30-Minute Hopper Clip

Sup guys,

I have put together a super easy hopper that uses a CPVC barrel--you can put this together in less than half and hour! The best thing about this hopper build is that you don't have to hammer a piece of CPVC into a piece of PVC.

Hoppered Big Blast Mod!

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The Great Foam Review!

When it comes to darts and barrels, I'm a freak. Your accuracy is completely dependent on them, so I take great care in selecting my materials and proportions. This post will go over the various types of foam I have come across and used in my time--I have rated 5 different kinds of foam by their quality. Let's check out T da B's rankings!

I Came

I am in no way affiliated with NerfOmania, but I am definitely a fan. When I saw this in the homemades section of Nerfhaven, I nearly blew my wad.

That's a RainbowPump 3.0 with Bloodwood handle and pump grip and a mahogany finish. Damn that's sexy!

My Stefans

Hi guys,

Some of you may be wondering what kind of ammo I put into my blasters. 95% of my blasters fire Stefans, or homemade darts. Stock Nerf darts just cannot cut it when it comes to accuracy and range. Occasionally you might get a streamline dart that goes straight, but it's pretty rare. It didn't take long for me to make the switch over to Stefans, and I can safely say that I'm never going back! Anyways, Here are the Stefans I am currently using:

Grey -- crappy online foam that I got off of Loghomestore.com or something like that. It fits 1/2'' CPVC absolutely perfectly, and I have a ton of CPVC stashed away.
Red -- Mod Man's foam that I got through Nerfhaven. It is a little fatter than the grey foam and fits 9/16'' brass loosely and my polyethylene tubing perfectly.
White -- Swift foam that I payed an arm and a leg for on ebay. It is the best foam I've ever used and fits 9/16'' brass perfectly. I stretched mine to be about the same diameter as the red foam.

All my Stefans are now 1.25'' in length, since my 1.5'' darts were having trouble feeding around the bend in a hopper clip. I will not go any shorter, as the accuracy really starts to suffer, especially with higher-powered blasters. I am currently seeking dense FBR with a smaller diameter, like my grey foam. I bought something off a guy on Nerfhaven the other day and he sent me 3 silicone-tipped Stefans that blew my mind with their quality and resilience. They still have yet to die after being fired out of several powerful blasters at cardboard and walls. I'll have to add a new mission to my Personal Quests.

T da B, why is my blaster smoking?

The story:
Anyone that has fired a highly pressurized air gun might have noticed an interesting phenomena--a strange mist emanates out the end of your barrel after each shot! Nubs in the forums refer to it as "smoke," but I can assure you that this is not the case. Smoke requires burning, dumbass. Smarter Nerfers will point out that what exits the barrel is actually water vapor. Now you might be wondering why you see this, so here's my explanation.

The science:
Some of you may recall a little something from Physics, or maybe Chemistry as well: the Ideal Gas Law. In case you forgot, here it is:

PV = nRT

P = Pressure
V = Volume
n = # of moles
R = gas constant = 8.314 J/(K*m)
T = Temperature

Another concept we will need to understand for this explanation is dew point. Here is a chart taken from Wikipedia:

The dew point is the temperature below which gaseous water condenses to liquid water. It depends on both temperature and humidity. Unless the humidity is 100%, the dew point is always below the ambient air temperature.

Explanation:
When you pump up your blaster, you are increasing the pressure in your air tank. The more pumps, the higher the pressure. When you pull the trigger, the air rushes out the barrel (path of least resistance) and transitions very quickly from high to low pressure. From the Ideal Gas Law, we know that

P = (nRT)/V

We can now easily see that 

P ∝ T

Pressure is proportional to temperature, so when one increases the other also increases and vice versa. When the pressure drops rapidly, you get a corresponding temperature drop. If the pressure drop and corresponding temperature drop are big enough, the water vapor in the compressed air cools down below the dew point and condenses, allowing us to see it in the same way we see clouds in the sky.

T da B's Armory

Hey guys,

I know some of you might be itching to know what kind of goods I'm holding onto, so here's a little teaser for you all :)

Oh yeah, and there's a PAS in the BBB box. Most of these are stock, since most of my modded blasters end up on my cubicle wall at work. There honestly aren't too many other blasters out there that I really care about--many of them are either too rare or too expensive to even make them worth the money and effort in obtaining. I'll be finishing off my stock Nerf blasters in a year or so and moving onto homemades and inventing my own components.

New acquisition!

Okay, okay--I know what you're going to say: "T da B, why the hell did you get a reverse plunger blaster?" Fellas, there's no need to worry. First of all, I got this thing for free. I just love it when people break their blasters and can't fix them. This specimen has its internals pretty jammed up, and the priming bar won't move any more. No sweat off my balls there! I'll be completely gutting this bad boy and putting in my first homemade plunger and plunger tube assembly. I guess you could say I was inspired by this post in the homemades section of Nerfhaven. So damn beautiful.

People are always talking about how great the Crossbow and Vortex Tornado are, but what is it that makes them so "great?" It's the space inside them that can be used to house a massive plunger tube. Well, what would make a good candidate for housing a long plunger tube? If only I could find a nice LONG shell, maybe off one of the LONGEST Nerf blasters of all time? Yeah, that's right--and it fits the shell like a glove. Prepare for a 1.5'' polycarbonate plunger tube and a rainbow catch some time soon!

Panther Mod!

What's this, T da B--another blaster that isn't made by Nerf? That's right! Another sleeper coming out of Buzz Bee--it's the Panther! I've heard so many good things about this little guy that I just had to pick one up. They are dirt cheap, dead simple, and perform marvelously. There really haven't been too many air guns released in recent times, so I was excited to find out about this little pump-action gem. The one thing I don't like about the blaster is the handle; you literally hold it with 2 fingers! Baby handle aside, this thing is still a lot of fun to use. As usual, my write-up was based upon the work of others, namely makeitgo's write-up and NerfOmania's Youtube video. This mod would be ideal for people just getting started with Nerf modding, since it's really easy and takes less than a day to complete. Let's get down to business!

Mcmaster springs and computer programming

Hi everyone,

I wanted to transfer over a post I made on Nerfhaven over to this blog because I thought it would be invaluable in designing spring-powered blasters around Mcmaster springs. Warning: things are about to get nerdy up in this bitch. This post deals with 4 of the most popular cut-to-length compression springs off of Mcmaster.com. If you are unfamiliar with Mcmaster.com, it is an American website that sells every part on the planet. I buy a ton of materials off of their website, including springs, PETG, pneumatic parts, adhesives, and more. Their spring collection is enormous, and there are many to choose from in many different styles--it can be a very large and daunting place at first The most common section for Nerf springs is the cut-to-length compression springs section. There are many attributes to springs, not limited to their free length, wire diameter, coils per inch, and rate constant. Many people don't have the intelligence or patience to try and understand completely the theory behind springs, so I have used my computer programming skills to put together a "cheat sheet" to be used in designing springers. I've always wondered how I could figure out an exact spring length to get me a desired spring load, and I've finally done it. Enjoy!