Hey everyone.
As a few of you know last summer I built my first speargun and it turned out amazing. It is a 55" enclosed track with Neptonics hardware and a Tinman grip. It was a great experience and I really enjoyed building it. Shortly after finishing the gun I told myself I wouldnt build another one for a long time but only a few months later I had the itch.
I started thinking about a design for a new gun. Thinking about the things I liked, didnt like, what worked well etc. I also started comparing what I built to the other custom and production guns on the market. To make a long story short I wanted to build another gun. The thing is I dont have a good justification for another to finance another build but I was wondering if it would be possible to build a couple and possibly sell one or two to cover the cost of one for me. I know I have no reputation and I know there are many custom gun builders out there that make excellent guns so my biggest hurdle is why would anyone trust what I make.
Here is an overview of what I would like to build and why I think it is different and or better than what it available.
From what I have seen there are 5 main types of spearguns, pipe guns, wooden ("euro" and "american"), hybrids, and mid-handles. There are other variations of these and different classifications but these are what I consider the basics. Now, I have not seen a single "custom" pipe gun. Probably because there isnt much that can be done and its much cheaper to buy a mass produced one. What I do see a lot of is wooden guns and most of these are very big and fairly bulky. They often use multiple types of exotic wood and can be very stylized and artistic. The other common custom gun is the hybrid, with a carbon or more recently titanium barrel and a bulky back section. The goal of the hybrid is to combine some of the characteristics of the wood guns with those of the pipe gun. This is the classification of gun that my design most readily fits into, however it is unlike any of the conventional hybrids on the market.
The first speargun I shot was a Riffe comp 2, the first gun I bought was a Riffe Euro 90x. What I like about the Riffe euro series is how well it tracks, how well they are made and their function first design. My first design goal was to have a thin gun. I wanted the handling characteristics of a pipe gun. There are a couple limitations that had to be overcome. First, was stiffness. One of the qualms with the longer Riffe euros is how much they flex. In order to keep my design rigid enough I decided to incorporate a carbon fiber stringer. The carbon will make the gun stiff enough to support multiple bands and prevent the gun from flexing. Now carbon fiber is considered light weight when compared to steel but underwater it is still heavy. In a pipe gun this is overcome by sealing the barrel but Im not making a barrel so I needed enough wood to float the carbon as well as all the hardware. The other limitation was the height of available trigger mechanisms. The Neptonics mech that I plan to use has a height of 1". After playing with the buoyancy numbers I came to a minimum height of 1.125" and a width of 1.6" without having to create an air cavity. When you compare this to a Riffe euro you will find this is slightly smaller in both dimensions and because of the carbon fiber it will be significantly stiffer.
Now for the fun part. I like a simple shaped gun that Im not worried to shoot daily. Some of the more elaborate custom guns look more at home in a display case than in the water. Here is a picture of a cross section of the gun. The red has is the carbon fiber and the yellow has is wood. You will notice in the design that there is room to have either a deep open track or an enclosed track depending on your preference.
There were a couple of thoughts on wood choice. The most common being teak. I wanted to add a little flare and ran across a type of wood called curly maple. Here is an idea what it looks like.
The stripes reminded me of three specific fish. A tiger shark, a wahoo and a kingfish. I want to stain the wood gray so that it it would look similar to the shark pattern. I think this in combination with all black neptonics hardware would look really nice. As for the finish to protect the wood and because of the carbon fiber I plan on using a clear epoxy.
I think this design will provide excellent mobility durability and with a little shaping will look really nice. It is capable of supporting 2-3 16mm bands and if someone was particularly interested in a very long gun with extreme range I could bump the height a bit and add more carbon fiber, use an enclosed track and support 4 or more bands. The limitation on the band number is more of a product of excessive recoil. The design is very strong but because of the lack of mass a lot of bands will put a lot of force on the shooter.
Now for any of you still reading, Im trying to figure out what lengths would be most likely to sell. Im also interested in any feedback anyone is willing to give on the design, appearance, marketability or even simple encouragement.
Thanks for your time.
Here is a link to my first build if anyone was interested in the results: