New Salvimar pneumatic gun spear tails and sliders or line slides.

[popgun pete]

The 2024 Buyer's Guide from Salvimar has this listing of new spear tails and sliders for their pneumatic spearguns.

The 45 degree angle on the face of the spear stop diameter and the matching rear face on the stop ring is to create a better passage through the vacuum cuff with the high speed exit of the shaft. A soft face in polyurethane has been used on spear tail stops by companies such as Taimen, it will be interesting to see if these 45 degree angled faces hammer up with repeated blows. Some of my shafts have developed angled faces due to being hammered, they once were 90 degree stops. The transformation was caused by stop rings jamming on the shafts and having to be bashed free, not always possible in the water and spelt the end of shooting with that gun and another brought into action, usually a shorter spare gun. Always carry two guns on a dive.

These new inox sliders may only take mono, but I hope they will take woven line as mono can be cut on some bottom situations and with a knick in the skin of the mono the strength plummets. Like a cut in a tomato.

 

[tromic]

The 2024 Buyer's Guide from Salvimar has this listing of new spear tails and sliders for their pneumatic spearguns.
View attachment 59688
The 45 degree angle on the face of the spear stop diameter and the matching rear face on the stop ring is to create a better passage through the vacuum cuff with the high speed exit of the shaft. A soft face in polyurethane has been used on spear tail stops by companies such as Taimen, it will be interesting to see if these 45 degree angled faces hammer up with repeated blows. Some of my shafts have developed angled faces due to being hammered, they once were 90 degree stops. The transformation was caused by stop rings jamming on the shafts and having to be bashed free, not always possible in the water and spelt the end of shooting with that gun and another brought into action, usually a shorter spare gun. Always carry two guns on a dive.

These new inox sliders may only take mono, but I hope they will take woven line as mono can be cut on some bottom situations and with a knick in the skin of the mono the strength plummets. Like a cut in a tomato.

I guess these stainless steel sliders will be a bit too heavy..

 

[popgun pete]

I guess these stainless steel sliders will be a bit too heavy..

My thoughts too, they are for use with and without the 45 degree angle tail stop rings. When accelerated by being hit by the spear tail we know what can happen as you saw with one of your Tomba experiments.

 

[tromic]

My thoughts too, they are for use with and without the 45 degree angle tail stop rings. When accelerated by being hit by the spear tail we know what can happen as you saw with one of your Tomba experiments.

I prefer the solution with a hydro damper, without a stop ring as Penengas has, or my Salvimar-Tomba adapter for Salvimar kit.
From 10:00 in video...

 

[popgun pete]

The hydro damper is evidently something they don't know about yet as a prevention against spear tail damage and stop ring jamming, the sole reason for its being. No damage on the spear tail means no carving up of the vacuum cuff, something that they do know about as otherwise they would not have tried the 45 degree angle step shoulder on the tail diameter.

 

[JonathanT]

The 2024 Buyer's Guide from Salvimar has this listing of new spear tails and sliders for their pneumatic spearguns.
View attachment 59688
The 45 degree angle on the face of the spear stop diameter and the matching rear face on the stop ring is to create a better passage through the vacuum cuff with the high speed exit of the shaft. A soft face in polyurethane has been used on spear tail stops by companies such as Taimen, it will be interesting to see if these 45 degree angled faces hammer up with repeated blows. Some of my shafts have developed angled faces due to being hammered, they once were 90 degree stops. The transformation was caused by stop rings jamming on the shafts and having to be bashed free, not always possible in the water and spelt the end of shooting with that gun and another brought into action, usually a shorter spare gun. Always carry two guns on a dive.

These new inox sliders may only take mono, but I hope they will take woven line as mono can be cut on some bottom situations and with a knick in the skin of the mono the strength plummets. Like a cut in a tomato.

Hi Pete, if I am understanding you correctly, you are referring to the stop slide ring that gets stuck either onbthe shaft itself or at the base of the spear right at the connection between where the butt end screws onto the shaft. Am I understanding you correctly?
I have had some issues like both of these scenarios. What I done that temporarily worked is to drill thru the stop ring a few times carefully. To fix the stop ring getting caught at the base of the spear I unscrewed the butt end and out a washer there, then I grinded the washer down to the same size of the butt end, and that seems to have worked for now. As the issue was the gap between the butt end and spear that was created by continued smashing of the ring stop to butt end. I'll upload a pic, I actually grinded slightly on the butt end, so one needs to be very careful when doing it ..

 

[JonathanT]

And with those angle stop rings does the 45° face the tip of the spear or the base of the spear?

 

[popgun pete]

And with those angle stop rings does the 45° face the tip of the spear or the base of the spear?

It faces the butt of the spear, the idea is impact is taken over the entire surface as they hit. The matching 45 degree angle is so that when the spear tail strikes the vacuum cuff on the way out it progressively spreads the cuff rather than catching it with a right angled corner. It is that sharp right angle, often hammered up to be even sharper, that catches and tears up vacuum cuffs. Taimen, who pioneered this equipment, use a polyurethane bush on the shaft tail stop for that reason.

When the bush starts to show wear you just replace it, the transverse hole in the extreme tail allows a rod to be used to unscrew the tail and then do it back up again with a new bush. You don't want any scratches on the spear or its tail, these surfaces need to be very smooth.

 

[popgun pete]

Hi Pete, if I am understanding you correctly, you are referring to the stop slide ring that gets stuck either onbthe shaft itself or at the base of the spear right at the connection between where the butt end screws onto the shaft. Am I understanding you correctly?
I have had some issues like both of these scenarios. What I done that temporarily worked is to drill thru the stop ring a few times carefully. To fix the stop ring getting caught at the base of the spear I unscrewed the butt end and out a washer there, then I grinded the washer down to the same size of the butt end, and that seems to have worked for now. As the issue was the gap between the butt end and spear that was created by continued smashing of the ring stop to butt end. I'll upload a pic, I actually grinded slightly on the butt end, so one needs to be very careful when doing it ..

A very powerful gun, like a 100 bar "Black Sea" gun, will slam the shaft tail so hard into the stop ring that after a few shots the stop ring will jam on the shaft tail stop diameter. This is because the stop ring goes from zero to 45 metres per second instantaneously. You need to carry a short metal tube that you can slip over the shaft tail and bash the stop ring free with the hammer butt on your dive knife. Reversing the stop ring you can get a bit more use out of it before you throw it away for another one. The Alcedo Hydra manufacturer considered line slides and stop rings as consumables, they too are 100 bar guns, and up! Heavy duty use only.

 

[popgun pete]

The reality is fish can be shot successfully with weapons of relatively modest power provided you get to about 12 feet away from them. Getting closer is always preferable to heavy artillery unless the fish is going to be hard to penetrate and by that I mean shooting it in the head, but away from the gill plates. Some fish you will never get through those structures, they are tough for a reason as they protect fishes all important gills, any damage there they are in trouble and bleed profusely. Twenty feet is a long shot underwater, spears slow and angular aiming errors are magnified as you get further away from the nose end of the gun. You can reduce those errors with a long gun due to its greater sighting radius.