My first major nerf mod was a BBUMB + Longstrike integration, and its still a very popular choice for people getting started with modding, and with good reason, the end result is quite the useful blaster, and the skills you will learn in constructing it are invaluable. However, there does seem to be a definite lack of guides on making them, enter, my BBUMBStrike writeup!

Firstly, I do not claim that any of this is my original work, BBUMBStrikes have been around for a while now, all ive done is go through the method i use to give people a good starting point.

The blaster I’ll be making here is a replica of my first BBUMBStrike, which was constructed with the help and guidance of the SNW community, specific thanks go to Ryan Giles (for guidance on the internal layout), and  John Pham (for the breech).

So, lets begin

WHAT YOU’LL NEED

PARTS

1x Buzz Bee Ultimate Missile Blaster (or whatever tank you choose)
1x Nerf Longstrike
1m 16mm conduit (See notes on conduit)
1m 20mm conduit
1x 20mm conduit coupling
fishing line (i use sport fisher 0.35mm braid line from kmart, but anything similar that is hard to snap will work)
lots of patience

NOTES ON CONDUIT

The brand of conduit can make or break your blaster, different brands can have vastly different quality.
For Nerf purposes I (and most experienced SNW modders) recommend either Keyplas (My personal favourite) or Vindex, both of these can be found at different electrical wholesalers, and i recommend you call around and ask exactly what brands a particular shop has.
The only brand that Bunnings stocks is Aussieduct, and quite honestly it causes more problems than its worth. Some people have gotten lucky, and had no problems with particular lengths, but I’ve found it to be incredibly unreliable. I definitely recommend that you avoid it like the plague.

TOOLS/SUPPLIES…. Cam this is the bit you need

Dremel (I use the Ozito rotary tool from Bunnings)
Dremel attachments: cutting disks, grinding disks, pointed grinding wheel, small drill bit
Pipe cutter
Safety glasses
Tarzan grip
2 part epoxy (i use Sellys)
Electrical Tape
H4000 silicone spray
Permanent marker

OK, got everything? Good, let’s get started!

STEP 1: DISASSEMBLE BLASTERS

 Presenting, our two blasters.

On top, the Longstrike (ignore the paint job, after we’ve made our BBUMBStrike, we’ll be repainting it)
And below, the Buzz Bee Ultimate Missile Blaster.

Now, raise them both to your altar and sacrifice them to foamdar.

Upon opening the Longstrike, this is what you will find.

Take out everything and throw it wherever you like, just keep the trigger, the front barrel attachment (the orange piece on the far left) and the stock clips.

Next open up the BBUMB, the tank and pump (pictured below) will just lift straight out.

Before you go any further, check your tank for any problems, and if that pipe isn’t properly attached to the tank (where you can see the pink on this one) then attach it with some Tarzan grip. The pump will not be permanently attached to the tank, don’t worry about that right now, we’re going to tend to that later.

STEP 2: GETTING THE INTERNALS READY

First things first, SAFETY GLASSES, trust me, getting plastic shavings in your eyes isn’t fun, and there’s going to be lots of plastic flying around from here on out.

Now to get the tank fixed up, the first thing we need to do is get rid of that black tubing, time to whip out your dremel with a cutting wheel on it.

Be very careful here, the plug on the tank sticks out a small way into this pipe and you don’t want to damage it, cut the pipe a short way up to start.
Next grab a hold of the pin on the back, and pull the plug back, this way you can cut the rest of the black tube without damaging the plug.

When you’re done, you’ll end up with this:

Our next step is to attach a 20mm coupling to the end of the tank, this is what will hold the barrel in place, lightly sand the area around the plug, then apply Tarzan grip ONLY around the base of this section.

You don’t want any glue ending up inside the tank or on the plug.

Press the coupling on and let it dry, this is what you will end up with.

STEP 3: MAKE IT FIT

This next step is the part where you really need to take your time, if you dremel carefully enough, the tank and pump will sit inside the shell without having to be glued to anything. I find the best way with any integration is to visualise how the tank will fit in then slowly grind away until it does, so, take your tank and lay it out how it will fit inside.

I recommend trimming up the pump a bit to make your life a little easier, be sure not to cut into it, just remove the lip that was used to hold it in the original shell so it looks like this.

There is also a small tab that sticks out on the tank itself, cut that away CAREFULLY, you don’t want to damage the tank itself, for this reason, i recommend not touching the other little ridges on the tank.

