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Taimen - Russian pneumovacuum speargun

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.

Yes, Mihail had asked me if he could use Tomba slider. Of course I had nothing against that request. That slider on a picture is an earlier slider, according to its shape. New sliders are shorter and I use different knot which is more secure than that on a photo. All my sliders are made in ertaceral, not steel. Steel is to heavy.
 
Pete, maybe you haven't seen this video before.

[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k_Hr0OGtGxE&feature=player_embedded]ОбÑлуживание подводного Ñ€ÑƒÐ¶ÑŒÑ Ð¢Ð°Ð¹Ð¼ÐµÐ½ÑŒ - YouTube[/ame]
 
My "Taimen" speargun has not arrived. The package tracking is showing it as having left Russia in mid-November, after requiring to be reshipped due to a problem at Russian Customs the first time. Spearguns are not a prohibited item, but the person checking the package does not always know that fact and sends the item straight back to the sender, which is exactly what happened. If spearguns were prohibited items then there would be no "Seabear" (Pirometr "RP") pneumatic spearguns outside Russia, but there are hundreds of them and I even have one of them myself, which came from the USA where there was an official distributor for them back in the nineties. A "Seabear" is a Polar Bear, which is an unusual name choice for a speargun, but then the "Taimen" is named after a Salmon! The images of the captured Salmon inside the user handbook show them to be big fish. As a matter of interest the "Taimen" user handbook is being produced in an English language version, I have seen a draft version of it after I sent them a copy of my own translation of the booklet.

The "Taimen" company has been good to deal with, the delivery problems are not their fault. They are checking to see what happened as having ostensibly left Russia all we really know is that is where the barcode on the package was last scanned. No sign of it arriving here or going through our own Customs, in fact I rang both agencies to check the situation and was told that the package had not been sighted. They confirmed that the barcode would be scanned upon entry and exit from any parcel handling area as a matter of course, so it is not here yet. If someone erroneously put it into the surface mail (by ship) then the delivery time could be 6 to 7 weeks according to Australia Post. However that time is about up and then there is the absence of the barcode scanning results appearing on any entry to Australia.
 
Still no sign of my "Taimen" gun, but on a query to the local post office, who have to deliver it at this end to my PO Box, I was told that this sort of delay was not unusual!! Hard to know how much of what you are told is "public relations" spin and what is the actual truth. Back in Russia the shipping trail only gets followed up after 6 months have elapsed when you can lodge an official complaint. I would say after 6 months any trail would well and truly have gone cold.
 
The parcel has finally arrived! The package appears to be totally unopened and undamaged. I was about to give up on any hope of it ever arriving, then there it was, it had just arrived at my post office box today!
 
Reactions: foxfish
Great news Peter!
Good luck hunting in the seaweed. Please let us know what your impression of the gun is and how it peforms.
Jegwan
 
Yes, I was beginning to think it had got lost after all this time.

I opened up the "Taimen" handle and found that the floatation element inside the rear grip section is now a grey coloured cast object, looks like rigid polyurethane foam, which replaces the open cell foam used in the first edition of the guns, so the rear handle assembly now floats like a cork when dropped in a bucket of water. The piston is like a little jewel and very light to hold, with shiny titanium body, a single "O" ring and a bright orange polyurethane bush on the front. As I suspected the metal core of the piston is visible when looking in from the front end of the polyurethane bush, so that metal core drives hard up against the spear tail during the shot.

I purchased 5 extra muzzle seals as these things eventually wear out, they are an interesting shape, but being black the details are hard to show in a photo, but I am working on it. You are advised to put a tiny amount of grease on them for assistance with seal lubrication, basically a light smear delivered with a suitably smooth object, plus an occasional wiping of the spear shafts with an oily rag. Something that maybe all pneumo-vacuum guns could do with.
 
Chelyabinsk, which is where the "Taimen" is manufactured, was recently rocked by an exploding meteor that streaked through the skies over the city. You can watch it here and see the fireball breaking up into several fragments http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gT7WNybNKEc. If it had hit all in one piece then it would probably have destroyed the city as the original mass of the meteor was estimated at 10 tons and travelling at 54,000 kilometres per hour when it first entered the Earth's atmosphere. Windows were shattered throughout the region causing many injuries from flying glass as the giant shockwave, which was of nuclear weapons magnitude, traversed the surrounding area followed by that of several explosions as the remaining pieces either disintegrated in turn or hit the ground.

