Mares Bazooka

[Don Paul]

Thanks Peter, I learned a few things that are different on the Bazooka.
1.The big question in the book Zen And The Art Of Motorcycle Maintenance...
''define quality'' has now been answered....Mares Bazooka. The vintage mares is machined and tooled as nice as others from the Golden Age of fine Italian guns.

2. The Bazooka does not have the pre chamber brass tube of it's sister Titian.
3.The Bazooka has a nylon guide plate for the power reducer and trigger rods. remember the groove machined on my Titian inner barrel ? This model has the guide plate there. My Titian was new and first dissembled by me and does not have the plate, just the groove. Perhaps it was not installed or found the shorter rods of the Titian did not need it?
Here are some images sorry for the soft focus will shoot the piston again Sun. More description later after a swim.
Cheers, Don

 

[popgun pete]

Well looking at your first photo of this group we can see, in order from the top, the brass transfer port plug or piston on the end of the power selector control rod, then the trigger pull rod and at the bottom the retaining cap of the non-return valve housing. I think you are right about the white nylon collar not being needed on the shorter guns. On my "Titan" the biasing springs are about the same length on both the rods and both abut against nuts screwed onto the rods. In your "Bazooka" the trigger pull rod has two biasing springs, a short one showing some kinks right near the central grip body section and another one which appears to be braced against that white nylon collar. The power selector control rod needs a spring as otherwise internal air pressure would push the power selector cursor forwards in the selector gate. Without the spring the user would have a big job pushing the power control lever backwards, so the spring acts as a helper and keeps the lever in the rearmost gate position (both the loading and "low power" position). To some extent that "assist" aspect also applies to the trigger pull rod, plus it needs a spring to bias the sear lever back and to reset the trigger position otherwise internal air pressure would fire the gun. The brass rear body may be longer, have you checked it? If so that would explain the lack of a tube as the pre-chamber volume would be increased. After loading a "Bazooka" and allowing some minutes for recovery I could not see myself ever using "low power", it is not the sort of gun you would be using around the rocks!

This gun is a later one as the power selector lever is a different shape and there is a brass coloured object with protrusions directly in front of the moulded centre section. I remember when I put the "Titan" back together the rods could get a twist as the inner barrel was not indexed in the gun and could rotate, plus I had to reset the tension on the two biasing springs. Evidently it all straightened up internally once the gun was back together. I suspect that on the "Bazooka" the brass collar somehow indexes the inner barrel in the central housing so that you do not get any twist in the rods over a much greater gun length.

 

[Don Paul]

Rather than start a thread for the mid sized Titian I'll post the image here:
The thin wall brass pre chamber tube is 9.5 long and .358'' OD. however the
port for it in the brass rear body is .178'' .

Both the brass body's in the mid and Bazooka Titian's are the same otherwise.
I image shows the pre chamber tube orifice in the Mid Titian brass body.

Cheers, Don

 

[popgun pete]

Rather than start a thread for the mid sized Titian I'll post the image here:
The thin wall brass pre chamber tube is 9.5 long and .358'' OD. however the
port for it in the brass rear body is .178'' .

Both the brass body's in the mid and Bazooka Titian's are the same otherwise.
I image shows the pre chamber tube orifice in the Mid Titian brass body.

Cheers, Don

Don, thanks for the photo looking in from the rear of the brass bulkhead on the other gun. So the bulkheads and rear chambers are identical, which makes sense from a production viewpoint, it keeps parts inventory to a minimum. Evidently the augmentation of the low power shot was not considered a priority for the "Bazooka", so Mares never added the brass tube extension to that model. The "Cannon" alternative name here for the gun may have been because we already had a "Bazooka" (Undersee's band gun). The gun I first saw was labelled "Bazooka" as the nameplate was just a metallic finish sticker placed on top of the name "Titan" moulded into the centre section, later gun had the sticker applied to the rear body tube.

As the original "Sten" had a stem type inlet valve I assume the earliest "Titan" series guns, including the "Bazooka", had a stem type inlet valve as well. Mares changed the inlet valve body from a bayonet fitting (quarter twist to lock the hand pump) to a screw fitting, then they replaced the stem type valves with the ball type. You can roughly date a gun by the type of inlet valve fitted. The serial number (only visible on the "Titan" guns when you remove the grip handle by undoing the clamping screw in the butt of the grip) is another guide. Having said that I do not know the number sequence and the equivalent year of production.

