Building 1st pipe guns – tips and advice

[OTGav]

I’ve got an idea in my head to build a couple of simple pipe guns, both 90cm, one 16mm roller, one 16mm single band. – both 7mm spears, 20-30cm overhang.

In my imagination I’d end up with 2 compact guns with good variation of use (for near Brisbane water), same handles & feel in the hand, same rubbers, same spears – so easy to swap parts around on a trip to stay up and running. Having not spent a load of cash on an experiment.

I have no aspirations to be a carpenter so am happy with pipe & pre-formed rail, keeping life as simple as possible this 1st time around.

As far as parts go roller kit from here:-
Roller spearguns Spear Fishing Charters
(unless other kits are recommended)

Other parts from here:-
SuperFrog - Offshore Spearfishing and Freediving

If there is any advice about how to build a simple pipe gun, fitting the mechs, muzzles, getting balance right etc. – or on choice of mechs/other parts it would be great.

So yes, please tell me if I’m going down the wrong path/it generally a stupid idea.

Ta

Gav

 

[foxfish]

Sounds fine to me, the roller head looks great.
I doubt if the roller gun will be very well balanced but it should work fine for shortish dives.

 

[OTGav]

Weight all at the front due to muzzle, with not enough in the pipe to compensate?
Impossible to add buoyancy to the front, but some weight in the handle to shift the centre back maybe?

 

[foxfish]

In an ideal world you would like your gun to just hover in the water with the spear in place but not many tube guns achieve this.
There are some 25mm tube guns but they tend to sink & recoil at lot, we have 28 & 30 mm too but none of then have lot of spare buoyancy to play with.
Obversely spears play a part too, 6mm will be considerably lighter than 8mm of the same length. Certainly one of the benefit of building a wooden gun is the ability to balance the gun to your spec.
However a nose heavy gun is not useless as you can get used to using them (forearms like Popeye) its just not ideal.