Nemrod Filibustero

[SkipperJeff]

Hi everybody,
Just came across this website & was delighted to see an old thread about pneumatic spearguns. Now you're talking my language.!
I used a Nemrod Filibustero for many years in Mozambique & South Africa, during the 1970's & '80's & my good friend Billy Warnock used a Nemrod Corsario. I still have the Filibustero & it's in excellent working condition even though it's now 37 years old.
A few years ago, before I left South Africa, I came across a dive-shop in Johannesburg that was closing down. I managed to buy most of their 'O'-ring spares, plunger seals, spears & detacheable spear-heads for the gun.
I have 2x small Nemrod pistols as well & they were all stripped down & serviced last Summer in my garden shed.

The seals you have to most worry about are on the plunger. The 2 seals are mounted back-to-front on the plunger & must be kept oiled, so the gun has to be stored nose-down all the time when not in use.
150 pumps was recommended by Nemrod but that won't shoot very far, so 200 pumps is starting to get useful range.
Once you've used that for a couple of weeks & your right arm is getting strong, put another 50 pumps into it. 2x weeks later put it up another 50 pumps to a total of 300 in all. Then, you have a bloody good speargun.!
I used to get 6m (20ft) out of mine (underwater of course) & never-(NEVER) fire these guns out of the water or you'll blow the end caps off & destroy it.!
I keep mine on my yacht here & am looking forward to doing some more spearfishing in the Indian Ocean before much longer.
About 'O' rings...Go to an 'O'-ring manufacturer-take some of the old 'O'-rings with you, & they'll make you some new ones. Very cheap.
Plunger seals, no idea...probably impossible to get these days.!
Lastly, if you're strong enough & tall enough to load the gun after 300+ pumps you shorten the life of the plunger quite a lot within a few weeks, as it really hammers into the end cap & eventually jams itself in after every shot. You also need a very good quality spear-loader to put on the spear-head in case it slips while you're loading. Even old die-hards like me have to admit that they're high maintenance guns, which was OK when spares were available, but they ARE absolutely brilliant to use. I wish Nemrod still made them.!
All the best...
Jeff

 

[Don Paul]

Thanks for your post Jeff, I really like old Nemrods, I have a few.
Cheers, Don Paul

 

[popgun pete]

The "Silver" series Nemrod spearguns, which are the guns that you are talking about, were all mid-handle, full length air tank spearguns with negative buoyancy. They came out around the same time (1966/67) that the Mares "Sten" first appeared, however the "Sten" proved to be a more versatile weapon for freedivers as it floated after the shot. Scuba divers like non-floating weapons for the fact that the gun stays down where they are after the shot. Once spearing on scuba began to attract criticism (sometimes unfounded) and was banned in certain countries then the heavy pneumatic spearguns became less popular. I bought the smallest "Silver" series gun, the "Comando", when they first went on sale here, but soon switched to the "Sten" as it floated after discharge.

The muzzle relief ports in the "Silver" series guns are in the wrong place as they are in the front sloped face of the muzzle, immediately behind the rubber nose pad, whereas they should be to the rear behind where the piston nose strikes the shock absorber anvil. This means that saltwater around the front of the piston is trapped in the muzzle behind the anvil. It can get out via a small leak path hole drilled through the side of the piston nose, but it tended to stay in there. That is why Nemrod supplied a short plastic plunger to stick in the piston and push it back a few inches to allow the insertion of a few drops of oil around that location. If it rusted then it tended to cause the piston to stick at the muzzle. Early piston noses were steel, later ones were changed to stainless steel.

If you look at a later gun like a Nemrod "Mariner" then you will see that the relief port ring has moved to the rear of the muzzle which allows water to rinse around the piston nose when washing the gun. The "Silver" series were some of Nemrod's most popular guns, but were probably more expensive to make than the "Clipper" style guns which gradually replaced them as the latter have fewer components and a moulded plastic grip which is also a pressure bulkhead.

 

[SkipperJeff]

Hi PopgunPete,
Very interesting post, & you obviously know your Nemrods well.!
The only airgun I knew REALLY well was the Filibustero, but I didn't know about the corrosion issue in the plunger area. I used the nylon plug constantly, as I had the gun so highly pressurised that even with a new plunger in, it was only a matter of 4-5 weeks before it jammed after every shot & was impossible to load in the water. Actually, I thought that was the reason it was supplied.! I remember it well, & it was a damned nuisance & I'd have to get back on the boat after each shot & look for a solid corner to wedge the barrel & plug into, to break the jam.
The reason in my case was that with the plunger slamming into the end so hard, the machined end of the plunger eventually would start to 'round-off' a bit with the inevitable result. I didn't always replace the plunger but would file the plunger perfectly flat again in the evening & re-install it ready for the next day. Stainless is quite soft really so quite easy to do. But really annoying, especially when you're surrounded by a shoal of big Kingfish that just won't go away.!

We dived the Mozambique Channel, off the almost deserted island of Bazaruto (living on the Island for up to 9mths of the year on fish & rice mostly) & broke every South African record for biggest fish in all the game species, but it didn't count as we were in the warmer waters of Mozambique.! Me & my mate Bill shot Grouper that took 3 big guys to carry them up the beach, 200 to 300 Kgs, (We saw others MUCH bigger than that too) & we'd sell them to the Portugese on the Mainland for good money. That's how we covered the cost of fuel & extras. Very often, a friend would fly in from Beira, land on the grass strip, & we'd drain his fuel out of the wing-tanks to use in the outboards.

