[Mattedhead]

I have had an opportunity to hunt with the Alluminum myself and it is honestly the sweetest shooting gun I have had the chance to use. Incredibly accurate and extremely smooth. I love my Riffe, but this thing is slick! I don't have the technical knowledge to offer this thread so I spoke with Mark Laboccetta of OMER and he passed along this information:

"Just like the last Hammer's e-mail I says, like a car-if you suip it up or change the characteristics and modify it, you're changing the way the car is going to perform and it will void the warranty. Just like a car these guns are not intended to be modified otherwise performance will suffer. The first diver's gun would not have buckled the muzzle if he had not overpowered it with two bands. There is a reason for that. If however I am wrong and he was only using one pair of bands then that's very strange and unheard of, in fact Riffe might have sent us a shaft that had an unusually higher shark fin than the spec shaft (9mm overall height) causing it to hit the muzzle.

With a second band what's happening is that by overpowering it, the 6.75mm shaft is whipping and not coming out strait (its still surprisingly accurate) and as its wipping it's smacking the muzzle. This only happens with shafts longer than 150cm usually or guns 110 or longer when thin shafts are overpowered. The simple way to avoid the problem is not to use more than an 18mm band, even a very short and tight 18mm band would never create this problem. The second way to avoid the problem is not using a Riffe shaft if overpowering the gun. A standard Omer 7mm shaft with two bands without the shark fins is a much better compromise with 2 16mm bands anyway since the shaft is heavier and thicker than a Riffe shaft. The muzzle problem aside, two 16mm bands are overkill for a Riffe shaft regardless.

The key is that by altering either the stock power or shaft set up the diver must counter react one or the other. If you change the power of the bands you need to change the shaft too. If you go to a thicker shaft you also have to increase power. You cannot achieve a more powerful gun by using more powerful bands keeping a thin shaft without it affecting performance. The Aluminum with a Riffe shaft and a single 18mm band is an accurate and balanced set up that is hard to improve on a single band gun."


I hope this helps,
Matt