Mares Cyrano 600 Pneumatic

[Mad Scientist]

Hey everyone,

Ive been out hunting a few times with my friend's new Mares Cyrano 600 and I figured I might give a little review of my inital impressions.... I have only used 2 diffrent spear guns, the Cyrano and a JBL 38 special NW. But here is how I feel about the cyrano given my limited experience with spearguns...

Likes:
- It is fairly quick and easy to load this gun... much quicker than the 3 banded JBL gun.

- It does not loose power if cocked too long. That was a major dislike with the JBL... If I had the gun cocked too long while stocking a particular fish there was definately a noticable power loss over time, almost to the point where the spear would just kind of pop out of the gun, rather than shoot with considerable force. With the Pneumatic, there is no diffrence in power between having the gun cocked for 1 minute or 30 minutes...

- The Hi/Lo power setting is useful if hunting close to reef and rocks. And the safety is a good design, easy and quick to operate.

- There are no bands to vibrate while moving the gun around underwater... There is slight vibration from the shockline, but not nearly as much as the JBL.

- The sights are fairly accurate which makes for better placement of the shot...



Dislikes:
- The spearheads that come with the gun are crap... The aluminum tip was very distorted (almost to the point of being useless) within a couple dives... Another problem is that there is no type of retainer for the "wings"(?) and the spearhead has to be unscrewed to remove a fish. Unfortunately the spearshaft is thinner than those used by other companies, and that limits spearhead selections... Although we did buy a new spearhead made of steel, but still no retainer... (on the brigher side of all of that, the gun did come with 3 shafts and tips)

- Thin spear shafts, and somewhat flexible... Could be made of a harder steel.

- Somewhat limited range.... Im not too sure on how far it is exactly... perhaps 9 feet at the most.

- Kind of noisy... It seems like after a few shots, the fish seem to make themselves more scarce...

- Its a fairly new gun, but I question how long it could last compared to a good solid band gun... Seems like there is always a lot of built up energy inside of these things and that must take a toll on the materials in some way or another... If there are ever any problems down the line, I will be sure to post the info...


Overall Impressions:
I really do like the cyrano much more than the 38 special, mostly because of the fact that it doesnt loose power over time when cocked... I would like a chance to compare this gun with better band guns like a riffe or someting of equal quality (is there an equal to riffe? ) But overall, I do like this gun, and I would recommend it... I think its a pretty brillant design overall, and im interested to see how it works out in the long run....

Happy Hunting :friday
Rico Reyes - AKA Mad Scientist

 

[Iyadiver]

Hi Rico,

This is my second reply to ur post but the 1st one somehow dissapeared....computers.

Thanks for the info on ur Cyrano, good to hear from actual users.

Need to ask u something :
The shaft has a small mettalic O ring , just under the plastic slider where u attach the shooting line. Does yours come with a small spring ? The Mares Stern has it but my Cyrano 850 and my friends 1100 do not have it.

Avoid large spearhead for ur short C-600 shaft, try to source Hawaiian shaft , the manual said Mares has it as options. What u can do to remove the spearhead from the fish is to re-insert the shaft the opposite way it entered the fish or if you have a swivel with a release clip on the shooting line, u can unclip the shooting line and pull it off the fish.

If you realy want to use reasonably good spearhead, you can ask a machine shop to make a female-to-male adapator so that you can use JBL or AB Miller spearhead that has the wing/flopper retainer u mentioned , but remember you will loose plenty of shaft speed with such big heads.

Thanks Again,
IYA

 

[Mad Scientist]

Hey IYA,

About the metal o-ring, there is no spring...

Also, about removing the spearshaft from the fish... Do you mean to pull the spear all the way through the fish, flip it around, and put it back through the same hole? The plastic slider is somewhat bulky and I wonder if it would be hard to pull through... I will try it though when I go out this weekend..

Thanks for the tip about the conversion for spearheads... That got me thinking about making some sort of wing retainer on a lathe... that probably wouldn't be too difficult and I can keep the smaller spear head that comes with the shaft... And besides, if i switched to a diffrent style tip, say a JBL head with the 3 flat sides, I probably would have problems with the plastic loader... I'd hate to have it break and get a spear through my hand (or worse ) - Not to mention a serious drop in speed, as mentioned.