Maybe "Taimen" should bring out a commemorative "meteor survivor" edition of the gun.
 
I have not seen this video yet. It seems like something from back side had arrived and hit the meteor (14 s).
 
tromic said:
Pete, could you use this for Taimen?

ImageShack® - Online Photo and Video Hosting
Click to expand...

The "Taimen" muzzle seals are one-piece rubber moldings made to fit the interior of the muzzle, I would be surprised if anything else was exactly of the same dimensions. They are a stepped washer on the exterior and inside the bore has a small lip right near the front face that is the actual running seal on the spear, the lip is recessed slightly inwards from the front face. The rear outer flange or step of the rubber seal body is also a shock absorber washer, it works in conjunction with the polyurethane bush on the piston and "O" ring no. 11 on the damper's metal body tube, but the "O" ring is small, so I doubt that it absorbs any energy. The key to the "Taimen" is the very light piston, it reduces the mass halted at the muzzle, plus the spear is not jammed in the piston face, it just sits there. I can see why they made the piston body out of titanium, there is less length of rubber being compressed when the muzzle is struck by the piston than in say a "Sten", so they minimized the travelling mass. The piston looks a bit longer in the metal shank than it was before, it slides in a 10 mm ID inner barrel, so is rather small.

I was told by the "Taimen" company that they are making a new rear handle so the gun can be used by left handed divers and will be more suitable for hunting in winter (ice and snow, so thick dive gloves are required). There is a photo in their gallery of a handle with a smaller volume lower grip which is less highly angled than before, so I suppose that is it, or at least a prototype molding as the production mold is now being made.
 
Russians, Ukrainians often make unusual designs of their guns quite different from Italian, just to have very light piston. Some of that pistons are all in plastic and are just 3 g. With so light piston shock absorber is not critical, just a few mm of polyurethane washer is sufficient. Piston in Cyrano is about 8 g.
 

If the mushroom tail or the shank snaps on an all-plastic piston then the gun shoots. I have seen them as well, they usually have a larger diameter tail end with a small step or flange on the mushroom head for the sear tooth to catch onto. Forward latching guns don't need a tail on the piston, so they can be all plastic, but I would not want to trust the other types.
 

One of the other types is Inalex Alpha C1 speargun. That kind of plastic pistons are usually for 13 mm barrel. Than the mushroom tail OD could be higher.
 
The "Inalex Alpha C1" is a releasing valve gun, so the piston needs no tail, as the trigger controls a ball that locks into the annular groove on the captive piston that is the releasing valve body. We seldom see releasing valve spearguns today like the GSD "Dynamic" and "Katiuscia" models, they had tailless pistons too.

Going back to the "Taimen" I can easily measure the piston as I ordered a spare one. The extreme tail is a conical shape, like a pointy mushroom head, most likely for air flow around it as the piston departs from the sear tooth which is a transverse hole in a vertical sliding column, the "tooth" being the step created by the edge of the hole due to the larger annular recess directly behind it. So the hole in the sear will be slightly larger than the diameter of the base of the cone which is 6 mm. Now the "Taimen" has a 10 mm ID inner barrel, so the hole in the sear, which must be slightly larger than 6 mm to let the tail escape from it, throttles the air flow in the gun. The spear being held by the muzzle seal stops the piston wobbling in the inner barrel even though the piston only has one "O" ring and is located about in the centre of it. Here is a photo of the surprisingly tiny "Taimen" piston.
 

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Interesting piston. Can you measure how heavy it is!
Here is a interesting gun having tailless piston too, Zelinka:



I like this design! It seems to be simple.
 
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tromic said:
Interesting piston. Can you measure how heavy it is!
Click to expand...

The "Taimen" piston weighs 4 grams. I weighed it on some kitchen scales. A "Cyrano" piston weighed on the same scales as a reference is 8 grams. The scales were of the spring type, so not very good precision. Both pistons placed together on the scales weighed 12 grams.
 

It is very light. Some all in plastic pistons has 3 g. In such cases shock absorber is not a critical part. What is normal working pressure of Taimen? It is 10 mm barrel, right?
 
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