 

[popgun pete]

2. The Bazooka does not have the pre chamber brass tube of it's sister Titian.
3.The Bazooka has a nylon guide plate for the power reducer and trigger rods. remember the groove machined on my Titian inner barrel ?

It just occurred to me that adding the brass tube prevented the use of the white nylon collar, could be the brass tube is a later refinement by Mares. They had machined the locating groove in the inner barrel, so it looks like that model used to have the white nylon collar fitted. Cutting a slot in the nylon collar to accommodate the tube would have been an option, but maybe they found that the gun did not really need a collar to control the alignment of the rods once they tried the gun after the tube was added.

 

[Don Paul]

I was thinking the same thing as well Pete.
As a side note the inner barrel of my Bazooka along with the sear/piston appear to have been hardly cycled. Your are right about users realizing their wallets and dreams of easy use were larger then the desire to load the beast. I just saw images of another mint one last week.

Images shows Bazooka piston top with the Titian mid below.
The Bazooka is .193'' longer and .003 wider at the foot and socket, not having the spear tail socket vent hole of the Titian.The stock Bazooka piston will be tagged and saved as I new lighter replacement will be procured.
I need to get the 13mm inner barrel back in the Titan as the Airbalete is getting jealous for the big bore...... yeah I know what you guys are thinking.:hmm

Cheers, Don

 

[Don Paul]

Pete, your welcome on the image thanks.
I found a old AMF/Mares brochure and some old remains of a scan. The 3rd image still has my notes from a dealer with a price of $585.80 around 1984. Sorry waiting for parts for my scanner.
The second image shows a Bazooka in the hands of a Italian team member Massimo Scarpati, Last scan is the Mini Titian parts.
Cheers, Don

 

[popgun pete]

I was thinking the same thing as well Pete.
As a side note the inner barrel of my Bazooka along with the sear/piston appear to have been hardly cycled. Your are right about users realizing their wallets and dreams of easy use were larger then the desire to load the beast. I just saw images of another mint one last week.

Images shows Bazooka piston top with the Titian mid below.
The Bazooka is .193'' longer and .003 wider at the foot and socket, not having the spear tail socket vent hole of the Titian.The stock Bazooka piston will be tagged and saved as I new lighter replacement will be procured.
I need to get the 13mm inner barrel back in the Titan as the Airbalete is getting jealous for the big bore...... yeah I know what you guys are thinking.:hmm

Cheers, Don

The "Titan" series pistons had a slightly different mushroom head at the rear end (more dome headed) compared to the one for the "Sten". I think it is due to the different shaped sear lever that has to be pushed aside for the sear tooth to snap over the rear flange and latch onto the piston. The double rubber cone back to back seal on the bottom piston is the original type of piston seal used on the early "Sten" models. Later on they may all use the same type of metal piston with three seals, i.e. a rear facing rubber conical seal, a central "O" ring and a front facing rubber conical seal. On my "Titan" there is no plastic guide sleeve on the front section, from memory the piston is slightly shorter than your "Bazooka" version and only has the three rubber seals. The gun is currently pressurized and "operational", so I cannot readily check it again. If you use a modern piston in the "Bazooka" or the "Titan" you better check the relatch operation is compatible with the different piston tail shape, although I suspect any modification required would be minor as long as the mushroom head flange is the correct diameter and the shank is the equivalent size.

 

[popgun pete]

Pete, your welcome on the image thanks.
I found a old AMF/Mares brochure and some old remains of a scan. The 3rd image still has my notes from a dealer with a price of $585.80 around 1984. Sorry waiting for parts for my scanner.
The second image shows a Bazooka in the hands of a Italian team mate. Last scan in the Mini Titian parts.
Cheers, Don

Thanks for the photos and the "Titan" parts diagram. No sign of that brass tube as an optional item on the parts diagram! I can see a few parts that my gun lacks: indexing collar and peg part 34, the two screws part 35 and part 36 the two bronze half rings. Possibly they were not installed in the first place. The piston shown on the diagram has the front rubber conical seal replaced by a plastic sleeve (pre-cracked on one side to fit it onto the annular locating groove on the metal piston) and the gun has the bayonet type inlet valve body. Everything looks familiar, however these diagrams always make better sense with the gun parts in front of you as then you can understand what goes where, not always readily apparent from the exploded diagram alone.

