• Welcome to the DeeperBlue.com Forums, the largest online community dedicated to Freediving, Scuba Diving and Spearfishing. To gain full access to the DeeperBlue.com Forums you must register for a free account. As a registered member you will be able to:

    • Join over 44,280+ fellow diving enthusiasts from around the world on this forum
    • Participate in and browse from over 516,210+ posts.
    • Communicate privately with other divers from around the world.
    • Post your own photos or view from 7,441+ user submitted images.
    • All this and much more...

    You can gain access to all this absolutely free when you register for an account, so sign up today!

Mares Cyrano 1.1 700 - Questions - Mods & maintenance

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.
It’s a tough comparison because the recoil is heavily reduced but the fuckery of aligning the shaft and the seal at higher pressures to meet the wet barrels power and distance is compromising

It’s a matter of preference, I’d rather bareback but that’s just me.

Please do report your opinion on the “upgrade”
 
Well, it is a hobby after all! I for example just finished making a new titanium pump for my Cyrano. The aluminum I made prior had its thread gradually destroyed - too soft. Hopefully this one will be more reliable. Was a huge PITA - the tolerances for the o-ring grooves must be within 0.05MM. Lots of precise machining on my lathe!
 
Although the vacuum barrel has been a fad for a number of years now it is really only advantageous on shorter guns which can be loaded off your thigh as there you have absolute control over pushing the shaft into the gun. Most pnemovacuum guns were short like the Russian Taimen which at 600 mm was seen as a "universal use" gun and once an 800 mm Taimen would have been considered big. There are longer models now, but when you are stretched out pushing the shaft in straight becomes difficult. That can break the sealing action of the cuff and suck water into the inner barrel even if no damage is caused. The wet barrel gun which has been around in various forms since the fifties has always been an easy gun to use provided it is not abused by foolish or careless handling. The spear tail will enter the muzzle provided you get it in the entrance and the shock absorber bore will direct it into the piston face, that doesn't happen automatically on a vacuum barrel gun and bad results can happen, such as this photo shows.
 
Reactions: Pjk
All new pneumatic spear users need to know and understand how the sealed barrel compares to the open barrel & why operators feel that way,

Knowing both sides of the force will properly determine which feels right for you given the slight difference and feel of each option,

I don’t entirely agree with the consensus on the dark side but I see clearly its marginal benefits,

I myself prefer the more natural approach.
 
To get the shaft to align on a vacuum barrel gun it helps, but is not foolproof, if the spear plugs in via a line slide that positively engages in the muzzle nose which then effectively directs the spear tail through the vacuum seal. You see that direction on Taimen guns and to a similar degree on the Pelengas models. Another gun that plugs in is the LG-Sub, but it doesn't use a nozzle type seal, so the nozzle chewing problem doesn't arise there.

A pneumovacuum gun ideally has two alignment bores, one outside the vacuum seal and another one behind it. The Italian guns still rely on their rear mounted alignment bore, the one in the shock absorber and nothing in front, they do nothing with the line slide and that is where their problems lie. Copying each other doesn't help.

More here. https://forums.deeperblue.com/threads/spear-tail-to-muzzle-alignment-pre-the-loading-effort.122995/

As another observation this dialogue would be better in the pneumatic gun section, not everyone looks outside it.

 
Last edited:

Given your background I should ask,

Which components are most damaged by shooting without the resistance of water to dampen the shots recoil & preserve the integrity?

Obviously the shock absorber takes the brunt of the force, piston included but the muzzle thread & barrel will also feel the impact.

I viewed a couple of insane YouTube clips where certified idiots shot pneumatics with the line attached as well as some short barrel examples which had impressive distance and speed

Running at a low bar with a short pneumatic could have little consequence to the high impact when firing “on land” which only silly people do,

What would dampen a longer pneumatic to endure these same impacts on land?

These improvements would have a positive result when exclusively used under water as intended.
 
Pneumatic guns all rely on the presence of water as in being submerged when they shoot. The water lubricates the forward moving piston seals. Water is many times denser than air, so it opposes the shaft movement and absorbs energy from the shot, which reduces the energy being absorbed by the gun when the piston hits the shock absorber in the muzzle. Shooting in air will destroy the piston seals and can crack the shock absorber, even the metal ones. Repeated air shots, if the gun still works, will strip the muzzle threads on the inner barrel nose and send the muzzle flying along with the piston immediately followed by all the air and the oil in the gun. In the worst cases police will soon be arriving if anyone is injured by flying parts. Speargun shafts have travelled city blocks and gone through car doors, a spear is way heavier than any bullet. No pneumatic gun that shoots spears should be fired on land, even small ones. Accidents resulting in injury could see spearguns banned, there are people waiting to mount banning campaigns, so don't give them any ammunition.

