Dummies Guide to Rigging a Speargun

[miles]

Hiya

A good friend of mine recently started spearfishing. He bought his gun and it was shipped complete with spare spears, muzzle bungees, mono, etc BUT it wasn't rigged up. So he's asked me to post some pictures on how to go about rigging a speargun.

Step1: Tool needed
- Crimping Tool. Use the best you can afford. Most spearfishing and fishing shops will carry a variety of crimping tools. Using inferior crimping tools is a recipe for disaster. Also FORGET about using pliers or side cutters!!!!
- Crimps. I use 2.2mm crimps as most of my mono shooting line is 2mm.
- Lighter or match's
- Side Cutters or nail clipper for cutting the mono

[miles]

Step 2

Push the crimp onto the mono. If you're using thick mono, you might have to cut the edge at a angle, so that i'll pass through the crimp.

[miles]

Step3

Push the mono now through the hole at the rear end of the spear. Some spears have holes slightly to the front of the notch's whilst others have holes on the first shark fin tab. The reason being that the notch's are the spears weak point, and should the spear break, if the hole is in front of the notch's, you'd still be able to land your fish. In theory, it sounds plausible, but in reality, its virtually impossible for a spear to be snapped at the notch's in normal spearfishing use.

Once its through the hole, push the mono now back through the crimp.

[miles]

Step 4

Push the mono so that quite a bit sticks out of the crimp. Use a lighter or a match to now burn the end of the mono. The mono will then form a "blob" at the end. This is done as a safety measure, should your crimps start to fail, due to improper crimping, the "blob" will not pull back through the crimp.

[miles]

Step 5

Now pull the "blob" back up against the sleeve and adjust the loop so that the crimp in about 1cm behind the last notch. If the loop is longer, it will get in the way and interfere with the loading of the gun.

Once you're happy with the position, get the crimping tool. I normally start to cimp the one end of the crimp, then the other end and finally the middle of the crimp. If you're using the proper crimping tool, you can press down as hard as you like with-out fear of damaging the mono.

[miles]

Step 6

This is what the end result should look like.

[miles]

Step 7

Now push the spear, with mono attached to it, into the muzzle of the gun.

Push it all the way back to the guns mechanism and lock it in place.

[miles]

Step 8

Now the mono should run from the back end of the spear, down the barrel, (on TOP of the spear if it is a RAILGUN), over the muzzle (see pic).

From the muzzle it will go to around the line release and back up to the muzzle.

[miles]

Step 9

Now for the slightly tricky part. Attached to the gun's muzzle will be your bungee with a small clip attached to it.

You now put a crimp onto the mono and create a loop, by pusing the mono back through the crip, like in STEP 3. Once again, burn a "blob" at the end of the mono and check for the position of the loop. The loop should end about 1-2cm short of the end of the snap clip. This will allow the bungee to stretch a bit, putting tension on your shooting line, so that it will not fall of the line release.

The other advantage of the clip is that if you shoot a fish and can't get the spear out, you simply unclip the shooting line and pull the spear through. Makes for very easy spear replacement should you bend your spear as well.

[miles]

DONE!!

Gun is ready for use!!!

Regards
miles

[KWM]

Hi Miles, I notice from the pictures that you are using dynema wishbones with a notched spear does this cause any problems? I had been told that unless you were prepared to do a lot of fileing that a cable wishbone would work better. what do find? Thanks kev

[miles]

Hiya kev

Welcome to DB!!!

You are not ENTIRELY correct in saying that. South african railguns, such as the Rabitech and Rob Allan guns come standard with dyneema wishbones and therefor there spears are also wishbone friendly.

With all the other euro guns, they come fitted with articulated wishbones, which are metal. Their spear notch's therefor need not be smooth. so if you're changing from a articulated wishbone to a dyneema one, you will DEFINITELY have to smooth the the notch's of your spears, or alternatively buy a Rabitech Or Rob Allan spear.

Hope that helps!!

Regards
miles

[Bill McIntyre]

Miles- that was a great service. I think those of us who have been rigging guns for a while tend to forget that its not all obvious to a beginner.

For what its worth, I'll add a few comments.

First, regarding burning the end of the mono to form a bubble so that it won't slip through the crimp. Ron Mullins tells me that he and gun maker Steve Alexander did some tests and determined that heating the mono that way weakened the internal structure for several inches from the end, including what will be in the crimp, so that it was actually counterproductive. This doesn't sound very plausible to me, but I thought I'd just pass it along.

Another suggestion from Mullins, who is absolutely anal about rigging, is to stick an awl into the ends of the crimps and twist it around a bit to take the sharp edges off so that they don't cut into the mono. I don't squeeze the crimps all the way to the end, so I don't take that precaution.

You mentioned crimping three times. Another approach is to use a monster crimper like the one shown below. All it takes is one squeeze in the middle, and it leaves the ends flared out a bit to avoid the edges cutting in as mentioned above. You can see the result in the last photo below. And I find crimper like this almost essential for things like putting the single barrel crimp on the end of a slip tip cable, where you are trying to press metal to metal. I just can't apply enough pressure with a single hand crimping tool.

And finally, a thing I like to use to avoid chafing is one of these stainless steel loop protectors, but of course it only works on shafts with fins rather than the hole in the rear as with Euro shafts. Before I started using these, I noticed that often, when cocking the gun, I'd pull the loop of mono back around the rear of the fin and mangle it with the wishbone. These loop protectors prevent that from happening.

[snare]

Great work miles.

Regarding melting the ends of the mono, I remember a thread on here a while ago with a guy doing some stress tests on different styles of crimping. His results were that crimping 3 times, a little back from the edges so as to not cut into the mono, and melting the tag end of the mono was the strongest method. IIRC it broke at very close to the mono's rating.

Here it is. 6th post.

[smee]

Great info Miles.
Quick question- Is there a simple way to convert to a breakaway system without driling holes in the barrel? Just got a 1.3m aluminium RA. Dive shop guy gave me instructions if I wanted to rig the spear straight to the float line but it involves drilling a bigger hole to attach the breakaway system. Just wondring if there is a simpler way to do this.
Thanks, Sean.