 

[popgun pete]

I do not have a manual for the "Titan" either. References to the guns are scattered through old dive publications as in "What's New" type listings and adverts for the then current Mares range of pneumatic spearguns, but I don't remember seeing a specific advert for the "Bazooka". "Airdive" used to be the Mares distributor here and imported some "Bazooka" guns along with all the other Mares models, from memory the new "Bazooka" I saw in a city store had a metal band around the nose cone slightly different to the one on your gun. Eventually someone must have purchased it, but it sat there for some time as it was too big and too expensive for most. Interestingly the range of Mares compressed air guns were promoted at the time as being "power without effort". If only that were true!

Here is the advert that I was referring to above.

 

[popgun pete]

Well sadly Don Paul is no longer with us and has gone to the Big Reef in the Sky. This thread is probably the most technical one in English that you can ever read about the Titan family and especially the Bazooka. However any pneumatic gun can be characterised by the length of the inner barrel, the length of the tank and the compression ratio and the trigger operated release system. Don Paul dreamed of using the Bazooka as a big fish gun, but it is built the way it is to survive being banged up on the bottom because it is a sinker. A more powerful gun would be the Sten 150 cm which was part of the Pipin guns. Although they are all rear handles. Turning a big long gun in the water is not easy, in fact you have to swim them around as dragging them laterally and swinging the muzzle is like wielding a barge pole. The aim of mid-handle guns was to make them fast pivoting guns, but with as much barrel out the front as out the back you are going to struggle with about 70 cm pointing in each direction, fore and aft. Plus you have to shoot it like its namesake the Bazooka, i.e. over your shoulder, no staring down the barrel with one of these. I know when I was using my Minititan, same length as a Sten, (90 cm) I was lucky to hit anything with it, but with the Sten I pretty well hit everything. The sighting radius and where you twist the gun from for fine aim corrections has a lot to do with it. In fact the attached diagram was drawn up after my experience with hunting back to back with the Titan and the Sten.

Of course pouring countless shots through the Sten made me get my eye in on it, but sighting along 90 cm is much more effective than sighting along 45 cm as you twist the gun to fine adjust the aim. At least with the Minititan you could hold all the gun out in front of you without risking your teeth. The popularity of rear handle guns came about with the long sight radius and floating, while all early mid-handles were sinkers, but that is not true now. You can have rear biased mid handles with more tank out the front end and a more modest length out the back, enough to stop you knocking your teeth out, but you still need a tight grip on the gun. Now the big pneumatic gun can look like this and still float after the shot.

And then there are monsters like these!

 

[popgun pete]

One aspect about the “Titan” guns, and most Classic layout guns for that matter, which you only realise when you use one is the passive line finger at the tank rear will not hold the shooting line very well, it will do a single wrap OK, but not two. Doing two wraps you have to pull the two line loops back simultaneously to get them under the plastic finger and it is very easy for one loop to fall out. This is a nuisance as I always shoot two line wraps on my pneumatic guns, even more on my shorter ones because the spacing of the hooks is very short on the smaller length guns. To increase the line gripping of the "Minititan" I bulked up the tank diameter with dymo tape to fatten the tank up and stop the plastic mounting ring for the line holding finger from wandering around on the tank.

 

[popgun pete]

As you can see the full length tank guns all use the “Sten” nose piece, in fact the front end of the forward tank tube is counter-bored to accept it, the tank tubes being very thick in wall section, so there is a front and a rear tank tube, you cannot mix them up. Never seen an original Titan, only catalogue photos of it with its short front tank and long narrow protruding barrel. It was a sensation when it first appeared.