Note that damage may not be immediately obvious when shooting the gun in air, so people have probably got a few shots off before they realise that they have damaged the gun. The Russian Seabear had a soft plastic shock absorber that crumbled with an air shot and the broken pieces would fall out of the muzzle relief ports, the shock absorber being mounted on the nose of the piston. With no shock absorber that destroyed the ability of shafts to be held in the gun when cocked and thus rendered the gun useless until you found new parts. As these became unavailable the guns were often left in the storage cupboard.
 
Last edited:
@vrokhlenko

I checked the air yesterday & the 70 was pressurised to 30 bar during the test, not 27 as I had assumed

It was good to know how 30bar feels with a sealed barrel, it was powerful as expected & the cup seal survived without damage or so it seems.

Using the wet barrel @30 is also quite painful to load but there is much less concern for misaligning the shaft without fear of damaging that thin aluminium muzzle.

It’s true running a vacuum setup at lower pressures like 23 bar is better than a 25 wet, one will get a similar distance with less recoil while loading difficulty is acceptable.

You will be pleased with the result when your muzzle arrives.

I haven’t checked the shock absorber, I’d have to nearly ruin it with pliers to get it out to observe any damage.

@popgun pete

Thanks for the insight regarding the dry shooting of these pneumatics,

I agree anyone shooting pressurised cannons designed for water while on land is asking for things to go wrong one way or another and should never be attempted.

Perhaps having a replaceable high strength rubber ring on both the piston face & the shock absorber impact surfaces might allow for open air operation without causing any serious damage to the structure.

Maybe a titanium inner barrel with thicker thread connecting the muzzle with a rubber damper at a reduced bar pressure would work.
 
Titanium is strong, but not good for wear, even all titanium spearguns have stainless steel inner barrels. I have a few of them, but all are non-floaters, titanium being heavier than aluminum alloy. Shooting pneumatic spearguns in air is forbidden by all manufacturers. Even the so called dry or vacuum barrel is wetted as water trapped in the muzzle runs down the length of the inner barrel with the gun cocked to shoot. That residual water provides lubrication to the advancing piston, in fact the gun designers rely on it.
 
Reactions: Pjk
Do you know how much fork oil (ml) need the Mares cyrano 970 pre evo series?
 
My Mares Cyrano 70 with the Salvimar Vac muzzle modification had a catastrophic failure on Monday afternoon

The first shot of the day resulted in an underwater explosion of oil foam from the exposed seal after the line connection part of the muzzle was torn or blown out either from shaft rebound force or maybe the plastic had fracturing I couldn’t see I don’t really know, anyone have any clue where happened here?

I had it at 28bar

Feast your eyes

 
Looks like the shooting line anchor has snapped off the nose cone and taken a chunk of the nose cone with it. The crack in the plastic must run back under the tank lip and penetrate the "O" ring seat and that has allowed the air to escape the gun or it has cracked through the wall thickness of the nose cone. You are going to need a new nose cone. As to why it broke I can't say, unless the gun sustained a hit at some time that damaged it. If a loop of shooting line had snagged the line anchor when the gun fired it may have pulled hard on it, but the line wrap loops should have been away from the line anchor. On older guns they avoid a snagging point here by having line hooks angled forwards and the line anchor is located in the line wrap hook.

 
You could send the nose cone to Mares as they may want to take a look at it and see if they can figure out the mode of failure. Unfortunately you voided any warranty when you swapped the muzzle over, but maybe they may find a manufacturing flaw in it and send you a new nose cone. It is called the Ogive in Italy.
 
Last edited:
Do you have the broken piece that the shooting line was tied to?
I didn’t notice any cracks and can’t recall any hard knocks so the line may have snagged the anchor tearing it off



Looks like I found a reason to get inside after all & I’ll probably free shaft in future to avoid any line related explosions.
 
Last edited:
I haven't seen a failure like this before. To break it the energy would have to be at launch velocity, otherwise the tug from a spear missing its target would be breaking the line anchors more often. One possibility is if the line release does not deploy and the gun shoots as soon as the shaft tail stop hits the line slide it pulls the line wraps tight on the gun. If the line release arm doesn't bust, and on these guns it is metal, it may be the shooting line rips the anchor rearwards and tears it off by levering against the air tanks leading edge. I had a Russian gun with metal everything and a line snag pulled the shot up immediately and spun the shaft around with the line stretch then sending the shaft back to me point first, it just got past the gun's muzzle before it ran out of steam. Strange things can happen!

For this to happen the front line wrap hook would have to not break, but on looking at my gun it is flimsier than the line anchor. We really need to see the face of the break on both parts to see how the break propagated.
 
Last edited:
Is that the only piece that snapped out of it or was there more than one fragment? I just noticed that you have a bungee on the shooting line, so that would take the strain if the line wraps were still hooked up on the gun and would have to stretch out before applying enough force to break anything.


 
Last edited:
Cookies are required to use this site. You must accept them to continue using the site. Learn more…