Posts by metelin

beautiful lines, love the paint.

have you put it in the water how's the balance?

Quote from fishhead

where do I find a 1" ball mill bit?

here you go Ball End Router Bits by Amana Tool

cant help with the wrapping question but i've been making guns in that style for years using both male and female handles.

for male versions like the demka, cressi, ect.. i use the same method i described in installing a carbon barrel into wood for hybrids http://spearfishing.world/spea…1298-how-make-hybrid.html. most male handles have a 1'' od so i use a 1'' ball mill and cut about 2'' into the wood, i then cap the .5'' shank cut with another piece of wood and glue the handle in place. i leave around .25'' of wood around the sides and bottom of the handle and dont use any screws. using this method assures the handle and the track line up because i center the fence of the router table to make both the track cut and to cut the pocket for the handle. after the glue dries i shape the end of the barrel so it blends in with the the handle assuring that i leave enough wood around it to avoid any problems, so far ive had no problems with cracks.

for female handles like the beauchat, rabitec, ect.. i simply use the router and cut a square peg into the barrel at the desired hight and depth and round it off using a chisel. again, this assures the handle is placed in the exact center of the barrel and the track lines up as long as its cut in the center.

for odd shape handles like the beauchat pictured above i would use the male method and shape it to match the handle by hand or would simply use the round version of the beauchat instead and again, leave enough material around the handle to assure wont break.

hope this helps.

this is becoming very common lately 3 divers killed over weekend off N. Calif. coast - SFGate. sorry to have to pass this along but after the news of a missing diver in indo i think we need to pause and think.

kalos ton thanasi

i was wondering how they harvest farmed tunas, it's no different from a slaughter house and i suppose the meat is better since they don't produce lactic acid (i think thats what they call it) from fighting too much.
sashimi anyone?

red balau? really? thats decking material.

what happened to sea-snipper innovation? looks like a abellan imitation to me.

Quote from Trace

He does some nice work.

no doubt, i wonder if he works from memory?:D

very nice work!!! i like the use of what i assume is either delrin or uhmw to keep weight down in the front. the rollers look to be a good size for the application (do you have a link or any info on them?) and the rest of the gun looks very well made.

rollers can get really complex and they go against my "keep it simple" principal but i also like to tinker with things so i cant help myself.

what don is suggesting is staggering the rollers to keep the rubber from rubbing against each other but that does make the muzzle really wide. i have been thinking of doing an inverted double roller like the one in the pic, as you can see the advantage of this design is, the mass is in the rear of the gun and the muzzle can be made thinner. it really kills my "keep it simple" theory but like i said, i cant help myself.

Quote from dustyyoungblood

Steve, Thanks so much. That means a great deal coming from you.

Slot + Band Elevator:
You know, this is a subject I have been pondering for some time. And with a wood gun, it is really really silly to argue against a typical band slot. The slot is king, no doubt. I will use the slot in every single gun up to 4 bands. But 5-6 bands.... any gun I have seen in this range with a slot is just a big messy pile of rubber all fighting for the same space.

Power, has anyone made power measurements on a barrel with a band elevator compared to one with no elevator? Wild guess..... power is lost with an elevator introduced. Doesn't the elevator make friction on the bands, and reduce stretch? The way to make an elevator would be to have a rolling member on the elevator. But how wants to load up a rolling member in slat water with 5-6 bands? I don't.

"the other observation i have is the amount of wood above the handle, a friends sea-sniper cracked in that area on the last trip i went on." Well that is scary. Did it come apart or just crack? I've got a much larger cross section in that area than a Sea Sniper. I'll study that some more.

