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Guess the gun...

Thread Status: Hello , There was no answer in this thread for more than 60 days.
It can take a long time to get an up-to-date response or contact with relevant users.

icarus pacific

Human-in-training
Nov 7, 2001
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Never being shy about taking advantage of another's misfortunes, your own Sultan of Smooth dropped a ten-spot at the garage sale for this little piece of diving history.

Anyone wanna tell me what it is? It's aluminum like a JBL, has a bent butt like a Prodonovich and the MILF , has a cast aluminum open muzzle and a pretty trick set of pins that serve as shaft guides and sites at the trigger housing, also of aluminum. It's 60" and has a 3/8" shaft.

It came with what I can only guess is a float release with a plastic body and a stainless lever that could release a float with a good tug. And the tri cut slip tip is just out and out old school cool. It was in So Cal where the WSB are as thick as the red tide visibility. :head

All comments are appreciated and it's not for sale. Yet. :king
 
It sounds like it might be a Sampson. Is the tip a three-edge thing sort of like an arrowhead, with a cable that goes into the adapter and then out through a hole in the side? And does the butt rake back at an angle of about 60 degrees? Does it have twin line releases, one on each side of the barrel?

The Sampson guns were made by a guy named Herb Sampson in Costa Mesa, with a lot of input from Ron Merker.

A plastic tube under the barrel would have been a line pack. Once all the line was pulled out by a fish, it inflated a small CO2 float.

The one you have would have been called the Long Tom model. I had a shorter version called the Short Tom, but I forget how long it was. I actually bought it used from another Marine in North Carolina back in the early 70s, and a couple of years ago I gave it to the Spearfishing Museum in Huntington Beach, CA.

If you could post a photo, we could tell for sure if its a Sampson.

The Spring 2000 issue of Hawaii Skin Diver Magazine was a special "tribute to the pioneers" issue, and it has a cover photo of Ron Merker holding a Sampson gun with a powerhead mounted on the shaft and a big black sea bass across the back of his MG.

Here is link that doesn't have any photos, but it does mention the gun.

http://www.freediver.net/freedivelist/faqstuff/faq_bangsticks.html
 
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Yeah, thanks, Bill. I'm thinking along the same lines. But like you and I, this thing is waaaay old school, excepting one of Jay's early reels. I'm right in the middle of photo software Hell trying to scale the photos down w/o losing the details, so come back in a couple hours and I'll have it fingered out.

Hey, I hear the CAOST are thick down your way. I'm out at San Clemente next week with my latest 58 and a Wong Hybrid if I can get Daryl to answer the phone.
 
Nope. It's not a Patco. They're too new. Jon has been kind enough to take the photo's off my hands and he'll post them here as soon as he's able.

Thanks Jon!
 
No problemo,

Here they are.

Jon
 
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I'm sure I've seen one exactly like that in one of the shops here, next time i;m in the city (hour drive away) I'll take a peek. it was in the corner wirth a pile of as-new spiro horsecollars.....
 

Its nothing like a Sampson, but I have no idea what it is.

If you know that the CAOST are thick down here, then you obviously have better sources than do I. I did get that one last Wednesday, but they weren't exactly thick anywhere I went in that 136 nautical mile trip.

But of course the PV crowd is notoriously tight lipped, so maybe that is what you are talking about and I've just not heard. And of course they were thick a few weeks ago at the Northern Channel Islands and may well be thick there now, but I'm not man enough to tow my boat through LA freeway traffic to get there.
 
OK, I will take a guess, the tubes look to be from an Aqua-Craft Bandito gun (Baja model?) and the shaft also looks to be Aqua-Craft or JBL (Swimaster). The nose looks to be where Aqua-Craft got theirs from. So, my guess is that the shaft and tubes are not original and that what is left is the prototype for the Aqua-Craft series guns.

John
 
Good call John. The back from the handle back looks just like the old Aqua Crafts and JBL used to have the bent tubes on some of the bigger guns.

Thing that has me stumped is the decription that you gave Bill. Take a look at the two pins that rise out of the handle that lock when the safety is on and retract like a line release would when the trigger is pulled and the shaft released. The speartip description is also spot on- the tri facets and the hole through it, though the line goes through a slide ring rather than an adapter. And that it ended up in So Cal as new, or at least that's what the guy's old lady said... So for now, a Sampson sounds the most plausible.

If you want to take the photos over to spearboard and see what comes up from there be my guest.
 
icarus pacific said:
So for now, a Sampson sounds the most plausible.

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Click to expand...

But I guarantee it looks nothing like a Sampson. The Sampson didn't have any butt aft of the handle, and the handle itself was raked back to about 30 degrees below the line of the barrel rather than being vertical. I wish I could find a Sampson photo other than on a magazine cover.
 
That gun and the reel looks like they were made by Bandito. Carl Long is the owner of that company and it is located here in San Diego, CA.

The reel is actually Bandito. Jay Riffe and his brother John took the design to Carl in 1976 and sold it to Carl because they didn't have the means to produce and sell it.

While I've never seen a Bandito gun, I do have his business card which sports an graphic of a speargun that looks very much like the first picture (minus the reel).

Nate in SD
 
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I've seen a gun like that but can't remember on what site.Bandido was sold to Jeff Bennet atleast a year ago and any parts or service you can get from Sportdiver in south Florida.
 

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