The Bows Are Back In Town!

So here we have it, the crossbows, internally...nothing but Firestrike pistols or Rough Cut's cut in half.....

Really......?  They are not as similar as you think.

Well Lets look at what they are compared to and then you will see that just isn't the case.

First off, the Firestrike, a pistol I often mod past 12kg's and brass barrels, sure no cpvc, sure no rear reloading, there is a reason, a good one.

but that's another post take a good look, and then I will tell you what pictures don t show, here is a plunger rod of a Firestrike.

It is large, square, and soft like a barbie doll distributing the draw weight via a larger area making a definite limit of yield on a pistol, however, now take a look at the pink crush and it's catch system.

Now look at the Pink Crush, the only identical parts in size are the PT, the Plunger Head, the O ring, hell the AR housing is even made off of diffrent tooling that enabled me not to have to use a piece of twine as a dart stop in the AR housing.  

The Plunger rod is made with a smaller amount of plastic, yet tougher, making the rod in a + configuration that holds the rod more stable from twisting and down-planking.  By default the inlet of the Derlin catch is slanted, and the spring catch is much tougher held in by 4 individual quarters of the blaster.  Only drawback is that you must cut the first coil of a 8Kg swarmfire spring to fit it in.  You could just use a 7Kg strongarm spring and coil a Black Tactical Version 1 Retaliator spring inside of it, but what are you, A GAY!  (now that's just insensitive!)  (EDIT:  I can't believe nobody got the reference of that joke.) 

Now what about the Star Shot?  Probably the same, I wanted to buy one today at Target, but I couldn't bring myself to paying $20 for something a $9.99 pistol can do just as well and I would kick myself for making it just a pistol and not a full out crossbow.  But personally I like it, it looks so much nicer as a Crossbow than a Pink Crush, Even though I wish the bow was not bright cyan, it has an actual bow with a string tied to it rather than a pop off bow look device like the Pink Crush has.  I could care less about the light, but the sight in the front could probably be coupled with a 1/2 inch piece of brass in the back to line up the crossbow with on target, and the target is overkill.  I would perfer less for $15.     

Moving on, the Crossfire, looking around the internet, I found an internal pic, look at it and then I will tell you my verdict.

I have seen 3 in battle, the blaster out of the box is slow and ungainy, To level out the lower 2 barrels from being different they took the top 2 and put holes in the barrels on the top 2 (2 in the 1st barrel, 1 in the second).  Ahh great, lets just make the whole thing slow all barrels!  Makes no nevermind to me however, 4 precicely tested and fitted pieces of 17/32nds will fix that! And no gears as the Roughcut 2x4 has (a great integration blaster.)

A 7Kg Strongarm Spring according to OMW Facebook page brings the velocity up to 88 feet per second with a 10 fps spread from top to bottom.  88 fps, are you kidding? and I don't blame OMW, I blame Nerf for not giving it enough clearance to throw an 8 Kg swarfire spring in there (which by default means also at least a Black tactical Retaliator V1 spring in the center coil, first sign of bad news).

Next is the Plunger itself, a strong arm plunger, nice it is derlin plastic, as well as the catch, but it has a big block where the draw handle reaches it.  They could have put it farther back as to not limit what size springs it uses, but then this just wouldn't be a Nerf product, would it?

The plunger volume is set by the catch on the rod and on the trigger set to about 2-2.125, a firestrike is 2.5, i make em with no dead space, however lots of dead space in the front where the smart AR's are, this means, 16Kg's will be like 12 Kg's, no matter, a 12Kg Triad with even less air area can do 100-120 flat.  So mine will probably be 18 or 20 Kg's maybe 130-140 flat,  hell I have 2-20 kg spring sets already, why not?

Also look at the New Bows on My Last Darts page, as well as the new stuff at the UK toy fair, I figure he has the low down better than I could, so take a good look 

--Cartaya