by Tom Gaylord
Writing as B.B. Pelletier
Paper Shooter Zombie Slayer.
This report covers:
- Plastic parts and steel screws
- American Airgunner
- Building the second gun
- Paper construction
- Velocity
- Velocity dry
- Velocity wet
- Bullet deformation
It’s been over 2 months since I wrote about the Paper Shooters Zombie Slayer Kit, but I have been doing things with it. Today you learn the back story about my kit and what I’ve learned. Take the time to review Part 1 before reading today’s report, because a lot will be explained today. I’ll begin with plastic parts and steel screws.
Plastic parts and steel screws
In case it hasn’t dawned on you yet, steel screws go into plastic parts in just about any way they want to, and they don’t signal when they are all the way in. It’s real easy to mess up a kit like this one, if you are too ham-fisted with the screwdriver. I mentioned that in Part 1, and now I am reinforcing it. If you want to build this kit successfully, you’d better develop a safecracker’s touch!
I didn’t, and I ruined the first kit. I mentioned that in the report, but I’m emphasizing it now. That’s why you’ll want to re-read Part 1. Let’s set aside the parts that can be assembled incorrectly ( I covered them well in Part 1) and just discuss getting those steel screws tight without stripping them.
American Airgunner
I had a thought about taking the kit on the set of American Airgunner. This would be a great way to show the viewers how an airgun works. To do that, though, I needed to build a kit that actually worked. My first gun did shoot, but it wouldn’t feed the cartridges from the magazine, and the magazine release didn’t work. So I contacted Pyramyd AIR and asked for another kit. They sent me three!
Building the second gun
I built gun number two in half the time the first one took. I now knew what to expect, and I had developed the “safecracker” touch for the screws. No mistakes were made putting this one together. As a result, everything worked right the first time and no disassembly was required. This was the gun I took to film the American Airgunner segment. But I did not finish the assembly, and I want to tell you why.
This is as far as I assembled the gun. It works and all the screws can still be seen.
Paper construction
It may not be obvious in the pictures, but after the base gun is constructed, all the “cool” parts that add dimension are just paper. That’s right, they are paper pieces that stick together and add dimension to the buttstock, the forearm and the receiver. The “sights” and carry handle are all paper parts. I did not want to add them to the base gun because they hide all the screws in the frame that I wanted to show in the episode. So I left my gun in the raw yellow plastic. When I arrived at the American Airgunner set, I discovered that had been a very good idea.
After the base gun is assembled, the rest of the parts are paper stickers. They give dimension to the basic plastic gun, but they have no structural strength.
The film company (5-Star Productions) that films American Airgunner had filmed an ad for the Zombie Slayer guns several months earlier, and they had constructed two guns for that job. Those guns were there when I arrived, so I added them to the segment we filmed. Both guns were non-functional. One never worked after it was built (sort of like my first gun) and the other one would shoot, but would not feed the cartridges. With all the paper parts stuck in place it was impossible to disassemble either of these guns for repairs, because all the screws holding the parts together were covered by the paper stickers. My gun was the only one that functioned 100 percent.
The feel of those two fully constructed guns was cheap and flimsy, in my opinion. The paper parts were soft to touch and did not hold up to much handling. My unfinished gun, by comparison, is much more rugged and functioned perfectly throughout the filming — even when handled roughly by the show host, Rossi Morreale! Once he saw how much fun the gun is, he started taking potshots on the set. That went on for several minutes. They did film all of it and I hope some of that shooting makes it to the air. Because the Zombie Slayer functioned perfectly!
What I learned from Rossi is the Zombie Slayer wants to be operated like a firearm. What I mean by that is the parts want to be cycled rapidly — not babied like I had been doing. Rossi handled it naturally and the gun fed perfectly from the magazine each time.
Velocity
I will have more to say about the Zombie Slayer, but I wanted to get the velocity for you today. Since this is essentially a spitwad shooter, there is really only one ammunition to test, but thanks to some experimentation on American Airgunner, we have two ways to test it — wet and dry. I will explain as we go.
Velocity dry
The first test will be of the paper wads/bullets that are completely dry. You get about 25 with the gun, which lasts until you can make more (see Part 1 and the wad-making mold). I figured I should shoot the wads in a dry state. Let’s do that now.
