More Paintball stuff...

Hokai, so I was always a kind of tinkerer. Um... I mean... I always tinkered with things... shut up. What's kind of odd about paintball is that there's not a lot of amazing innovation going on. This makes it common for you to see someone with a custom marker, or a customized addition to their marker. So to begin with, you have open air for inventors.

And invent they did. Every once in a while you find about someone who knows someone who had a neat idea, some expensive tools at their disposal, and a block of aluminum. Bam! They've got a great idea, a prototype, a patent (hopefully) and a distributer willing to purchase that patent from them!

Yeah, I know it doesn't always work out like that, but just let me have this...

Hence, ideas have been pouring through my mind on how to improve, customize, streamline, etc. any aspect of paintball! My most recent (and hopefully fruitful) idea was what I'm calling the spring top tube.

A cigar tube loader that has a spring loaded top. But, the hinge is between the middle and back of the loader, and has a piece of plastic (about 30 degrees of a circle) extending from the hinge to the end of the tube with a flat circular top at the end. This way the tube could be held closed by being held in the harness, and then by your hand when you remove it. When it's close to the feed tube, you can release pressure on the "arm" and the arm will pop away from the tube, and so will the top attached to it. This will give enough clearance to stick the tube into the feed tube enough to get past the rubber stopper thingy. Then, a little bit of pressure closes it back to a small cigar tube, and it fits right back into the harness. Those stupid cigar tube tops can be annoying to open, to pour, and close and replace to keep dirt out of them while they are in the harness empty.

Cool yes? If not, please don't say anything.

The other idea I had was based on a dream I had a while ago, a few posts back I posted my dream, and as fire... swat... whatever I was, I needed a water gun to put out the fire. We all had what looked like paintball markers that fired water... (to put out the fire) Sigh... Anyways, mine was some kind of phantom-type (no suprise there) that had two vertical air adapters. One where the VSC Phantom would have one, and another in front of that one. Both set with 12 gram adapters (as in the VSC Phantom). Also, it was all chrome, with an annodized green shroud-like thing to cover the sides of the gun. I drew a crude picture of it, maybe I'll post it when I get some free image hosting... And find a scanner.

So this idea (of the double vertical air adapters) made me wonder about how to set up something similar to that... First I wondered if the system would allow two 12 grams to be set on the same line (like a parallel circuit), or if a switch (to select one or the other) would be better. The realization that 12 grams don't function like a normal constant air system kind of rained on the parallel style setup...

12 grams CO2 canisters are like small bottles waiting to give off their gas. The way they are tapped is that they are punctured by a "needle" which causes the gas to push into the system the needle is a part of. The way a parallel style system would work, is that it would be one end of the line going to the power tube, and two ends going to open "needle" ends. It follows that without a way of closing an opening, you can't add the 12 grams one at a time. The best way would be to use valves on both "needle" lines. Insert one or two 12 grams, turn them on, then the other. Got it? If you screw in one 12 gram into one side, since the other side is in the same system, and it's just an open needle, the CO2 would spray out the other needle. You'd have to do them both at exactly the same time, or use valves. I kind of wanted to get away from the use of valves, because they're not particularly attractive. If there was a 12 gram valve that functioned similarly to the constant air systems (pin valve built in), that would work.