Freeshaft Gun

[griswold]

Here are a few pictures of a freeshaft gun that I made.

 

[griswold]

Few more pics

 

[ferris]

Wow mate Freeking sweet!!!!!
That looks awesome love the carbon fibre, whats the main material under that?
or is all carbon fibre? Let us know how it goes or even better upload a vid to Youtube with a tutorial on the build! Once agin great job!

 

[ROBERT REYES]

Wow, awesome gun, as always my friend.

 

[griswold]

Thanks Berto, this one was fun.

 

[Team Deniz]

That is probably the nicest DIY gun I've ever seen. Where did you come up with the design and how would you rate the difficulty level of the build? How about total cost?

I have been trying to get a decent sized piece of hard wood without blowing lots of money... in the hopes of building a piece of similar proportions. Any chance you've documented the build close enough to create a walkthrough?

Thanks

 

[griswold]

I didn't do a very good job of taking pictures of this one during the build, but I am happy to help in any way I can.

I started with making up the barrel section out of teak, G10 and carbon fiber.

In this sketch you can see the wood on the inside, the carbon fiber around the wood and under the G10 track.

This section runs from the tip of the muzzle to the trigger mech. The rear, thicker stock was made from another block of teak, which was again wrapped in carbon.

 

[Team Deniz]

any difficulties in mounting the trigger?

 

[griswold]

No, but I have a mill with digital readouts, which makes if MUCH easier to be precise.

 

[foxfish]

So how did you actually apply the carbon?
How many layers of weave?
How did you achieve a good shiny finish?

 

[griswold]

I get the carbon from Soller Composites. Look them up, they have a good web page with many different options on carbon and other materials.

I used 3 layers of uni-directional fabric and one sleeve for the barrel section shown above. I added about 6 extra layers in the muzzle area to ensure that it would be very strong even with the slots cut in each band hole. I added another two layers after installing the rear section.

I used heat shrink tubing to achieve the finish.

 

[foxfish]

Shrink wrap tubing is a good idea! I have used all sorts of things to get good finishes.
On round muzzle holes I have used balloons passed through the hole & inflated, I also make full use of stretchy electrical tape & putty for complex shapes like handles.

 

[jtkwest]

awesome gun! one question, g10 is so hard. it dulled my ball bit. why use it? do you think its more slippery than an epoxy track or a delrin one? after my first try with that stuff, i went back to poured tracks. the only other builder i have seen with that material is big daddy spearguns. you got it in black? did you have to buy the whole sheet? i could only get green in strips. great gun!

 

[griswold]

The g10 is challenging to work with, and no it is not low friction. I coat it with epoxy filled with graphite to get the friction down. The biggest advantage in using the g10 is that epoxy sticks to it, and it doesn't grow like delrin and uhmw. I did have to buy a whole sheet.

That shaped handle is a piece of art! Very nicely done!
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[Mr. X]

I've heard of free-shafting before but never come across somebody doing it before. Do you loose a lot of spears/speared fish? [Super looking gun by the way ]

 

[Team Deniz]

I've heard of free-shafting before but never come across somebody doing it before. Do you loose a lot of spears/speared fish? [Super looking gun by the way ]

My understanding is that Free-Shaft, at least on a blue water gun, means that the shaft is free from the gun, but attached to a float. I could be wrong, but I don't see any other way to make it work.

 

[jtkwest]

freeshafting means the shaft is attached to nothing. you just shoot barbed shafts with well placed shots. the fish has a hard time coming off the shaft without the line anchoring it, so it cant tear off as easy,(or so is the idea anyway) there is no such thing as a "blue water freeshaft" gun . freeshafting guns are for bottom hunting only. alot of florida guys freeshaft. i dont know why. maybe the shallow water? i dont know. especially scuba guys,( we have alot of scuba spearos here, almost ALL the older guys,(45 and up) do scuba , and a large percentage of them freeshaft. i dont know how they do it. mostly though- if you are freeshafting, you use fat spears-8mm, and the fish struggles when hit, you swim over and grab the non barb end of the spear, if he runs, you reload and shoot again (hence xtra spears) the fat spears make it hard for small fish to run at all, plus the impact force knocks them out a little more. scuba guys take alot of point blank shots on big fish in holes and such, so the extra shots may be more valuable than a line. deathstick makes a quick line system that you can clip to a freeshaft, turning it into a line shaft,( if you see a big fish and have the time.) but, yes, they do lose alot of shafts. but they have multiple shots with very fast reloading. pretty much useless to freedivers in deep water.

 

[Team Deniz]

freeshafting guns are for bottom hunting only.

Everything you said makes parfect sense. Thanks for enlightening us... but I'm still rather confused. The gun we're talking about in this thread is pretty damn big for a bottom hunting gun. How do you shoot a 4-band gun near bottom without having shafts get either stuck or bent?

 

[griswold]

This gun was made to be used in different configurations. As a freeshaft gun, in which case it wouldn't be rigged with more than 2 bands, or it could be rigged with more bands and used as a line gun.

 

[Team Deniz]

Nice. I get it now. Thanks