That spring gun in the timber box, according to the guy who was hoping to retire for life by selling it on eBay, is a "Siama Roma" speargun. It is a forward latching speargun using a coil tension spring, not a compression spring. To load you stretch the spring coils out (the spring is anchored at the muzzle end) as the spear tail drives the aft end of the spring rearwards in the gun. If you push it far enough in you can add the extension tube to make the gun a full length mid-handle gun, or you just use the front half as a rear handle gun, but less power of course as less stretch used on the spring. The spear has a couple of sections to lengthen it or shorten it as the case may be. The spear has multiple notches in the front end to allow the spear to latch at various distances into the gun, thus varying the power of the shot, by changing the length of spear still projecting from the muzzle and conversely extending into the gun. When you shoot you need to pull the trigger right down so that the sear tooth does not rattle on the notches moving forwards from behind it. Steel barrel tubes are used to maintain strength as there are so many anti-suction ports an aluminum barrel tube would be too weak. The number of port holes have gone completely overboard, but the grip handle has been blind drilled grip "scales" to match. The gun looks nice, but is actually a weak design as the spear retention notches weaken the shaft at the worst possible place, right behind the spear tip.
Posts by popgun pete
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Blue grease is faster..:D and John says hi.
I have a Cernia Velox.Cheers, Don
The lithium based grease, being creamy white, seems to be less messy on your wetsuit and clothes. The black stuff on my hand is molybdenum disulphide grease, I cannot wait to get rid of all traces of it on the guns. To take those photos I must have washed my hands four times and even then I got more of it on my hands.
Any chance of a photo of the "Cernia Velox", particularly the sliding handgrip section?
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Here is a photo of the "Saetta" in its canvas carry case. The carry case, or bag, is in two section held together by a buckle and leather strap backed onto the top carry strap. A small canvas pocket alongside the mid-handle handgrip holds tips, line slides and "charging pin" for transport so that they do not rattle around with the gun and the two spears inside the case. A "charging pin" is the predecessor of the hand loader to cock the gun, it passes through a transverse hole just behind the spear tip. Another name for it is "loading bar", they all do the same job in helping you to ram the shaft down the barrel against the resistance of the long coil spring (or springs). Powerful spring guns 2 meters in length were real "test your strength here" weapons, such as the Cressi-Sub "Cernia". Some say "Cernia" rhymes well with hernia! Anyway to spare the spearfisherman somewhat there was also the "Cernia Velox" with two foot pegs and two-stage loading, you pushed the spear down the muzzle as usual, reversed and flipped the gun with handgrip upwards and put both fins (or feet) on the fold-out pegs just rear of the muzzle. The handgrip was then hauled back with both hands on it to fully charge the gun for shooting. The sliding handgrip could lock in two positions on the barrel. I have only seen a "Cernia Velox" in photos with guys wearing just a dive mask, snorkel (maybe) and fins with a sheath knife on a webbing canvas belt and a pair of swim trunks and that is it. How soft are we today!
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sick post...thanks a lot for shainrg this gem of knowledge
Well I figured that if I did not write it down then such knowledge will eventually disappear with the passage of time. Of course preventative maintenance meant keeping your spring gun in its canvas cover to avoid it picking up any dirt, dust or sand and leaving traces of grease on other surfaces which it rested against when not diving.
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Pete your knowledge of speargun history is insane...
Well I guess you would be crazy cleaning your gun off with petrol, but it evaporates with no residue, unlike degreaser which must be washed off with water and everything then has to dry off. Also degreaser put down the barrel may take grease out of the trigger mechanism as it flows down the barrel. The gun will stink even after being hosed off, but on the plus side you can stick a garden hose in the barrel tube and blast everything out with water with the tap turned on full. Then the gun has to dry off. As to using petrol; kids, don't try this at home or you will be in the burns ward before you know it. Non-smokers only if you use volatile and flammable solvents to clean your spring gun.