Next, you want to make sure that your tank is straight with the front of the blaster, the easiest way to do this it to use the barrel attachment we kept before. So take your 20mm conduit, feed it though this, then push the end into the conduit coupling on your tank.

But oh noes! It doesn’t fit!

Time to make it fit, take your dremel with the small cylinder grinding tip and grind away until the conduit goes through, again, take your time, you want it to be *just* big enough for the conduit to go through, otherwise it’ll do nothing to hold everything straight. In the end, this is what you’ll have.

Now, finally time to go to town on your Longstrike shell!
So get in there and cut and grind away until the tank and pump sit in flat, remember, take it slow, you don’t need to grind away absolutely everything. By the time you’re done you’ll have something like this.

As you can see, there’s a notch cut out of the side under where the jam door normally is, this is for the lip on the tank.

Once you have everything fitting in this side…

Grab the other half and mirror it.

Don’t forget to cut a window at the back for the pump handle, make sure its not too big, it needs to be big enough to fit the rod, but not bigger than the pump head itself.

Test that the pump is sliding properly, and you’ll realise that air is escaping somewhere, this is because the pump isn’t permanently attached to the tank in the stock BBUMB shell, but is held in by the shell itself. This works for us because it means we can twist the pump and tank around to get them in the ideal spot in the shell.

Since we now have our layout sorted, its time to take some Tarzan grip and attach the pump properly, ensure that you only put the glue around the base of this section of the pump.

Press the pieces together in the shell to ensure they are aligned properly, then take it out and hold it until the glue starts to cure (it should only take a few minutes) this is just to stop glue dripping in your shell.

STEP 4: LINK IT UP

Now we need to get a trigger working
To do this we’re going to attach the Longstrike trigger to the pin on the back of the tank using fishing line.
My personal preference is this braid line (you can get it at Kmart for about $10)

Firstly you will need to make a hole in your trigger, use the smallest drill bit that came with your dremel.

Then take a length of your braid line and attach it to the pin on the tank.

You want it to be as tight as you can get it without actually pulling the pin out. Once its connected you can close up the shell and test it out.

STEP 5: ASSEMBLE THE BREECH

Home stretch now!
After checking that your pump and trigger are working there’s just one more thing to do before we can start firing darts! And that is to build the breech. Credit to John Pham for showing me this breech design.

Basically the way it works is that the 20mm conduit is permanently attached to the coupling on the tank, a window for the darts is then cut in to the 20mm conduit, so to reload you will pull the 16mm conduit up past the window, put in a dart, then push the 16mm conduit back down, which will scoop up the dart and push it all the way back to the tank.

Firstly you should already have the 20mm conduit attached right in the the coupling on the tank, if you didn’t already, make sure its pushed in as far as it can go. Then slide the barrel extension over it, and mark how high up it comes, then remove the extension and use your pipe cutter to cut the 20mm conduit about 5-10cm away from the end of the extension. It will end up about this long.

Now put the extension back on, and slide your 16mm conduit down into the 20mm conduit, and push it all the way back to the tank.

It’s not terribly scientific but the general consensus is that if your 16mm conduit goes a few cm past the end of the barrel extension, then its right on the perfect length for a BBUMB.

You should end up with something like this.

Next up is the aforementioned window that lets you load the darts in. The exact angle you put this at is entirely up to you, but i recommend you put the window close to the end of the base blaster so that when you pull out the barrel extension and the 16mm conduit, there is enough 20mm conduit to hold it there while you load a dart.

Once you have decided exactly where its going, mark out a rectangle.

Then cut it out with the cutting wheel on your dremel. Be sure to test load a dart and widen the window if you need to.

Reaming out the end of the 16mm conduit will help to scoop up the darts. For this is use the pointed grinding wheel on the dremel. Apply some of the silicone spray to the outside of it to help it slide in the 20mm conduit

Now, in order to make it easier to pull out the 16mm conduit, we are going to attach it to the barrel extension. But as you can see, the 16mm conduit is much smaller than the barrel in the extension. Our way around this is to take a small section of 20mm conduit (about 2cm is plenty) and slide that over the 16mm conduit, so it sits flush with the end of the barrel extension. Once you have it in the right place, use your 2 part epoxy to make sure it doesn’t go anywhere. To make sure it goes in the right place, use your marker to draw a line at the right level, slide off the 20mm conduit, apply the epoxy just below the line, then push the 20mm conduit back down to the right place.

