Indie/Minor Speargun Companies

[foxfish]

This is a interesting roller gun thread if you are into patents http://forums.deeperblue.com/spearguns-accessories/82717-new-super-easy-loading-speargun.html

 

[behslayer]

Yes, a patent is only worth what you are willing to defend it for... I know that people in the USA have been making Rollerguns since the early 5O's. The Sea-Maxx is clearly an original concept. What does Berry have a patent on? A Roller muzzle? Are there other patents to avoid?

 

[popgun pete]

Yes, a patent is only worth what you are willing to defend it for... I know that people in the USA have been making Rollerguns since the early 5O's. The Sea-Maxx is clearly an original concept. What does Berry have a patent on? A Roller muzzle? Are there other patents to avoid?

His patent is basically around the two-stage loading principle with the band separated into two segments, the rear band segment can be split into subsiduary tensioning bands. His patent also shows twin axle and multi-rollers on one axle, but none of that is new. The interlinking of the bands is the only really new part to form a main loop segement tailed by the other loop segments. From memory it is a worldwide patent.

Rollerguns come and go over the years, lateral drag and increased loading time are the turn-offs, but they have their uses. Spearguns tend to work best when they are simple as less to go wrong when you least expect it.

 

[behslayer]

Thanks Pete.

 

[foxfish]

Roller guns also have some benefits!
I have built a few but they were pretty basic in design & took no longer to load that a conventional single band gun.
Roller guns are a delight to fire, they seem to have very little recoil & have a very different feel on firing.
Difficult to explain but there is smoothness & of course a lot of power too.

 

[Mr. X]

I'm pretty sure somebody, possibly me, posted an image of a really old, small, wooden Chinese or Japanese rollergun some years ago.

 

[popgun pete]

I'm pretty sure somebody, possibly me, posted an image of a really old, small, wooden Chinese or Japanese rollergun some years ago.

The Japanese wooden rollerguns use a twin rail and sliding carriage system to drive the spear out of the gun. There was also a single rail version, but not as common as the twin rail type. The brass rollers allow flat strip rubber bands, which were red in colour, to be anchored at the sides of the gun just in front of the trigger location. The single-piece trigger uses a short biasing rubber band as a return spring to help oppose the propulsion band pull as the trigger pivot pin is below the sear tooth, not directly behind it, the sear tooth engaging a lower notch in the spear shaft tail. The trigger would tend to roll without the opposing torque provided by the short rubber band, it is tied between two brass rings underneath the wooden stock. The metalwork on the gun is brass and that includes the spear shaft. The guns used detachable tips with slide rings, but so far the speartips have gone missing on the examples found to date. Brands are "Tairyo" and "King" and there may be others. Manufacture was in Osaka, Japan and the earliest guns appeared around the time of WWII. They bear patent numbers on anodized metal plaques, but so far these numbers appear to be from a different Japanese numbering system as the patents have not been found in the modern Japanese patents database. A very much later version of the gun uses a top slotted plastic tube instead of the twin brass rail system. Although branded as "fish guns" their intended use above or underwater is not known definitely, but for sure some people used them as underwater guns. The roller system derives the most propulsion out of the thin flat bands, some guns use two bands on each side, but only one set of rollers. Inquiries into Japan have met with no replies to date as to the development history behind these guns.

 

[Don Paul]

The images of mine are in a old computer, I traded the little toys for another gun I wanted. Here are images from John Warren's page.

Cheers, Don

 

[popgun pete]

The images of mine are in a old computer, I traded the little toys for another gun I wanted. Here are images from John Warren's page.

Cheers, Don

Don, did you ever put some bands on the "King" fish gun to try it out? I know that you had two of them.

 

[Don Paul]

Don, did you ever put some bands on the "King" fish gun to try it out? I know that you had two of them.

I did band up the less mint of the pair I had with truck inner tube and made two shots before I traded them housed in hand made shadow box.
With 250 percent elongation the untethered shaft shaft traveled 10 feet before gravity dropped the tiny shaft under the section of boogie board I shot at in the pool. I do remember the clank the throw plate made as it smacked the rail anchors. These little guns are a still a mystery even after our early attempts of a more complete history of their use. I can envision the small children of the Ama divers harvesting little fish in the tide pools or rice paddy's in Japan.
Cheers, Don

 

[popgun pete]

I know that there is a tradition of raft fishing in Japan which involves fishermen shooting pole manipulated spearguns through the air to water interface. This activity can also be carried out from small boats where only the muzzle of the gun need be submerged. With the rubber band drive system operating in air there is a more powerful shot. The same operating method is used with the Japanese "Scope-Arrow" speargun. I think it is a possibility that these small rollerguns were used in such a fashion, hopefully one day we will find out for sure.