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What a great post Peter, I have only changed the grease in one Cressi Cernia , make one happy for Air guns and bands.:D
Cheers, Don
Here is what you get even when the spring is "clean"!
A photo of the "Saetta" handle, this is an early one with dual springs, one inside the other, the outer spring is a larger diameter than the inner one. After a while it produces less power as the springs rub on each other, so eventually it was back to single springs in each gun.
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Few today would have seen or even used a spring powered speargun, but in the early days of spearfishing as a recreational activity they were all the rage and the latest thing for the then new fad of going underwater and emerging, to the astonishment of beachgoers, with a fish.
Ever since Alexandre Kramarenko (a Russian émigré) and his partner Charles Henry Wilen (an American) introduced their compression spring gun in 1937/1938 the underwater world has come under assault by a growing variety of spearguns wielded by Europeans who had thought that this activity was only something practiced previously "in the islands" with simple spears. In the USA and elsewhere the growing availability of dive masks and fins also brought about a desire to shoot fish in their own environment and everyone scrambled to find bigger and better underwater hunting solutions.
The spring gun held sway as the most powerful of underwater arms until band rubber ceased being scraps scrounged from inner tire tubes and other forms of rubber goods pressed into service as "make-do" power bands.
The key to maintaining shooting performance from a spring gun was to maintain its efficiency, which it does not have much of to start with. The enemy of tube confined sliding coil springs is friction, and friction in the barrel tube is what robs spring guns of their power as the spring coils always slide on the alloy tubing wall. To limit these frictional losses the springs are heavily greased which makes them a magnet for every sand particle within reach of the gun. When a spring is strongly compressed it buckles in a series of kinks and these kinks rub on the barrel as the spring expands back to its non-compressed length. Many people think spring gun propulsion springs are greased to stop them rusting, that is true, but it is also to lower the friction encountered with the spring moving against the inner wall of the barrel.
In order to maintain shooting performance the grease had to be replaced frequently and if the gun hit a sandy bottom it definitely needed changing as grease embedded with sand skyrockets friction levels inside the barrel. Cleaning was a post-dive chore with numerous rags, a tub of grease, pliers and associated tools for extracting the long springs from the gun.
Here is how you can do it today, perhaps a little easier than the pioneers did it. The fixing bolt that secures the spring in the gun is removed, then the trigger is pulled to lower the sear tooth to stop it impeding the spring's removal from the barrel as the coils pull past the sear tooth position. The removed greasy spring is wound in a circle inside a large diameter plastic container like that used for large cakes or pastry products such as a family sized pie. Then either degreaser fluid or petrol is added (ultra caution is needed with petrol) and swirled around in the plastic container which will pick up the grease and dissolve it allowing all foreign particles to fall off the spring to the bottom of the container. The spring is then fished out and hung on a nail driven into a fence post at an angle so that the spring droops in a long curve at the top when depending downwards from the nail. Any remaining particles are wiped off with a clean (but soon to be dirty) rag and WD 40 is then sprayed on the spring and under gravity spirals its way down the spring to cover all the coils. Do this on a hot day and things will evaporate and dry off much sooner, plus you can pitch the cleaning solution on the ground (out of the plastic container) and it will evaporate in no time.
Now place a small wad of rag around a wooden dowel which is attached by a long nylon cord with a toggle at its front end and use this as a "pull through" device to clean out the inner barrel tube. A shot of petrol or degreaser ran down the inside of the barrel tube first will soften the deposits as you want them coming out without too much resistance on the movement of the rag covered dowel. You want the rag to have some loose clearance around the dowel when inside the barrel bore, so the dowel cannot be too fat in diameter or sand particles will scratch the inner barrel surface as the rag can then behave like sand paper and will be too tight to move along the barrel. A couple of passes with the "pull through" are needed with visual inspection looking along the bore of the tube with sunlight lighting up the appropriately angled barrel to see how clean it is all looking.