BTW, do ALL band guns suffer from power loss over time while cocked? Perhaps there are better bands than the ones that came with the JBL... Like I mentioned in the previous post... power loss was my biggest complaint with the band gun.

Thanks for the input.
Happy Hunting,
Rico

 

[Iyadiver]

Hi Rico,

According to what I read ( very reliable info-s trust me ), rubber must loose some percentage of the modulus if it wait too long in a loaded state. The percentage loss depending on rubber quality.

I am very familiar with JBL rubber and they are on the lower quality scale, I used to ruin a few JBL's already. I tried quite a few other brands some blue color and so on but I do not know the exact brand because the shop didn't say. The best I tried so far is the Riffe rubber and they are so easily available in the US. Try this rubber and I guarantee, it shoot faster,last longer and eventualy cheaper in the long run than the original JBL ones. Since ur 38 is short I hope you do not have trigger problem with it (unless u have the JBL XHD trigger with tungsten carbide insert, this triggercan take more load ), with longer ones like 120cm JBL with non XHD trigger, using Riffe band of same diameter and length results in very heavy trigger pull because Riffe rubber give so much more modulus/energy.

Becareful if u r using old/used JBL wishbone and replaced the rubber with Riffe. In most cases the wishbone will break before the rubber. New wishbone for every new Riffe rubber is a safe bet.

If u have access to a machine shop ( US airforce should have plenty ), you can buy 7mm Riffe Hawaiian shaft and convert it for 600 use. With the small power the 600 generates a Hawaiian shaft with single flopper will give you maximum penetration compared to any spearhead...trust me in this one. What u need to modify on the Hawaiian shaft is to cut the rear end, machine a similiar stainless steel adaptor like the 600 shaft end. Since Riffe Hawaiian shaft has quite a long distance to go before the flopper, you definitely need to reposition the flopper a little higher.

See my attached photo, left is the original Cyrano 7mm steel shaft with the stupid aluminum head. Right one is Riffe 7mm Hawaiian Shaft with a single flopper. Notice the distance a Riffe shaft will need to penetrate before the flopper can open up on the other side of the fish, this flopper u must move up to the front. All u need is to drill a suitable hole and get from Riffe their original rivet/pin. This is exactly what I plan to do for my 850 next week. If u order a Riffe H-shaft, u must order with a calculation in mind that the end part of 12-15cm will have to be cut away, I mean where the trigger catch and two of the shark fins/rubber loading tabs are. Pay extra ( US$4 ?? ) for the wasted length and don't think of cutting the tabs and grind it smooth, any imperfection will not allow the slider to move nicely. Also think of how long to add for the over hang/prodtruding of the shaft after the muzzle, when loaded. Not too long I suppose but definitely longer than the current Mares shaft because the Riffe flopper is longer.

This shaft will be a two solution 4 u. One, u need not use the inferior shaft from Mares. Two, no spearhead to buy and u are set with a proven Hawaiian Flopper system. Don't look down at single flopper, it has taken many big fishes with success. If u have enough practice with Hawaiian flopper, you can spin left-right while pulling it off a fish, the flopper won't get stuck much this way. I usually use a knife to cut bigger hole or slice open all the way if the fish not too big, sure faster than any other method of removing a shaft from a fish. Reverse shaft penetration I mentioned will work well if no bones or tought gill obstructing.

No matter what spearhead you use on the Mares 7mm, it has to be bigger than 7mm because it carry the female machine thread, if u have a wing retainer, it will be even bigger and so on. Not only weight factor but the idea of 7mm shaft is not only light weight but very "hdrodynamic" in water for faster speed because of less frontal surface area drag.

U can wait till I do my shaft conversion and see what happens.

Anyway have fun & thanks for the spring info.

IYA

 

[rigdvr]

Hey Iya,
JBL just changed their rubbers. The 5/8 bands are now officially bad ass. On my gulf mag XHD I had shortened the rubbers by an inch and when I bought my last bach I couldnt cock the gun with them. My dive buddy owns the shop and we started looking at the new ones versus the old and they are now high mod bands...couldnt tell you about the loss of power issue though.