The wad or “bullet” is seated in the base of a cartridge and pushed in as deep as a finger will push. When the cartridges are all loaded, they are inserted into the magazine that then fits into the gun. Pulling back on the charging handle cocks the gun and loads a fresh cartridge. If a cartridge was already in the barrel, it will be extracted and ejected.
Push a paper bullet into the base of each cartridge.
Cartridges are loaded into the magazine.
Five dry “bullets” averaged 91 f.p.s. The entire string looked like this.
Shot………Vel.
1……………108
2……………..95
3……………..80
4……………..90
5……………..79
Velocity wet
Why wet? Well, I won’t gross you out with the discussion we had on the American Airgunner set, but when we started shooting this gun, all of the crew knew a lot more about it than I did. They call me The Godfather of Airguns on the show, but I guess that doesn’t encompass spitwad guns. All I know is the entire crew knew the gun would shoot better if the “bullets” were moistened before loading.
Laying the bullets in water makes them uniformly wet in seconds.
They placed a saucer of water (yes, I said water — as in the stuff you buy in plastic bottles) on the round table and placed some of the wads in the water. They were properly moisturized within seconds, and then we loaded and shot them. Sure enough, they did seem to go faster and shot farther. I always joke about the guy whose “chronograph” is the screen-door-to-the-hickory-tree, but when the projectile is white and only goes 100 f.p.s., you really can see small differences.
Five wet “bullets averaged 100 f.p.s. The string looked like this.
Shot………Vel.
1…………….97
2…………..109
3…………….81
4…………..108
5…………..103
Obviously wet “bullets” go faster than dry ones. But the uniformity is pretty equal. The dry string has a spread of 29 f.p.s. while the wet string only differs by 28 f.p.s. That’s not much of a difference.
Bullet deformation
I showed the deformation of the paper bullets in part 1. But now that I was wetting them, they deformed much more.
All these bullets were fired, but the three wet ones on the right deformed the most.
There is one more report to come on the Zombie Slayer. Next time I’ll talk about what you can learn from a simple airguns like this.
BB
I’m like totally bum’n right now. And I mean totally. Your a day late or I’m a day early how ever we want to call it.
I placed that order yesterday with Pyramyd AIR for that Brodax and steel mags. I kept think to myself there’s something else I wanted to get when I made my next order. Yes I know I should write me out a want list.
Yes I would of ordered me a zombie slayer yesterday. And you know after reading today’s report I got mods in mind already for it. See what’s happening. I got all my seriuos guns worked out right now. Time for some seriuos fun guns. I will get me one. And I am writing it down on a list. 🙂
Gunfun1,
Why not give customer service a call? It may be possible for them to cancel the order so you can place a new order with the paper shooter added in.
Paul
Paul
Thanks. And I have done that in the past. But then it usually puts the order going out a day later. I have to order by Wednesday morning before noon at the latest to get something by the weekend. Usually I’ll get it by Friday or Saturday.
So that would probably put me getting it by Monday. And I can’t do much durring the week. So wouldn’t get to shoot the Brodax till next weekend. And I get impatient when I make a order. When I order I want it now. Just me.
I have to make a pellet order fairly soon so I put the zombie slayer on the list when I make that order.
Plus that way I can get some shooting time on the Brodax and get it and myself shooting it right. I like modding and tinkering as you know. But I like concentrating my effort on one project at a time. When I get it worked out how I like then I move on to the next project. So when I make that pellet order and get the zombie slayer I can concentrate on getting it working how I want and mod it some.
I already see my zombie slayer getting painted all black. Well except for the orange barrel tip of course. I don’t want somebody mistaking it for a mini AR or something you know. Then I see myself tuning it. Maybe a heavier spring for more velocity. Heck I might even see if some air soft balls will fit in the cartridge’s. Maybe even experment with some salt placed in a paper towel patch and load it in to the cartridge. Then I can have a little splatter shot guns for the bugs. Yep I can see some fun stuff happening with the zombie slayer. 🙂
BB,
I notice that not only is the barrel tip orange, but where the barrel is inserted into the action there is an orange tip also. Can the barrel be removed and it still function? What of the stock? Can it also be removed and it still function as a pistol?