 

[popgun pete]

The “Bazooka” arrived today from Alex after we struck a deal to send it Down Under. I just finished unwrapping it which took about half an hour, especially as it was well insulated from bumps and things rubbing on each other in the shipping box. A great job done on packing this monster! Looking at it I remember the first one I saw at Hartleys Sports store when these were new on the market, it had a silvery grey tank like on all the Mares guns which has now become a dark bluish black. A dull and rainy day today, so will take photos when it fines up. As I remember these guns used thick shafts 10 mm dia,.it is very heavy. In the water there will be a slight offset, but nowhere near enough to be a floater. I wonder if anyone ever used one of these Bazooka’s beyond a promotional hunt as turning this gun in the water would be a chore just due to the drag on the vast expanse of tubing alone.

Hartleys Sports Store, where divers in the sixties flocked in order to drool over the many underwater weapons imported in those days and on display, mainly Champion Cavalero, Nemrod and Mares. These were the racks where I and many others looked at the Bazooka alongside the silvery tanked Stens, the latter creating the most interest as they floated after the shot, a complete novelty in those days for pneumatic spearguns.

 

[popgun pete]

Sea Quest had the Mares distribution in the USA at one time and provided an instruction sheet that folded up with three panels and was printed on both sides, here it is.

 

[popgun pete]

And here is the other side.

Not quite what you usually found in Mares own instruction sheets, this seems to be an all-purpose offering. No parts diagram!

 

[popgun pete]

In his book “Modern Spearfishing” Vane Ivanović shows a Titan as his example of the pneumatic gun. Note how it holds its shooting line, although both strands of the wrap loop are depicted as a single line here. Vane Ivanović produced several editions of his instructional book, this is the 1974 second edition. A superb athlete, he would have no trouble loading any speargun, no matter its size.

Vane Ivanović - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

 

[popgun pete]

It is interesting to note that Sea Quest were then selling the full range of Mares Sten spearguns, but only one Titan which was the Bazooka. Now I have yet to check its serial number, but the Bazooka has to be one of the later ones. What can date it is it still uses the bayonet air pump connection judging by the hand pump that came with it. Mares changed to a screw threaded end pump when it became apparent that the dead space was larger using the bayonet connection than it needed to be, hence more pump strokes were required to achieve any given pressure level. Users had long suspected this as when unlocking the bayonet connection there was always a brief sound of escaping air as the pump “O” ring cleared the inlet valve body. That meant on every pump stroke the dead space dumped an ever increasing amount of air that never went into the gun.

This change in pump connection type is best illustrated by the change in pump strokes required to pressurize the air hungry “Mirage” that needed 40 bar in it to justify its complicated construction.

 

[popgun pete]

This extract from a Mares advert in "Spearfishing in Southern NSW" tells us that Bazooka was not going to be the name of the gun in Australia, instead it was going to be Cannon. That was probably because Bazooka was already in use in Australia by Undersee and had been so for decades. But then Canon was being used by Champion for their double handled tube gun, so the name went back to Bazooka. I expect that few Bazooka guns were sold here because the gun was not very versatile, it had only one real job and that was shooting big fish in a standoff in front of their rocky lairs.

The range capabilities are somewhat exaggerated, which was standard practice in those days.

 

[popgun pete]

Here the Bazooka arrived at about the same time as another gun was being used to polish off big territorial fish who ventured out to confront strange intruders into their domain, that gun was the Alcedo Hydra. The Alcedo had the advantage over the Bazooka as you could push the spear in with little effort and once in the gun you switched off the bypass valves of this hydropneumatic and began pumping the spear in the gun with very short strokes, gradually building up the shooting pressure in the gun. Although it took some time the big Alcedo, which weighed a ton, could deliver a powerful shot and many big fish were done for. The arrival of new models with an auxiliary hydropump which used a long thin needle as a water displacement pump could take the gun up to 100 bar, something the Bazooka could never match. Jim Agar, who managed Airdive the Mares distributor in Australia, also sold the Alcedo Hydra, a gun which I interviewed him about many years later.

An Alcedo in pieces showing the hydropump pulled right back to deliver a pump stroke,

The water pumping needed to reach shooting pressures with spear and/or hydropump.

More info here: https://forums.deeperblue.com/threads/alcedo-hydra-hydropneumatic-gun.96940/