The springs can be regreased by painting them with warmed up grease with a small paint brush, or putting grease in your palm, or on a clean rag and pulling the spring through your closed hand, turning the spring coils as you go. At the end of this procedure you and the spring will be covered in grease. Long springs seem to have a mind of their own, so be prepared for the spring whipping around unexpectedly and administering grease to your clothing and anything else that it happens to touch.
Lastly feed the freshly greased spring back into the gun and refasten the attachment pin and then wipe the gun down to get rid of extra grease that has wiped off the spring exterior and is emerging out of the numerous anti-suction ports that pepper the barrel.
At the conclusion of this procedure you will realize why no one in their right mind still uses a spring gun, unless of course they love playing with mechanical items like old guns and can feel empathy with the generations long before who faced this greasy chore as an inevitable necessity.
Unfortunately even with the best spring guns power out is much less than power going in, especially as the internal bore of the barrel gradually roughs up and the springs get progressively rusty if you shirk on the regular and essential maintenance.
I have written this as a result of my recent greasy encounter with the springs from my Cressi-Sub "Saetta Extra" (the blue anodized tube was extra) and a "Freshman" spring gun from Japan. Needless to say I will not be shooting these guns any time soon! I had put this task off for months and figured that it was now or never, plus it was a hot and still day, you do not want dust or grit blowing around when dealing with greasy metal objects like long coil springs.
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have a question ......
The speargun " SEA HORNET AUTOMATIC CO2 " existed????????????
CYRIL
It was the Sea Hornet "Rocket", I have only seen one and that was hanging on the wall of a dive shop. Both shop and gun are long gone, it was a decade or more ago.
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Well here is that post:
"The lever operated rollergun dates back to 1949, that is when the French patent for the "Hurricane" brand rollergun was taken out in its original angled handgrip form (which looked something like a Sampson speargun handgrip). Later a guy in the USA (Norbert Ebeling) patented a dual band rollergun as a powerful short gun for hunting catfish in limited visibility waters, that was in 1958, the US patent was published in 1962. Ebeling's gun looked like a reworked Champion Arbalete with a new twin roller muzzle and the original screw-in band muzzle bored out, reversed and inverted and placed further back on the barrel acting as a band anchor plate. Jack Prodanovich also built a single band rollergun with a complex band run configuration, you can see it on John Warren's web-site. In more recent times Marc-Antoine Berry has patented his own version of the rollergun using the two-stage loading technique. The gun has a deep wooden body and large diameter pulleys or rollers at the muzzle, it was written up in "Apnea" magazine in May/June 2004. Seatec manufactures a rollergun in the eurogun format with relatively small rollers and a compact muzzle (to minimise side drag), but it shares many parts with a conventional line of euroguns in the Seatec range, so was no doubt a commercial proposition.
The KISS principle has been the rollergun's nemesis, as Phil says it is really only useful for a short and powerful for its size band gun. That is also the territory where the pneumatic speargun excels, i.e. short and powerful, so rollerguns have not really found a niche for themselves except in the hands of home-builders.
The longer shaft on a conventional band gun may seem a waste with the non-powered barrel length, but it provides a greater shaft mass for a given shaft diameter. A longer shaft also has a more stabilised flight, so the shorter shaft length in a powerful rollergun loses its appeal, plus a longer gun is just that much closer in terms of shaft flight distance to the target on long range shots and is easier to aim."
You must have been "persona grata" back then Don because the next post after this one was from you!
Anyway I don't know why they banned you, in fact I was not aware that you were no longer there.
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A signed Norbert Ebeling Single band roller gun.
Cheers, Don
Never actually seen one of these before, but I wrote about it a few years ago here: School me on roller guns - Page 2 - Spearboard Spearfishing Community.
I had thought the conversion was done on the Champion "Arbalete" gun, but instead it is the Beuchat which was sold in the USA by Healthways. Same type of gun, but single-piece trigger in the Beuchat and two-piece, pull down sear lever type in the Champion. The Champion gun was sold in the USA by U.S. Divers and Voit, plus a few minor companies sold it as well. At one stage virtually every diver owned one of these Arbalete's as they were simple and effective on reef fish. Ebeling wanted a dirty water shooter with a bit of grunt for big catfish in lakes.
