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New LG

Sorry Pete, I don't buy the "usual sinkers" argument here. You are, of course, right (as always) in that "metal guns" used to be sinkers. But LG designed this from the ground up and even made brand new hydroformed reservoirs for them. Should be easy enough to add a little extra volume in Solidworks/Autocad before you milled the molds.

But I will let it rest now as I am borderline violating my own principles here. This could be mistaken as slander on a beautiful gun which it is def not meant to be. In fact, I applaud LG for pushing the envelope. It is just that I am a tad worried after having seen very few pics of a gun with extra floats on it. I hope I/we can soon update this tread with some more specific info on how this gun actually floats.

Also, I am probably a minority here as I really like my guns to be very close to neutral in the water;-)
Well by "sinkers" I am referring to discharged guns heading straight to the bottom after you release them having just speared your fish. Previously metal speargun body components were either fully machined from bar or rod stock or dedicated die-castings with thick sections, so there was no inexpensive way to lighten them while maintaining structural strength with a minimum of cutting operations being applied to that component.

The more machining operations used then the more metal can be removed, but problems can occur when the component is turned around to machine it from the other end. When working to close tolerances on thin sections any out of alignment and consequent loss of concentricity will cause break through on thin sections as the cutting tool operates on a slightly different rotation axis to what was used previously in generating the initial cuts. It is attention to such details that makes the Russian "Taimen" an expensive gun to produce on what must be fully automated lathes that control every movement of the component as it is reset for different operations on it.

Hence it will be interesting to see the pattern of cuts made inside that LG rear housing (from both ends) in order to hollow it out enough for it to make the "Revolution" gun a floater without its spear. It should be noted that a metal cutting tool can only remove metal directly in line with the cutting teeth and their axis of rotation, however an undercut can be made such as with a boring bar (or wheel type milling cutter) reaching in and cutting out a recess behind a smaller diameter entrance with a larger annular recess created behind it. This method was used on the "Taimen" rear bulkhead to create a gap behind the air bypass holes (see diagram).
Taimen rear body PV s.gif
 
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Pete, you have an eye like a hawk. I thought it was to improve the reel position...:p
An "engineering eye" actually as I was looking for a step or protruding peg that provided some interlocking of the two components, but could not see one previously. Evidently others were looking for that feature as well and LG then changed the design accordingly, otherwise someone may have been in for a nasty surprise further down the track when the transverse pins broke free of the plastic grip. Such accidents have occurred with home-made band guns and have resulted in facial injuries.
 
On skimming through the 70 odd pages of the pescasubapnea forum http://pescasubapnea.forumfree.it/?t=70463854&st=900 while I certainly did not read all of it I found this morsel of info from a contributor “Manu” on page 61.

“The gun structure (of the Manilu Revolution 92) is slightly negative, but with a piece of Styrofoam inserted into the butt handle the gun becomes almost neutral, then falls softly to the bottom”. He measures the gun at 92 cm from valve cap to muzzle tip and 97.5 cm from muzzle tip to rear of the angled butt handle. No mention of the working course of the piston unfortunately which is where the gun is intended to excel, but does it? So as I suspected that rear milled out metal bulkhead section is relatively heavy, but can be offset with a buoyancy chamber in the hollow of the grip handle which as stock the “Revolution” gun does not have. This suggests to me that this 92 cm length gun is a marginal floater, but as with all guns a longer version will be a better floater with more length in the fatter mid-section of the tank. Shorter guns will be sinkers, but I don’t know the range of “Revolution” gun sizes currently available.
 
I am wondering if Andrew eventually received his LG Manilu "Revolution" gun and what he thought of it. I had completely forgotten about this gun until someone mentioned complex machining operations and making speargun parts from scratch. I said that it was unlikely, then I remembered this LG-Sub speargun.
 
Any updates on the LG Manilu "Revolution" speargun? We know LG changed the handle by putting an indexing step on the receiver instead of relying solely on the two handle fixing pins.
 
Thank you so much for your thoughts. The importer seems (One Breath Spearfishing) to be on top of things so I have requested prices for service kits, pistons and shock absorbers. I do my own maintenance so as long as I can access what I need it should be ok. I guess having something out of the ordinary is part of the attraction and in that is acceptance of risks.

@Andrew Fogarty. Could you,or anyone else who owns this gun, comment on their experience as a user?
I would love to hear your thoughts especially regarding versatility, maintenance and reliability.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
 
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No hand pump will not worry me, so I purchased the gun myself and will be taking it apart once I get my hands on it. As a 62 cm model,. which is an “itty-bitty” size gun, it will be interesting to see if it floats after the shot.
 
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The seller is Pelengas, it seems;-). Perhaps they bought one to check compability with their own parts or just to check what the "opposition" was up to. Nothing wrong in that. Perhaps they bought the smallest gun not only because it suits river hunting but it seems unused, so if they were
just using it to check parts why spend more money on a longer one. Or maybe I am way off, just thought it was fun to see who the seller was.

As for whether it will float or not, I'd like to see as well. Maybe you can even ask the seller before bidding? That way, we will know whether you win the auction or not;-). I keep thinking of how I have seen a few pics of people adding floatation to one of these (a longer one, I would say) which honestly was a little bit disconcerting but then again, I really like my guns neutral - even with shaft in.

[EDIT] I saw the auction ended - did you win/buy it?
 
