Posts by popgun pete

Don Paul sadly passed on earlier this year. His son Dylan will have inherited his gear. There will be a period of grieving so not something you can pursue right now, but Dylan will have the parts that Don Paul obtained when the Sampson operation was wound up.

Thanks Dan for sharing these great memories of Don Paul!

I have learned that Don Paul Gaboury has passed on unexpectedly. Don Paul will be well known to long time members on this board and was a great spearfisherman who took on worthy prey. He fabricated his own guns and also had an extensive collection of old spearfishing equipment.

I remember many discussions with him on past spearfishing equipment and Don Paul knew all there was to know about spearguns and their rigging. His “Double Trouble” gun will be known to many, a specialist double shot speargun based on an extensive reworking of the Ultimate Double speargun grip with not much else retained from those guns, especially as Don Paul's gun floated after the shot.

Don Paul participated on a number of spearfishing forums, his passing will come as a shock.

My deep condolences to his family and friends, Don Paul was a one-off!

The International Underwater Spearfishing Association

Sad to report that Don Paul who contributed much on this forum, including this particular thread, has recently passed away. This will come as a shock to many divers around the world. Don Paul is a world record holder for Wahoo.

The International Underwater Spearfishing Association

He will be greatly missed. R.I.P.

Could have been dropped as a loaded pneumatic will go straight to the bottom. The depth may have been beyond the diver's capability to get it back.

That is an interesting way to effect a repair as polyethylene is a material that resists adhesives due to its wax-like surface. I think melt based repairs using the same material are the only way to go.

Try Don Paul, he had some Sampson gun parts.

The bungee is for use in the shooting line if it is anchored at the muzzle, however with a reel you don't use it. Stock a lot of guns don't come with a reel, so the basic supply is for the gun using a couple of line wraps and the bungee to tension the line. This tension keeps the spear held at the open muzzle via some hooks moulded in the muzzle or via metal prongs that do the same job.

Check out the description here https://www.divewarehouse.com.au/Cressi-Cherokee-Fast-Speargun.html

Another video of a shot in a pool where you can see how the cable pulley system works.

https://www.facebook.com/seawolfsub/videos/1507256709689023

The dividing pressure bulkhead used in the first version of the "Mirage". Left image is of the bulkhead's front face, right image is of the rear face that presses against the boss shown above. The ball valve of the pumping barrel inlet valve can be seen with its sealing "O" ring in the rear face of the bulkhead. That small "O" ring sits on the red plastic disc seen above. The small hole is the transfer port that the brass piston plug seals, if you look carefully you can see a step in it where the port diameter changes which is how Mares planned to make a lower power shot with the port not totally plugged thereby allowing air to leak past thus throttling the shot. This was not very successful in the earlier guns. The screwdriver blade slotted disc in the rear face is the screw plug for another ball valve buried in the bulkhead which faces the other way to the inlet valve. This valve only opens if the pressure differential in the gun is too high with the front tank at 40 bar plus and the rear pre-chamber at next to nothing which might then bust something, hence the ball valve here uses a much stronger biasing spring so that it only opens under very high pressure. This would only happen if you exceeded 5 strokes of the pumping barrel and had the gun at 40 bar start pressure which is its design limit.

A better look at the front boss showing the rectangular channel at the bottom and the cut-out where air flows transversely from the air transfer port in the bulkhead which is removed here. The brass piston plug is also removed, but you can see one of the metal guide sleeves for the power regulator shaft that moves the brass piston on the right. The top holes are for locating indexing pins on the bulkhead and the other holes are to lighten the plastic moulding. The red disc is the seat for the pumping barrel inlet valve which is a ball valve built into the bulkhead that sits directly in front of this red plastic disc with the gun assembled. The pumping barrel in turn sits in front of that valve.

I expect that you just thread the mono through one hole, whip it around the length a number of times and when you get to the bottom you run it through the other hole, so no knots as such. When the line is pulled the coils tighten up and then they stretch out taking the underlying band with it. Held tight at full stretch the mono might cut into the elastic rod, but as they are selling it I guess it works. Sort of like an inside out bungee, but there they use woven cord inside a thin rubber tube.

Well that is a bit different, I wonder how long it lasts.

It is a line tensioner according to their catalog, probably installed with a loop at each end.

How the pumping barrel operates to transfer gas in the gun from one section to another, the pumping barrel using its high compression ratio to force air into the front tank even as the gas enters the pumping barrel at ever lower pressures as it transfers from the back end of the gun with each operating stroke of the pump. This capability is conferred by the rubber sleeve valve which has a ring of exit holes very close to the rear end of the pumping barrel resulting in next to no dead space in the pumping barrel to front tank connection.

Spearguns with closed muzzles you can wrap the shooting line last, spearguns with open muzzles you have to wrap the shooting line first as the line wraps over the spear to secure it against a pin or tab which holds the spear against the barrel at the front end of the gun. If you don’t do this then the spear can fall off the gun and the spear tail may damage the gun's sear box or the spear tail itself due to the leverage applied by the length and weight of the shaft.

Taimen have revamped their website and there is now a new tool to assist in dismantling the gun for servicing.

Ключ Таймень профи

Залог удачной подводной охоты
taimen.pro

As the rod on the previous plastic version of the tool is no longer needed with the two part muzzle it has been replaced with a screwdriver tip.

This appears to be the Velair V3 version as the run of cables involves three strands on the moving pulley block. That means if the pulley block is pulled back one centimetre by the orange cable it will move the blue cable on the diagram by 3 centimetres, so you get a 3 to 1 on the cable drive instead of 2 to 1. However the energy of the gun is dictated by the power stroke on the orange cable and in the V3 version it is reduced in length compared to the previous model, so while a 3 times multiplier seems an improvement the gun's pneumatic engine now has less energy to work with. The speed of the pneumatic drive is not a constant as it is affected by the load it has to overcome, the same with rubber bands retraction velocity as the load slows them down if you substitute heavier shafts.

More information on the "Velair" here.

Velair – Seawolf Sub – Spearguns – Arbaletes – Rollergun

As the SMG MKII has two barrels you can identify a MAGNUM version by its much longer barrels which allows the two highest power Ramset cartridges to be used. More gas pressure can then be exploited to drive the spears using longer barrels and the reinforced section of barrel is also longer.