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Dear Cliff.
Your story touched me.
Just like Charleston Heston wanted to preserve our
firearm and hunting heritage for future generations, you want to preserve
underwater hunting heritage for your descendants. You want to also enjoy seeing
them enjoy themselves underwater
when you can no longer physically scuba yourself.
I know what you mean about getting older. It gets a
bit harder to do things myself with my 51 year old body. I had to take my double
dive tank rig apart recently to a single because it was
getting just too heavy to dive with what with
supporting the weight and getting in and out of a boat with it with the steel
inserts in my spine.
This old ex marine now a grandpa, has had my left
hand fingers crushed (but now useble), half my right collarbone gone, left
collarbone broken, most of my hair gone, both wrist surgeries, both knee
surgeries with the left one twice, and two spinal surgeries.
I hate getting older! Lol.
I go to pain management for shots into my spine
area when it gets bad. That helps some. But I realize that getting older
means dealing with pain. I try to keep my strength and stamina up by working out
and using the
boxing speed bag. But then my epicondials on both
arms hurt and I have to take medication and get cortizone shots in them! You
can't win against age. But like you I plan to hang in there as long as I
can.
Like you I wonder how many more years I can dive
and do the things I like before age stops me. I think your spearfishing sub is
an excellent idea. Just as you say, it would enable
you to introduce your descendants to the underwater
world and spearfishing at an early age from within the dry confines of grandpa's
submarine. You go guy! I wish you the very best with building your
sub and
achieving your dream. I am very interested in how
you are going to rig the spearguns so you can aim and remotely fire them from
within the sub. Are the spearguns going to be able to pivot and move or will
they be static?
How will your sights be set up? Will each gun have
a light attached to it, possibly a laser dot sight as well?
Will your spearguns be single shot only? Have you
given any thought to making an air powered repeater that loads from a magazine
or even a revolving speargun like a gatling gun type? You could hang a
bunch of baited
hooks all over the sub and catch just as many or
more fish that way, but the remotely fired speargun sounds like a lot more fun.
I hold a patent in the firearms field and am very interested in underwater
personal weaponry.
There is an italian speargun that I forget the name
of right now that is an "over under" two shot speargun. Thus far that is the
only multishot speargun I know that is manufactured for civilian use. The U.S.
navy and a few other
countries have underwater FIREARMS. An
underwater firearm differs from an air or rubber powered speargun in that
it uses a chemical combustion explosion to drive the dart or spear just as a
metalic cartridge does in a standard firearm.
That is why a BB gun, pellet gun, or air or rubber
powered speargun are all NOT firearms. You might run into some legal
problems if you design and use an underwater firearm but you would be just fine
and
fall into the same catagory of any other
spearfisher if you used rubber or air powered spearguns on your sub. I would
suggest air powered. There are two types of air powered spearguns. One drives
the spear with the air which rushes out behind the spear
and obscures your vision for a few seconds. You
lose air when you use this type of speargun. The other air type is also
sometimes known as a hydraulic type speargun. You pump the chamber of your
speargun up and when you
pull the trigger, that air goes into another
cylinder that has a piston that pushes the spear out. The air stays trapped in
the cylinder and does not exit the speargun. Then you can push another spear
into the cylinder and this compresses the air
back into the chamber and makes it ready to fire
again. Every once in a while you have to pump up the gun because of small air
seepage past the o rings.
H & K makes a 5 shot underwater pistol that our
navy seals use. But the Russians stunned our navy guys when we found out they
had an underwater machinegun that looks like a stretched out
AK47 and fires 26 or 27 spear bolts from its
magazine! We have nothing like the Russian weapon. Check out these links
for underwater firearms. They can give you some good ideas. Just remember they
are underwater FIREARMS
and would be considered as such by the coast guard.
I am thinking you might look into building a revolving
speargun similiar to a long pepperbox pistol or gatling gun type of
barrel arrangement without the speed of a gatling of course. Lol. And have it
air powered. Since you cannot exit the
sub to reload there would be no sense in using the hydraulic type of air
speargun since you could not shove the spear back in to recharge it for the next
shot. Or even a rubber powered rotating barrel type of gatling setup which
would be easy to make and use standard
speargun parts. That would be a bit more bulky with all the rubbers
stretched on the spears though. If minimal air loss for say up to 20 shots would
not be a problem, I would go with a gatling rotating barrel arrangement, and
have a valve that the barrels rotated
in front of and stopped in line with so that as in a revolver the air
chamber was lined up with your barrel. If you make this barrel cylinder
arrangement tight enough you will not get much air loss from between the barrel
and air chamber. Plus it would be sleek and
streamline without rubbers stretched all over it. If you like this
arrangement you could make this on your workbench. The only thing is....how are
you going to rotate those barrels and remotely fire the speargun and aim
it?
Were you thinking of having more than one speargun built into your
sub?
I would be very interested in what type of spearguns you decide to design
and build onto your sub. If you ever want someone to bounce ideas off of, I
would be glad to help out.
Kindest Regards,
Bill Akins.
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