 

[popgun pete]

While we are discussing Japanese spearguns there was a Japanese English language web-site for "Nakaoka" spearfishing equipment which was viewable on-line a few years back. The "Nakaoka HB2 model" speargun was made from teak and had a rear wooden pistol grip handle configuration. Most unique feature was the thick timber barrel which was split horizontally running from the trigger mechanism right through to the muzzle. That produced a thin deep slotted groove on either side of the gun barrel at about the mid-line of the stock. These long side grooves were necessary because the spear shaft ran in a totally enclosed track located out of sight between the upper and lower halves of the rectangular cross section stock! The spear tail was fitted with a horizontal plate with short rearward curved fins, like the fletch of an arrow, whose tips projected out of the narrow grooves on either side of the gun and served as shaft tabs. The slim, round section rubber drive bands were terminated by flat metal (think of a paper clip shape) loops that hooked onto these projecting fins. The rubber band strands were trussed together in pairs to form a separate rubber loop for each metal loop end, there being two rubber loops used on either side of the gun to hitch onto the projecting metal fin tips. So the grand total of rubber band strands was eight, with them being formed into four looped pairs tied together with cord at either end. One end was tied to the metal strap muzzle frame, basically an anchor point, and the other end was tied to the flat metal loop. The split muzzle thus had two band loops tied to a metal frame on the top half of the timber barrel and two band loops tied to a separate metal frame on the bottom half of the timber barrel, with one loop on either side of the gun and thus essentially being tied to the four front end corners of the bifurcated timber stock. This strange band anchoring arrangement allowed the fletched shaft tail to clear the barrel without fouling on the band anchor positions at the muzzle and when tensioned up the combined action of all of the rubber bands held the two halves of the split barrel together because the top loops on either side pulled down on the muzzle and the bottom loops on either side pulled up on the muzzle. The stored shooting line ran along the flat top deck of the gun through some metal rings before being deployed. The spear tip was a double long tine fork oriented vertically so that when sighting along the barrel you could see the upper tine projecting up into your sight line. This was necessary because the spear was buried inside the timber stock, being somewhat like a pneumatic gun in terms of aiming the gun. An optional five tine tip was available in the HB5 model, this model actually being referred to on the web-site as a "diving gun". Basically the HB2 and HB5 were the same gun.

Another version of the "Nakaoka" gun was built into a long pole and a pull cord operated the trigger mechanism in a remote fashion so that the user remained high and dry while standing on a raft and holding the rear end of the pole. Part of the raft fishing kit included underwater look boxes and submersible fish decoys (something along the lines of rubber ducks for duck shooting) which were designed to lure their unsuspecting fishy comrades to an untimely end.

This style of speargun was referred to as a traditional "Hiroshima gun" that had been manufactured by Nakaoka for 40 years (from memory this was back in 2003), but the web-site looks to have since vanished from sight. Price of the spearguns was around US $700, bearing in mind that every part was expertly crafted using traditional Japanese metal and woodworking methods. I had some saved images of the gun, but have yet to find them. I am sure Don saw these guns at about the same time, a guy in Japan had indicated their existence and provided the URL in an e-mail.

 

[Don Paul]

I remember the site Pete, and it was fascinating to see such unique fishing gear. I crashed the drive I had in 99 to 02 but perhaps our friend John has some images I can have him send to us.

Cheers, Don

 

[Mr. X]

The images of mine are in a old computer, I traded the little toys for another gun I wanted. Here are images from John Warren's page.

Cheers, Don

Yes, those look like it - excellent.

 

[spaghetti]

Interesting discussion. Meanwhile, I go on feeding the beast.
Here's the newest reverse trigger and handle frame from Arbafan, all own design and make. The shaft is lodged a dozen centimeters back (compared to traditional euro triggers) and runs on mini-pulleys (own made too by Arbafan).
I'm loving this man!

 

[Don Paul]

I'm pretty sure somebody, possibly me, posted an image of a really old, small, wooden Chinese or Japanese rollergun some years ago.

Here are a few more from John's site.
Cheers, Don

 

[Mr. X]

Did anyone ever manage to translate those character on the label?

 

[Don Paul]

Did anyone ever manage to translate those character on the label?

Yes '' This gun just right size for crazy GI in airport shop''.. sorry that's as funny as I get.


Yeah, ''I'm on a licensed hunting trip''
'' Big fish''
'' model ''
I believe it is Cantonese.

Cheers, Don

 

[Mr. X]

You'd definitely need the "Big Fish" model. (Might be "good Karma" to have "big fish" written on your speargun - that's why I stay away from those "Weird Fish" products ).

Interesting discussion. Meanwhile, I go on feeding the beast.*
Here's the newest reverse trigger and handle frame from Arbafan, all own design and make. The shaft is lodged a dozen centimeters back (compared to traditional euro triggers) and runs on mini-pulleys (own made too by Arbafan).
I'm loving this man!

Incredible.

What next? An electronic remote trigger - perhaps using fibre-optic or bluetooth connection to, say, trigger a solenoid or servo-motor? You could even have the the barrel/aiming done by one hand and then squeeze the trigger on a remote unit in the other hand (so trigger squeeze should not effect the aim at all!). Better get a patent on that, could use it on any type of gun/weapon...although I guess those machine guns with a foot-pedal trigger got there first .

*[Re. "feeding the beast", interesting turn of phrase. Climbers sometimes talk of their need to climb as "feeding their rat", which possibly comes from the climbing writer [ame="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al_Alvarez"]Al Alvarez[/ame] (maybe from "The Games Climbers Play" or "Mirrors in the Cliffs"?).]

[ame="http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/0747564523/ref=as_li_tf_tl?ie=UTF8&tag=various02-21&linkCode=as2&camp=1634&creative=6738&creativeASIN=0747564523"]Feeding the Rat: A Climber's Life on the Edge: Amazon.co.uk: Al Alvarez: Books[/ame]​

 

[popgun pete]

I found the photos of the Nakaoka speargun and spear, please see attached. The text was part of the original images.