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Band Power

Thread Status: Hello , There was no answer in this thread for more than 60 days.
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TyBoy

New Member
Aug 2, 2021
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Hi, just wondering about what bands to buy. I've got a wooden 100cm roller gun with a 7mm shaft with a 30cm shaft overhang, right now it's powered by a 14mm band, but wondering if I got a 16 or 18mm band would get me more power or not an for what distances.
Cheers for any help,
Ty
 
Hi, just wondering about what bands to buy. I've got a wooden 100cm roller gun with a 7mm shaft with a 30cm shaft overhang, right now it's powered by a 14mm band, but wondering if I got a 16 or 18mm band would get me more power or not an for what distances.
Cheers for any help,
Ty
We have done some experimentation with bands for our roller gun and have found that the 16 mm seems to perform better. You need a pretty strong band for a single band gun.
 
16mm should provide more power but will likely make it handle a little differently, e.g. harder to load. But 16mm doesn't sound outlandish for your set-up.

My 95cm roller speargun came factory equipped with a 6.75mm spear and 16mm rubber (actually measures 16.5mm). I wouldn't want to go any heavier than that

I bought a thicker replacement rubber only because it was on deep discount - I'm not looking forward to using it! I would rather try a 14 or 15mm rubber next.

Loading my 95cm roller is not like loading my regular 90cm speargun, it is more like loading a 120cm speargun, because you start stretching it from the muzzle. I've only just started using it, so this is still quite new to me.
 
BTW For non- roller spearguns, it is normal to use slightly longer bands for thicker diameter rubber (something than is often overlooked when comparing band power). I would think the same could apply to rubbers for roller spearguns but I guess you could fit whatever length bands you want.

With a roller, you usually have some discretion over how much pretension you set - Rob Allen has some recommendations for this in one of his YouTube video. He uses a heavy duty luggage style scale to measure it. I think he had recommendations for 14mm and 16mm bands - which I think are the only size options they offer as standard.
 
A friend of mine uses 14 mm bands on his 100 cm roller (7 mm shaft) and there's just not enough power there. He could add more pre-stretch, but running 16 mm seems to work better from what I've seen, as long as you're comfortable loading it.
 
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