I am pleased to tell you that I have made some progress since then.
So without further ado, here is said progress.
First I took the blaster apart. I want this to be a functioning blaster when I'm finished so I felt it was important to get an inside glimpse so i don't cut through anything vital. Luckily, there was nothing in the way of where I was goin to do the chop chop.
After carefully analyzing the pictures I have, as well as the small number of attempted replicas I found that not nearly as much should be chopped off as other modders have done. (Aside from the fact that a number of them used the incorrect gun [the nitefinder] rather than the scout, which the Alpha Meson Blaster was originally made from) I hope the lines are clear enough that someone else can get what's going on.
Now for the most heavy duty work my cheap harbor freight rotary tool has gone through. I suggest getting an actual dremel, as my cheap tool had a hard time keeping up rpms to cut. The work was a little slow, but in the end, as you can see, the cut came out pretty good and clean. If you look at the original blaster picture, you can see that it is a pretty good placement of chopping lines.
Next, since I'm never happy with stock performance I just had to remove the air restriction. This is fairly easy, but you can break things that shouldn't be broken if you're not careful. First take off the o-ring, but note how much space it had to sit in. (this is very important as it needs to be the same when you glue it back in) I took a small pair of adjustable pliers and lightly squeezed around the base were the air restriction backing is. You'll hear a little cracking, and if you've done it right, that'll just be the glue holding it in. Then I grab the actual backing with the pliers and twist firmly, but just enough until it breaks completely free and comes out.
Next I took a drill bit and completely cleaned out the tube, post and all, and I took my dream with the cutting bit and etched into the notches alongside the backing. The original notches were pretty small and I felt that opening it up a little better would help airflow through.
Now take some super glue (very little is needed) and dab it around the bottom of the backing and put it back into place; remembering the distance needed for the o-ring. if it's too far in, the o-ring will sit high and cause too tight a fit in the plunger. If the distance is too far out the o-ring may move around too much, and might not give a decent seal. The above picture is what it should look like when you're done. Note the increased size of the holes from stock. I don't really dare to go any farther than that. I never read a write up before doing this, and so the hope that it helps came from my own speculation.
For kicks I decided to close up the blaster to see what it would look like. I did the penny mod (in this case I used dimes because pennies are too big) It looked pretty good, and I was lucky to have bought the 2 pack so I could get a good distance comparison.
I used the whistler darts that came with the gun.
(indoor test - level shots)
Stock ranges seemed to be between 20-25 ft.
Modified ranges jumped to about 30-40 ft.
(I did not try shots at angles as of yet because I didn't have much farther of room than the distance the darts went in the modified blaster.)
It was nice to see that the mods all worked out well, and that the scout, which I already thought was awesome, now had a good range to go with it.
I hope this small write up for modding the Scout helps you guys out, and keep watching as I continue to work towards the goal of creating the ultimate replica Alpha Meson Blaster.
What sort of dremel tool would you recommend for trimming the barrel?
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