Tuesday, January 3, 2012

Digging into the Spectre Barrel

Mod Night!  Fun times!
So I had a nice Mod Night with two friends checking out the Rayven and some laser tag stuff we're working on.  From a recasing of a Super Soaker Thunderstorm to my Pulse Rifle getting a new Screen-accurate stock, we had a lot to work with.  We thought we might be able to utilize the Spectre's Barrel Extension as a long-range lens upgrade for other Recased Nerf Blasters we've built that can use them.

We started digging into the Spectre's Barrel Extension and immediately ran into a problem... there's NO easy way to take this thing apart.  After trying for half an hour to get it apart with flathead screwdrivers and pliers, we decided to hack into the front with a Dremel.  The problems just continued, as we discovered that this little useless accessory has more engineering in it than a combustion engine.  While I expect that we'll be able to make use of them, I was just floored by how much trouble 3 avid recasing pros had with that lil guy!

By our diagnosis, the Barrel Extension is mainly held together by the yellow middle section which is actually two parts glued together.  We found the seam on it but were unable to break it open.  The Orange tip and Gray connector are secured on the inside of those two yellow halves with the barrel running between them.


You can see the seams
finally starting to pop after
pressure!
Final verdict?  Don't expect to get this fella apart without breaking it!  We're planning on still using them for lens upgrades for our recasings, but if you're looking just to do something simple with it, you'll find more work than you had bargained for!

Eventually we'll get a lens in there and hook it up to one of our Laser Tag blasters.  For now, we're still getting over how much production went into these little useless hunks of plastic!

3 comments:

  1. wow. it's like trying to get inside a jolt. It upsets me whenever nerf makes something that you have to break to do anything with.

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  2. Are those snowman-shaped cake pops I see on the blue plate?

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  3. Would you not be better off using recon or longstrike barrel extensions then?

    alternatively, you could try weakening the glue with really hot water, or steam...you might've tried already but the article doesn't mention so...

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