My first gun was a JBL Woody Sawed Off Magnum.... needless to say I now have 4 guns non of which are JBL :naughty. For a while I would loan out the lil JBL to my buddies trying to get into the sport.
A stock JBL woody magnum is a decent intro gun, it can take a beating and its easy to load. Now the bad; it uses a 36" 5/16 or 8mm threaded shaft with 3 notches for loading and a severely heavy double barbed tip, on top of that it uses a massive slide ring to give you a horrendously non-hydrodynamic projectile. To propel this ugly stick through the water they power the gun with 3 22" 9/16 or 14mm bands with metal wishbones, they must of figured to just keep adding bands till it blows up the target not taking accuracy into consideration. The muzzle is closed making the aiming a bit of a struggle for anybody... Oh; can't forget the fat nylon shooting line that drags the shaft down even slower... awesome!
I was always thinking of ways to upgrade this lil gun and all my attempts never really made much of a difference. I was trying to figure out a way to use a Hawaiian flopper shaft like the ones on the Riffe comp series, the loading notch on the shaft on the JBL looked very similar to the Riffe's. I couldn't test fit it due to the closed muzzle so I grabbed my dremel and cut it to open muzzle. I have an Andre Speargun which uses the same mech as the Riffes, I tried the shaft on the JBL and bingo fit like a charm! Only problem was that the loading tab at the end of the shaft was right on the housing for the trigger mech making loading impossible on the rear tab. So I cut some of the housing off with the dremel... all my cuts came out clean and I sanded them down smooth. I then went and picked up a Riffe 44" 9/32 Hawaiian shaft with double wrap 200lb black mono which fit perfectly
.
Now I had to figure a way to secure the shaft since it is open muzzle. I had a bunch of ideas but found the solution in the form of my sister's disposable eyelash brushes, they are plastic tough and black. I cut them to just the right size and used my drill to make holes on the muzzle accordingly. Had to have the angles just right for this, once in place I used epoxy to secure them in place. Ran the line and bingo, couldn't have worked any better!
For power I made a pair of 20" 5/8 or 16mm bands with dyneema wishbone and ditched the old set. Also just to make the gun prettier I shortened the butt of the gun and dremeled off that piece that goes in front of the handle like the AB Billers have... thought it looked ugly and cheapy.
Here is a picture of one before any modifications:
Here are my after pics, sorry for the crappy quality:
Here you can see how I ran the line with the eyebrow brushes lol
In this one you can see the shortened butt and the handle piece is gone!
Vision is much improved now
.... I haven't taken it out yet but I did test shoot it in my pool and let me say I couldn't be happier with the results! Much faster shot, far more accurate, and distance right around 12ft with penetration into the 2liter bottle of Pepsi :martial
p.s My lil JBL out shot my buddies Riffe Comp 1s in the pool hehe
A stock JBL woody magnum is a decent intro gun, it can take a beating and its easy to load. Now the bad; it uses a 36" 5/16 or 8mm threaded shaft with 3 notches for loading and a severely heavy double barbed tip, on top of that it uses a massive slide ring to give you a horrendously non-hydrodynamic projectile. To propel this ugly stick through the water they power the gun with 3 22" 9/16 or 14mm bands with metal wishbones, they must of figured to just keep adding bands till it blows up the target not taking accuracy into consideration. The muzzle is closed making the aiming a bit of a struggle for anybody... Oh; can't forget the fat nylon shooting line that drags the shaft down even slower... awesome!
I was always thinking of ways to upgrade this lil gun and all my attempts never really made much of a difference. I was trying to figure out a way to use a Hawaiian flopper shaft like the ones on the Riffe comp series, the loading notch on the shaft on the JBL looked very similar to the Riffe's. I couldn't test fit it due to the closed muzzle so I grabbed my dremel and cut it to open muzzle. I have an Andre Speargun which uses the same mech as the Riffes, I tried the shaft on the JBL and bingo fit like a charm! Only problem was that the loading tab at the end of the shaft was right on the housing for the trigger mech making loading impossible on the rear tab. So I cut some of the housing off with the dremel... all my cuts came out clean and I sanded them down smooth. I then went and picked up a Riffe 44" 9/32 Hawaiian shaft with double wrap 200lb black mono which fit perfectly
. Now I had to figure a way to secure the shaft since it is open muzzle. I had a bunch of ideas but found the solution in the form of my sister's disposable eyelash brushes, they are plastic tough and black. I cut them to just the right size and used my drill to make holes on the muzzle accordingly. Had to have the angles just right for this, once in place I used epoxy to secure them in place. Ran the line and bingo, couldn't have worked any better!
For power I made a pair of 20" 5/8 or 16mm bands with dyneema wishbone and ditched the old set. Also just to make the gun prettier I shortened the butt of the gun and dremeled off that piece that goes in front of the handle like the AB Billers have... thought it looked ugly and cheapy.
Here is a picture of one before any modifications:
Here are my after pics, sorry for the crappy quality:
Here you can see how I ran the line with the eyebrow brushes lol
In this one you can see the shortened butt and the handle piece is gone!
Vision is much improved now
.... I haven't taken it out yet but I did test shoot it in my pool and let me say I couldn't be happier with the results! Much faster shot, far more accurate, and distance right around 12ft with penetration into the 2liter bottle of Pepsi :martial
p.s My lil JBL out shot my buddies Riffe Comp 1s in the pool hehe
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