The seller is Pelengas, it seems;-). Perhaps they bought one to check compability with their own parts or just to check what the "opposition" was up to. Nothing wrong in that. Perhaps they bought the smallest gun not only because it suits river hunting but it seems unused, so if they were
just using it to check parts why spend more money on a longer one. Or maybe I am way off, just thought it was fun to see who the seller was.

As for whether it will float or not, I'd like to see as well. Maybe you can even ask the seller before bidding? That way, we will know whether you win the auction or not;-). I keep thinking of how I have seen a few pics of people adding floatation to one of these (a longer one, I would say) which honestly was a little bit disconcerting but then again, I really like my guns neutral - even with shaft in.

[EDIT] I saw the auction ended - did you win/buy it?
Yes, it was actually a buy it now, not an auction. About $500 plus from LG-Sub, but the Pelengas Store sold it for a little over $300 including shipping. A bit small and in that size I would rather use my "Taimen", however it looked like Hell would freeze over first before anyone else here was going to buy one. I will be able to dismantle one now without having to shell out upwards of $800! Personally I would not normally buy one of these because guns like the "Predathor" will do anything that the LG can do at a fraction of the price.
 
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I checked on the LG Sub website and the hand pump is an extra as you don't get one with a gun, however that is maybe not surprising as the guns use the Mares pump! That is fine by me as I have a lot of Mares hand pumps.
LG Sub hand pump.jpg
 
The LG-Sub arrived today and I immediately threw it into the bath tub. The gun floats muzzle up with the grip handle on the bottom and in deeper water probably floats vertically with the muzzle up, but I need something deeper to try it out in. The black plastic (Delrin) grip handle bears machining marks, so LG-Sub definitely mill it out of the solid which in my view looks nice, but is entirely unnecessary. Plus it adds significantly to the cost. The muzzle has some gouges where a spanner was used in an attempt to unscrew it, but slipped instead rather than budging it and that is why it is marked. No sign of immersion except for its dip in my bath tub where it still sits even as I type this.
 
Well although I do not really want, or need one of these, I purchased a near new one secondhand on eBay, a 62 cm which will be OK as the ends of the gun are what I am most interested in checking out. Bigger models surely do float as there is a longer run of tank to provide buoyancy to the gun. First impression is the quality is excellent, but milling everything, including the plastic grip handle from stock, is needlessly expensive to do and makes the Manilu "Revolution" very expensive to buy. Especially when it is a single power gun, even in the longer sizes than this small version.
 
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Looks like LG-Sub “borrowed” DG's idea for an internal reflection illuminated gun sight as here it is in its ruby red glory on the nose of the Manilu "Revolution"! https://forums.deeperblue.com/threads/fiber-optic-sights-for-pneumatic-speargun.106583/
LG-Sub front sight 1R.jpg

LG-Sub front sight 2R.jpg

Something to keep in the shade as in my experience red colors bleach out over time in strong sunlight and the sunlight here can be merciless as you stagger back to your vehicle in the beachside carpark longing for a tree with a lot of leafy foliage to collapse under.
 
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Like many of us here I read all the material on the LG-Sub website when the Manilu “Revolution” guns first appeared, but had not revisited it for over a year. On just reading it now I find it considerably changed and revealing on-line what I had been wanting to find out by either buying a gun, or preferably waiting for someone else to do so.

The LG-Sub Manilu "Revolution" is a Mamba type pneumovacuum gun as when I picked up the spear shaft the line side seemed rather sticky, so I lightly greased the shaft and then it moved much better, but I then realized that the line slide must contain a seal. There is another seal in the muzzle to bear on the outside of the line slide which is made of Delrin by machining plastic rod. Examining the gun closely I see that all the gun’s plastic parts, including the reel, bear no mold parting lines because the Italians have machined each and every part from solid plastic stock!

Usually when you make plastic speargun parts you machine a highly expensive injection molding die once, maybe twice if you find that you have to change the die for some technical reason or a molding requirement. This mold manufacturing expense is your "set up" cost and after that and with the molding conditions (temperature and pressure) all sorted the parts are pumped out every time the injection molding die opens.

On the Manilu "Revolution” you cut them all out with multi-axis milling machines, fabricating every part, including the removable plastic delrin cover on the spear tip! AND that makes for a very, very expensive speargun. Why do it? Well you can have surface detail which would not make parts easy to extract from a mold as the parts would foul, otherwise necessitating mold inserts that withdraw in a particular order during mold cycling to release them, but is that extra detailing really worth it? Personally I have my doubts, but there is no questioning the quality of those parts. As for the metal components I assume the same applies, but that awaits opening the gun up.
 
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Another expensive touch is the gold lettering name on the gun is not a sticker as such, it is laser cut lettering daisy-chained together where the capital letters overlap and the same goes for the LG-Sub logo in white with red, white and green elements which are also all laser cut and no doubt applied with a peel off backing to keep the correct spacing when a humble vinyl sticker on a transparent film would have done much the same job. A downside of the cut lettering approach is one piece has already disappeared from the "N” and there is a crinkle misapplication fault in the downstroke of letter "T". For 400 (US$457) Euros everything should be perfect as that is what QA is there for. Incidentally replacement stickers are available at 5 Euros each!
lg-sub sticker 3.jpg
lg-sub sticker (2).jpg
 
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