Thanks Steve!!!!!! :thumbsup2:

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everything is a compromise, yes the bands may bunch up in front of the muzzle when loaded but it sure is a pain trying to figure out which one of the bands goes with another when there are 10 to 12 bands dangling in the from of the gun but thats just me, try it and if it works for you great.

a crack developed over the handle of the gun, i'm not sure how it happened but remember that particular gun has 2 titanium pipes reinforcing the wood so....

someone there knows his way around the shop, very nice work.

after making all sorts of different guns i come back to the most basic things like balance, shape and simplicity. the band alignment thing gets people to do all sort of things, yours is very unique, but you give up power with any design that cuts length off the bands. think about it, a 110cm gun is more powerful than a 100cm, by cutting the bands in order to put them on a muzzle so they're aligned with the shaft you lose several inches of rubber that you would normally have if they were going through a regular band slot. sure with five bands you have some power to spare but.... imho, a better choice would have been a simple band elevator and a band slot.

the other observation i have is the amount of wood above the handle, a friends sea-sniper cracked in that area on the last trip i went on.

no nitpicking, just constructive criticism based on my little experience.

again, very nice work and it's great to see something new.

Quote from John Hanson

An interesting topic to say the least.

Having had several years of experience shooting multiple configurations of these guns, I would have to say that they are way more "specialized" then many are led to believe.

My primary hunting conditions with these guns were off the Southern California coast. Personally I found that the these were the ideal conditions for a hybrid gun in the shorter lengths (42-52.5") where dirty water combined with limited visibility and heavy cover demanded a fast swinging gun.

Fast swing can be a relative term though. I feel that manuverabilty is a much better term. Obviously the longer the gun and the pivot point on the gun (the handle) how the gun is handled, carried, aimed, etc. have a much bigger impact than a streamlined front end.

Most of these design aspects have much more to do with personal preference than what someone tells you that something should be.

My best advice to anyone considering a hybrid would be to spend some time hunting with one before commiting to having one custom built. This is the only true measure of how they will perform.

In an overall analysis of a hybrid, my biggest critique of them would be, that unless they are finely tuned, the balance of the gun is almost impossible to make "just right". Any changes made to the gun will affect the characteristics in some way, shape or fashion.

Close shots are not affected so much as long-range precision shots. I couldn't hit the broadside of a barn with ANY hybrid I owned past 10-12' from the tip of the shaft. For longer range shots, I prefer a rear handled gun in wood or pipe that is perfectly balanced or very slightly nose heavy. Think of it in terms of trying to hit a target with a pistol at 100 yds vs. hitting the same target with a rifle. A difficult thing to do on a hybrid unless it has a short overall length with a mid-handle, making it easier to manage.

Just my dos centavos

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a thoughtful response from a man with plenty of experience.

the problem with daryls hybrid is the pipe he uses (.125" wt by 1'' od if memory serves me right). while it's really stiff, it's also really heavy and doesnt have enough air volume to hold the muzzle up in the water. this is especially noticeable with the gr version which doesnt have enough wood in the back to add lead so the gun is more balanced.

i think a better pipe would have been a thicker od and thinner wt for more air volume and less weight overall while providing enough stiffness, something the bicycle industry has been doing for years now.

my two drachmas although i dont hold 56 world records.

took the gun out this weekend after making a few changes for another try.

first thing i wanted to address was to make it easier to load, initially the band was really tight when loaded on the first stage and the only way to pull it was with a hooking device which made things difficult. i though of just making the band longer so it would hang over the muzzle but that would defeat the purpose of the roller gun by decreasing power at the end of the shot (the real advantage of a roller over conventional guns), i also though about adding another stage but i didn't have enough room in the wood. the last resort was the best solution, in keeping with the "keep it simple" approach, i added another loop to the wishbone which allows for extra length to the band and by simply going to the shorter loop, extra power.

i wanted this gun to replace my two band 90cm, i wanted a euro of about the same length with more power so i can take a calico and a wsb with the same gun in dirty water.

although there was nothing much to shoot this weekend i was able to swim around with it for a while and take a few practice shots. the gun felt nicely balanced, comfortable to load and easy to maneuver. it felt underpowered when i shot it but at the end of the shooting line i felt a noticeable tug, while this is not a real way to compare my old two band 90cm to it, i feel good enough with the power that im going to use it as my wsb gun and see what happens.

somewhere daryl is laughing all the way to the bank, pure marketing genius.

