Wednesday 24 June 2015

Quick Mod: Armless Nerf Crossbolt, Removable Arms

Just a quick mod I did to my newly acquired Crossbolt. Review will be done pretty soon now that exams are over.

The Crossbolt's bow arms, while they do add to the bow feel, introduce all sorts of issues such as making priming awkward and uncomfortable (more on that in the upcoming review), and also significantly increasing the width of the Crossbolt, making it a pain for storage and transportation.
Solution? Simply remove the cord from the bow arms, which can be accessed by removing a single screw on the end of each bow arm, and tie them into the hole where the bow arms are inserted into.
Here's a close up of the cord in unprimed position. I've tied it around the top of the hole.
Here's a closer look at my knot and the tied off length. I'm not skilled at knotting, but this knot is tight enough to not become unraveled upon firing. More important to note is the length of the tied off string. A longer tied off length gives more power, but also increases dart damage and risk of misfires/jams. The length I've got here doesn't appear to jam much but still provides decent power.
Here's the cord when fully primed. As you may or may not be able to see the cord dips into the priming track.

Performance is largely unchanged to using bow arms, though it depends a lot on how much you tie off. More importantly, I seemed to be getting inferior accuracy to having the bow arms on, possibly due to how much extra the cord expands/contracts with the armless mod. I'll be tweaking the armless mod to get it up to par with an armed Crossbolt.

Storing and transporting a Crossbolt is a pain thanks to the bow arms sticking out so much. If you're not using an armless Crossbolt though, you'll need the arms to function. Solution? Make the bow arms removable.

Making the bow arms removable is simple. All you need to do is shave off the ridges from where the screwdriver is pointing to. (I'd shaved the ridges off already and covered in e-tape for friction)
As I inserted my bow arms *before* shaving off the ridges, I had to open up the Crossbolt and faff about with a rotary tool to cut off the ridges, so cut off the ridges *before* inserting the bow arms into the Crossbolt. You may need e-tape or a similar material to increase friction if your arms fit in too loose.
There are 4 ridges, two on each arm, one on each side.
And here's my Crossbolt in its current state, with easily removable friction fit bow arms. As I much prefer the ergonomics of not having bow arms at all, I'll probably revisit the armless mod at a later stage.

3 comments:

  1. How many darts in 12 jams on average?

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    Replies
    1. I wouldn't know, I didn't keep precise track and I tinkered with it too much to get some solid counting done. I also didn't keep it in an armless state for too long, as it was being too unreliable.

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  2. Fun fact, you can alleviate most of the slide jams by tying off the string below the barrel rather than above it as you have pictured, because then it pulls down on the slide catch (provided you havnt removed it).

    Also, it seems to misfire with accustrike darts for some reason, regardless.

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