for the trigger of course).

Salvimar's big breakthrough IMHO is that they have back end flex and general flex completely under control. Even with shark fins all the way back ... there was zero flex ... so the shaft flies incredibly flat. To do that with a wood gun or even a pipe gun, you need to lay strips of CF and reinforce the mech pocket with CF. You then have to also reinforce the entire gun to prevent barrel flex. To prevent flex in the tube Salvimar actually added an "I" beam inside to dramatically reduce vertical flex !!! I know of not a single gun manufacturer that has thought of that! I mean with a 95 gun I was aiming dead on at fish at maximum range (around 5m) and hitting them with no shaft drop adjustment. It took me many shots just to get accustomed to aiming dead on with no shaft drop. We need to give them credit for that.

Sure they need to find a new source of 17-4PH metal rod for their shafts ... and for God's sake get on the small ID band wagon! Just changing bands to 14mm and 14.5mm made the gun easier to load, reduced recoil quite a bit ... and improved performance by at least 30 or 40%! The 95 gun after this simple change actually had more performance than the default 115 setup!

Here are some pix of the internals. Who else has an "I" beam inside their aluminium tube !!!

[IMG][/IMG]

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