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This is Dante Draganti's US patent drawing which shows that the final gun marketed by Pirelli as the "Aries" did not undergo many changes from the layout as originally proposed. You can see the missing rubber line clip fitting that encircled the butt section (part number 19). The gun is not absolutely airtight, hence the built-in pump feature to top it up.
The Italian priority date for the Pirelli "Aries" gun patent is September 22 1956, hence the gun may have been produced there not long afterwards, but as you can see February 2 1960 is the US patent publication date. -
That is a cool gun Peter. It used to hang on the right side wall of Jack's workshop, I have a hour of footage I shot of Jack in his element. I'm waiting to get a larger computer to edit it, will see if your gun is in the footage.
Cheers, Don
Thanks Don, John sent me a photo of him and Jack with the gun before it was sent, but it is on my old computer which is now kaput. Here are some more images, the gun has original everything, shooting line and speartip. The only thing missing is the rear rubber passive line clip that had disintegrated over the decades. I have fixed the gun so it can now be pressurized, but it is not the sort of gun to shoot anything decent with, note the small floppers on the tip. One line wrap only, plus the butt is nearly in your face when aiming along the barrel.
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I have this photo of a Pirelli "Aries" to contribute. This pneumatic gun is 1960 vintage and invented by Draganti, I found his patent long before I received the gun. The "Aries" was owned by a true legend, Jack Prodanovich, he was given lots of guns to try out by well-wishers, but he never used this one, nor do I imagine did anyone else as one "O" ring was in the incorrect position and the wrong size "O" ring was fitted to the piston (it only uses the one piston seal). Jack gave his entire "other people's guns" collection to Ron Mullins for the instruction of other divers via Ron's spearfishing museum and web-site. This "Aries" gun he gave to me via John Warren after I sent Jack some historical material and worked up a mathematical analysis of his "balanced sear" speargun (the one with the jiggle pin safety in the tip of the trigger). Jack figured it all out empirically while I merely confirmed why it worked as it did, I was not telling him anything that he did not already know. The "Aries" uses the inner barrel as a hand pump, the spear has a socket on one end to operate the rear inner valve "switch" from pump to shooting action and a female thread on the other end to screw it onto the threaded piston nose for pumping. The pump breathes air by the single "O" ring sliding back and forth on a tapered cone seat on the piston, forward it seals and back it loosens up and air can flow around it. The "Aries" is an amalgam of strange ideas, but not really practical, these old guns disappear for good reason as later and better guns just stuck to the "plain vanilla" solutions. The "Sten" and its pneumatic speargun clones got rid of everything that went before as that gun and subsequent design offshoots are built around the inner barrel tube as a structural element and can be made to float like a cork once discharged. The "Sten" gun has been around since the late sixties and has had very little changed in all that time. My old "Sten" uses a cup seal on the power regulator piston, once it tore that was it and I retired it. (photos to follow, once I have worked out how!)
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I received an invite to come here a few days ago. Anyway I began spearfishing when I was about nineteen after years of just snorkeling around. I started off with a handspear and used it for many years, but soon got into guns. My interstate dive buddy made me a band gun, I met him out on a reef and we have been friends ever since, that was about forty years ago. We teamed up each year to go spearfishing in his home state, New South Wales in Australia, a great place to shoot fish of all shapes and sizes. I live in Melbourne, Victoria, but know quite a few divers in the States (California) and have kept in touch with the US scene over the years thanks to the Internet. I made a study of all speargun types about 10 years ago by reading all the US and foreign language speargun patents, particularly the French ones as in the early days that was where the action was at. I was going to write a book, but thought of all the remainder copies after selling a handful, so I decided to put some of it up on the web in various forums like this one.