Quote from Don Paul

Thank you buddy, that means alot.
Than you will really like the next generation I'm building little by little.
I cast the grips from tooling clay I made a latex mold from. The barrel will be a Metal matrix composite tube made for a navy project that went south a few years ago.
Today I milled out some of the handle and pressed in my trigger pivot bush's, a lot more metal to remove.
Your the first to see this.

Cheers, Don

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love the handle don!!!!

Quote from Don Paul

PM your address for the Ti.

What bachelor party?

Cheers, Don

you know, strippers and booze.

thanks don, thats very generous of you.

congratulations on the impending nuptials, when and were's the bachelor party?

thanks for the kind words everybody.

i did get a chance to put the gun in the water yesterday and i can report it's still work in progress.

first the specs: the gun is 120cm in length (i'll use the metric system because i want to compare this gun to other euro models) from butt to muzzle. the band stretch is 100cm from the loading tab on the shaft to the top of the roller. the first stage adds 50cm from the bottom and the second adds another 20cm, for a total of 170cm. for those not into the metric system thats 67'' of total band pull, which is about what you get from a 72'' tuna gun, packed into a 47'' euro.

the tube is 40cm long, 2.54cm id and 2mm wall thickness. the wood is appr 5cm by 3cm at its widest point and tapers to meet the tube and the handle to about 3x3cm.

the muzzle and reel in the pics are from mvd in greece (apologies to our friend petros, i had no idea ). muzzle od matches the tube and it weighs about 130g. the reel was not used because it's too heavy at 180g.

a 114cm by 6.5mm shaft was used and the trigger is from niletec. the band is 16mm thick by 44.5cm long (times 2) and there is 2.5cm long wishbone on the bottom and another 7.6cm long on the top. the band is cut to 3.5 times stretch when loaded to the second stage and about 3 times on the first.

the handle is made from a piece of marine mahogany plywood core with epoxy paste molded to my hand and sanded smooth.

i normally like guns that are very slightly negative in the water and sink very slowly but completely flat with the shaft in. the roller muzzle is almost twice as heavy as others i used and i had to cut shaft overhang to get it to balance properly (see pics).

first impressions in the water were mixed. it took a while to get the thing loaded and i had to resort to using a hooking device (D ring from my float line) to get the wishbone away from the muzzle. to load the gun you first load the bottom of the band to the first stage (front line anchor), then load the top to the loading tab on shaft, finally, load the bottom to the second stage.

the power and shoot smoothness were impressive, after the first shot i only loaded the band on the first stage as it had more than enough power and i was exhausted by the second time.

once loaded, the gun felt nicely balanced and very easy to maneuver in the water with excellent power given the length.

this is my first attempt at making a roller so i need to adjust a few things. first, the band length and/or the length of the bottom wishbone needs to be adjusted (made longer). second, it would have been helpful if i had another stage or placed the first so the band didn't have as much tension when loaded on the bottom in order to make it easier to load on the top.

overall, i hope someone makes a lighter muzzle maybe using titanium instead of ss so the balance is easier and more time spent in the water getting use to loading. i also think a roller is a good choice in certain situations. it would make a great travel gun, a good gun to use in tight situations (kelp) and in high current because of it's size to power ratio. aslo, it's a natural fit for a hybrid euro because it allows the front to be made thin for easy maneuvrability (given the balance problems are worked out).

like i said, work in progress but lots of potential.

haven't posted much lately, but with spring coming up and the new/old house almost done i had an itch to try something new. bought the roller muzzle and reel from greece last summer and i planned to try a roller so i though why not a hybrid roller. going out to try it tomorrow but i wanted to give you guys a sneak peak. i know dan doesnt like hybrids but i wonder what he thinks about this one?

plenty of pismos in oxnard