RR,
With the barrel off the bullet will spray everywhere.
Can you leave the stock off? I don’t see why not.
B.B.
Time to start working on Spitwadgage. We can expect to see 10 ft groups, right? Kill shots on stinkbugs and flies? If this will hold up for an entire summer, I want one, too. 🙂
Jerry,
The Spitwadgage? 😉
B.B.
Wet spitwads allow themselves to expand at the base when they are shot giving them a boost in velocity I theorize.
Siraniko,
I thought it was the lubricating effect of the water in the plastic barrel.
B.B.
I think some threaded inserts would make all the difference in the world.
StevenG
You mean like screw in chokes for the barrel. Or screw in rifled inserts for the barrel.
I just mentioned above that maybe a air soft ball will fit in the cartridge’s. Or maybe take a small piece of paper towel and use as a wadding and put some salt in it and load it in the cartridge. Could have a little zombie bug killer.
You know not much talk is done about what the zombie bugs will be like when the zombies attack. They say the bugs will be worse than the people. Can you imagine killer mosquitos that keep mutating bigger and bigger. 😉
I meant to prevent the screws from mangling the plastic. They are metal and glued into plastic. I use them for repairs, but they could be done ahead of time.
StevenG
Ok got ya. We have those at work also. They do work good.
I’ll be interested to see just what one learns from a gun like this. It sounds easier to buy a military surplus rifle than assemble this gun. The product sounds more like a challenge for virtuoso builders than for shooting.
It would appear that I am late to the party for fun reactive targets for the outdoors. Thanks for the suggestions. Exploding dry corncobs will be hard to find, but the small V8 cans sound very intriguing. I hope I can find some as I’ve only seen the large plastic bottles in stores recently. I see a trend online is to shoot bottles full of carbonated soda so that they explode. That seems wasteful and there is no way I would do that to a full bottle of V8 which I really like.
Bulldawg and B-I-L, I wasn’t criticizing the genetics or basic humanity of the German people. I have a fair amount of German ancestry myself, and Germans have been the largest ethnic group in America for the longest time. I was talking more about the perception of the national culture of Germany by many including the Germans themselves, which is full of ironies. One appears at the end of Stephen Ambrose’s popular book, Citizen-soldiers, about American soldiers in the European Theater of World War II. I turns out that after fighting all the way through Europe to get to Germany, the people that the American soldiers liked the most and felt the most kinship with was their recent enemies, the Germans. The Americans never felt quite comfortable with the expectations of British society, and they did not feel connected to the recently liberated French for some reason. But they got along surprisingly well with the Germans. One explanation would be that because of ethnicity and culture, the Americans were more German than they were anything else.
Just got some interesting news about my vision. The tiny holes in my retina are “atrophic” which means they are old and not in danger of further tearing. So, I am cleared for judo! But my vision has deteriorated to 20/60, 20/70. This is not ideal and might explain my M1 groups. What role could vision at this level play in 3+inch groups at 100 yards with iron sights? Maybe there is an equivalence chart one could prepare of vision versus group size that could make us feel better. For instance if a 5 shot group is on average 80% the size of a 10 shot group as we figured out a long time ago, maybe group size X done with vision Y is actually equivalent to group size Z. Heh heh.
Matt61
B.B.,
Thank you for posting the photo of the completed gun without the decals. It makes it possible to actually visualize the actual thing, without the window dressing. The pic also has helped me become undecided again. I had decided against getting one of these because of the busy pattern of the decals, but the skeleton looks almost cool as-is, and with a “steam-punky” black and worn nickel finish, it might turn out to be quite the looker.
Michael
Hello All,
Wondering if anyone else has the same problem…..?
When I fire off the gun the cartridge doesn’t always pop out the gun. more often than not it gets stuck in the chamber.
Does anyone know how to stop this from happening?
Please let me know,
Thanks
BobsUrUncleAintHe
BobsUrUncleAintHe,
Welcome to the blog.
The problem is with the extractor. It may be improperly assembled, which is common. There is a 50 percent chance it’s upside-down.
B.B.
Thanks B.B for the reply I’ll give that a go and update on outcome in due course.