As you can see, its still not wide enough, so, remove the extension again and bulk out the width with some electrical tape until you can wedge it in to the extension.

Now put the extension back on one more time, then mix up some more 2 part epoxy and use it to make sure that your widened 20mm conduit isn’t going to slide back out again.

Make sure that you give the epoxy at least a day to cure, then attach the extension again and admire your work!

STEP 6: TESTING

Now comes the time to measure the quality of your work, so pump it up, then put your finger over the end of the 16mm barrel and pull the trigger, listen carefully and make sure you cant hear any air escaping, if you do, open it back up and find the leak, if not, you’re all set for pew!

Go blast some foam!

James “Captain Crooks” Armstead entered the SNW scene as an attentive, well-read individual. He quickly became a regular war attendee, cooking barbeques and introducing us to his love of “stampies”. He developed the “whale flopping” technique early in his career, and was soon flopping all about the place. There truly is not a war location that he has not left his mark on (whether it be by flop or poo).

Recognised for his artistic hand and creative mind, as well as his devotion to the group as a whole, Crooks was swiftly elevated to an Administrator position. There, he continues to play an integral role in the design features of SNW’s blog and merchandise. And now, with the departure of the co-founders from the Admin team, he has assumed the role of the Head Administrator of SNW.

As a visionary with the ability to kick lazy dart sweepers in the buttocks, Crooks should be seen as the fearless leader that will take SNW into a new age.

Core statistics:

BBQs cooked: 12

Whale flops: 15 and counting

Stampies: Never you mind. And call a plumber.

Buttocks kicked: Yours

Stampede clips emptied at Echoes without a hit: All

Well the awesome members here at Sydney Nerf Wars have officially kicked off the 2013 season, with our awesome Performance Enhanced War on the 05/01/2013. It was a fun filled day of foam flinging decimation, many members were slain by their beefy blaster wielding opponents. Many others fell victim to the completely devastating  heat and humidity, that mother nature felt we needed so badly.

The first photo in this collection outlines the brave souls that ventured out into the bushland, into certain and imminent danger from all angles. These brave souls will always remember the day, they stood together against each other, for the good of the SNW community (Makes sense right?)

The members of the 05/01/2013 PEW – Geared up and ready to do battle, for the glory of Foamdar!

There were many highlights from the day, most of which never made it to the lens of our photographers. They will however remain burned inside our brains, as an awesome montage of humour and epic skills.. Forever more.
The 2013 season has really kicked off with a mighty bang, and shows that SNW is here to stay. Perpetually growing stronger and stronger, with each and every member that joins our ranks. There are plenty of new adventures in store for the members of SNW 2013, no-one really knows what to expect. But the anticipation is always more exciting than the expectations that we hold, atleast for me anyway.

Our very own Cameron shows off his grace and poise, as he attempts to curtsy mid battle (Sadly the gesture was never returned)

You may be able to out run JT, but you will never out run his akimbo’d stampedes

SNW Co-Founder Echoes, silently stalks his prey with 1 of his red longshots (Yes.. I said “1 of”)

Just a random photo of our attendees doing random acts of nothing.. Make no mistake though, each and every one of them will pwn you in a heartbeat. Especially that lil dude with the snapfire, he’s got a wicked aim!

All your darts are useless when the guardians come to play, their shields are nigh impenetrable.

The honourable admin BFG, attempts to lead his squad to victory. With a stern look on his face, even with Pham making disturbing fart noises to his left.

There lay just a few of our photo’s from the PEW on 05/01/2013. The day was a great success, a true testament to SNW’s foot hold in the nerfing community Australia wide. If by now you’re kicking yourself, wishing you could have been a part of the awesomeness of the day… Well you’re in luck my friends, because our next event will be held only a few short weeks away.

On the 26/01/2013 (Australia Day) we will be hosting a muck around day of sorts.
It will be Psychosis’s Birthday Bash, a day of mucking around and fun fuelled debauchery. There will be a BBQ lunch for all the hungry troopers, and even a filming session for our upcoming SNW propaganda.

So make sure you get yourself over to our facebook page http://www.facebook.com/groups/sydneynerfwars
Like us, and confirm your attendance for this and many other future events.

On behalf of the SNW Admins, and all of our wonderful community members. I’d like to welcome you all to the 2013 Season of Sydney Nerf Wars. We hope to see you all at our future events, after all it is all of you who makes us who we are today. Much love to you all, keep up the wonderful job you’re doing.

Sydney Nerf Wars
Foamdars Faithful 2013