The Mares Sten range...I had the biggest one ever made-forget the model-didn't last long though as Bill & I were invited to go croc-hunting on the Congo River so I pumped it up a bit more. Had a couple of test-fires out of the water, that was OK, did the hunt, went back spearfishing off Pomene Point in Mozambique & shot a Kingfish around 80.lbs.
The end-cap blew off, about 400psi went up, & the last time I saw the Kingfish it was mortally wounded limping off with the spear through it, the attached line & the outer barrel of the gun dragging behind it, leaving me with only the handle & inner mechanism.
Within seconds of the explosion 2 of the biggest Kingfish I've ever seen in my life came round to see what all the noise was about. Well over 150.lbs each,(absolute record breakers) & would have been the catch of a lifetime.! Still remember THAT like it was yesterday.!
Happy Days.! Couldn't do it as well now though, but I would love to get out there again & have another go with this Nemrod, before I get too old.!
Cheers...Jeff

 

[popgun pete]

It sounds like you had your Nemrod "Filibustero" (the longest "Silver" series model) pumped to well over the recommended pressure limit, those guns had a 35 mm diameter outer tank, so they had a higher compression ratio than the "Sten" which has a 40 mm diameter outer tank. Both guns have full length air tanks, unlike the classic rear tank models. Usually you put less air pressure in higher compression ratio guns as when cocked and ready to shoot the pressure in the gun climbs to much higher levels. I once made the mistake of pumping a 30 mm diameter outer tank gun, which I had just purchased, up to the pressure that I would normally use in a "Sten", it too had a full length air reservoir and I was judging the pressure by the effort to push the pump handle down. When I came to load the gun I could only get the shaft slightly over half way into the inner barrel, any more effort and I was going to bend the spear. Then I realised that the gun had a much higher compression ratio, it could not use that pressure level, so I removed the tail cap, put it into my diving glove and used the detached spear tip to bleed some of the air out so that I could continue diving with the gun. Fortunately it had a stem type valve rather than the ball type so I did not have to worry about damaging the valve.

Just so other people understand what we are talking about here what you call a plunger is the piston that pushes the shaft from the gun. The plastic rod or plunger that I was referring to enabled you to push the piston back without it jamming in the nose of the piston. It had a rounded tip and was about 9 cm long with a larger head at the pushing end. If you used the spear tail to do the same job then conic friction would jam the shaft in the piston, which is what it is designed to do, so it may be difficult to free the shaft again. I found that plastic plunger very handy for use on other guns as well. The sticking that I am referring to is when the guns were stored and the pistons rusted onto the shock absorber anvil, not sticking after the shot. This was with the ordinary steel nosed piston, my gun only received a stainless steel nosed version when I replaced the piston years later.

Your experience with the "Sten" shows what happens when the inner barrel muzzle threads strip, the muzzle flies off taking the nose cone with it and the outer tank as well. Those test fire shots out of the water may have done the initial damage before the muzzle threads gave up when you actually fired the gun underwater. I have had my old "Sten" up to 40 Bar (600 psi) and never blew the muzzle off the gun, however it was a two handed loading job with a custom made loading bar and was nearly impossible to load in the water. These guns rely on water in the inner barrel to keep the muzzle impacts down if you use high pressure air in the gun.

 

[SkipperJeff]

Hi PopgunPete,
Yes you're right, my Filibustero was WELL over the recommended pressure.! Apart from 1 guy I met in Mozambique who'd come down from Rhodesia for a 2 week spearfishing holiday I never met another spearo' who could load my Filibustero. For a start, re-loading underwater even with the back of the mid-handle braced against my outstretched left foot, you needed to be over 6.00 ft tall to have that kind of reach, & when you're fully stretched out like that it's difficult to get the spear started. That's why I was saying 'have a very good loader for the spearhead'...I had a few near-misses while I was almost loaded, & at the end of my strength in my right arm, but the plunger hadn't actually locked into place yet. It's a wonder I never took my chin right off.!

The Mares Sten...Even as a beginner, I always suspected that you couldn't fire these air-guns out of the water, but the guy in the dive-shop, when I asked him about it, (& more the fool me, for believing him!) told me it was OK with this gun, & dare-I-say, if you stuck to the manufacturers recommendations you'd probably get away with it for some time. What killed mine was putting about twice the recommended pressure into it.!
The Nemrods...Yes, I described the plug wrongly. It's the 3-4" plastic stalk with the head on it, to ram the plunger back off a bit. An invaluable little piece of kit.!

Pneumatic guns were never that popular in South Africa, as a lot of Spearos dived from the beach & with a lot of waves & surf action there's always a lot of sand swirling about, with the result that it was very easy to get sand up inside the barrel when loaded. As you'll know, sand & 'O'-rings don't get on very well together.! So, if you HAD to use an airgun from the beach then the best you could do was keep it unloaded until you got through the dirty water & got into clear water nearer the back-line of breakers, then load-up there.
Further up the coast-over the South African border-in Mozambique we had no such problem with airguns as there wasn't the sand-laden water to get through.

I'd like to ask you about a speargun I came across in 1972 at Lake Kariba in Rhodesia. I was talking to a guy who had just pulled in & was getting ready to spearfish in the lake. As he was unpacking his gear he brought out an American cartridge-fired speargun called-I think-an SMG. He had black cartridges, yellow? & red. What happened to these guns.? They were reputedly the most powerful speargun on the market at that time.(& probably still are) I've never seen another one since. Are they highly regarded/still available.?

Cheers...Jeff

 

[popgun pete]

The SMG production was sold to a New Zealand company, they made some guns (probably from stock parts which they received as part of the deal) and soon disappeared. Technically not a firearm in the USA, the SMG was considered to be one nearly everywhere else. Shooting fish with firearms is now illegal in many countries, so the market for the guns dried up.