So, my brothers broke their barrel break yesterday. They had taken it apart and could not figure out how to put it back together again, so they were playing with the plungers and broke one of them. I am always circling them like a vulture, feeding on their debris, so this gun naturally fell into my hands.
Basically, this is a very heavily modded barrel break. I named my particular gun "Fujiwhara Special" because I'm out of creative juices, and it's hurricane season. (Google Fujiwhara effect if you wish to be enlightened.)
At the time of writing, I have completed part 1 of the mod process. This includes modification/reconstruction of the right barrel, as well as any modifications to the externals and the rest of the gun that are necessary. I plan on adding two more parts, with part 2 outlining the construction of the left barrel and part 3 describing the final exterior aesthetic modifications (including paint).
PART 1Here's a list of what I had to work with for part 1:
-Barrel break shell
-Barrel break internals, minus one plunger tube and minus one breech
-6" of 1/2" PVC
-2" of 5/8" Barricade grooved barrel material
-Two stock barrel break springs
-An SAE size 9 O-ring
-WD 40!!!!!!!
-The jam door from a Longstrike
I think that's it. You don't have to use these exact parts but feel free to use my mod as a template of sorts. You should be able to get a general idea of what to do, and then you can take that and run.
I am a big fan of getting maximum range out of blasters by making their breeches and barrels 100% airtight. For me, the Barrel Break is an awesome gun to mod because its breech is completely isolated from its cocking mechanism, so it's easy to make airtight. Basically, this mod lines the barrel with PVC, and allows the breech to make an airtight seal with the barrel. (I don't know if it's really a breech, but the part that the plunger tube slides over.)
To make the barrel 100% airtight, all I had to do was remove the moving parts (the dart door and alignment thingy) and slide some PVC in. The only hard part about this was that I had to do a heck of a lot of dremeling out the rear of the inside of the barrel, because the PVC didn't quite fit in there. (If you don't have a shaft extension attachment then you're out of luck.) I only did the right side in this pic:
Because the dart alignment mechanism was removed, the darts have to be loaded into the breech. Leaving the rest of the barrel as is, when you try to flip it back down it crushes the dart (only with stock darts; if you use slugs, you won't have to do this next step). So, I had to cut out a piece about 1" long and 1/2" wide from the bottom of the barrel. Now the part of the dart that sticks out from the breech won't get folded down by the barrel.
Also, I cut this part out so I can access the breech to load the darts.
In order for the breech to fit inside the barrel, you need to dremel out the inside of the PVC. You don't need to do this for a long part of it, just for the front inch or so. The breech won't need to slide in more than a half to quarter inch to get a good seal.
Because the draw of this gun is so pathetic, at the stock barrel length the darts will begin to create a vacuum inside the barrel when fired. To prevent this, the barrels need to be shortened. I cut mine down to right in front of the flare that links the two internal tube sections. (You'll notice later in the pics that I later drilled a few vacuum release holes and then filled them in; don't do this, it's unnecessary). I think that that is the optimal length of the barrel. You'll have to unscrew the slide to make the cut without damaging it.
Before:
After: (upside-down)
The PVC needs to be secured to the inside of the barrel. Cut it down to 4" long, and make sure that the side you dremeled out earlier is in the back. Then, make a couple wraps of e-tape around the front, near the tip. Remember that barricade barrel tubing I mentioned in the parts list? Cut that down to 1". Make a ring of hot glue around the tip of the PVC, and then push the orange barrel tubing over the tip until the tips of the two tubes are flush with each other. You might need a hammer.
Finally, make another couple wraps of e-tape around the PVC and then a couple more rings of hot glue, then hammer the whole thing into the barrel from the front. If you cut everything perfectly, the orange barricade barrel tubing will match the dimensions of the flare in the barrel, and the PVC will extend to the very tip of the long slot in the rear of the barrel where the dart alignment thingy used to be. (You won't be able to see the PVC if viewed from underneath through this slot. You should, however, be able to view it from the dart door slot.)
Lastly, take the dremel and sand down any nubs or anything on the tip of the breech. You might have to sand down the tip in a conical shape to get it to squeeze inside the PVC.
That's it for the breech and barrel. Now we can put the gun back together again, making sure that the O-ring has been replaced and that the springs are doubled (or if you have any better springs, go ahead and replace them.)
Feel free to remove any parts we don't need anymore, including the levers for the barrel release, the trigger catch, and other stuff.
You don't have to worry about the barrel release because the fit of the PVC around the breech is tight enough to keep it put. In fact, it's pretty hard to pull it off to reload.
This gun is a pain to put back together. I really hate messing with it for that reason. I put a couple parts in the wrong way, and had to take it apart again at least three times.
Anyways, now that it's all together it should look like this:
The short barrel makes it look kinda funny with the curved bottom front. It would look much better with more rectangular, longstrike-esque styling. To alleviate this aesthetic violation, I cut the longstrike jam door at an angle so that I could screw it over the gap in the front. It matches the straight line on the bottom of the rest of the gun, and makes the gun not look so weird. I screwed it in by the back side, so when the gun is primed, it just bends out of the way. Unfortunately, when I tried to take a pic of this, my iphone died. (For some odd reason, it erased my ipod too.)
Go ahead and sand the gun down at this point. I haven't decided what kind of a paint job I want for this thing yet, but it will be awesome. That's a given
I want to replace some of the plastic side panels at some point, to give it a "cleaner" styling.
I've also thought about using a high-powered DSLR flash module as a secondary weapon, kind of like a flash grenade. I don't know if that's legal, but I would do it on a rail anyways so it wouldn't be permanent.
School starts on Tuesday, and I haven't gotten any farther with this yet. I doubt I'll be on much more after this, but I might return just to finish this up. I hate to leave things unfinished. I I don't see ya, happy nerfing!EDIT: I've renamed the gun, and the thread, "Fujiwhara Special". I thought that "Double Spot Tail" was too long, corny, and lacked subtlety, so I changed it.