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.
----- Original Message -----
Sent: Thursday, March 31, 2005 5:58
PM
Subject: [PSUBS-MAILIST]
Spearfishing
I think I should explain the main reason I
am so excited about spearfishing from a 1Atm. sub.
Grandchildren!!!. I am approaching an age very quickly where
spearfishing on scuba will not be possible without being selfish and unfair
to my diving friends. On my last trip, I had to surface on my son's
octopus because I let my air get too low watching him fight a fish
I speared and couldn't fight. He could have stayed down
and fished for another 30 minutes on the air he had left, but following safe
diving practices, which I didn't do, he knew he had to bring me to the
surface and abort the dive. Don't get me wrong, I'm not feeling sorry
for myself, I'm just fighting for any chance I can to maintain a
lifelong connection I have had with the sea and have passed on to my
children and hope to some day pass on to my grandchildren. As a
boy I free-dove for crabs and octopus on the island of Crete when my
dad was stationed there for the US Air Force. My
dad took me to the many coral reefs around the island and taught me to
snorkel and not be afraid of scary things like crabs and octopi
(sp?). Back then I could hold my breath for almost 3 minutes
and stay down twice as long as my father. I was raised an American
Hunter, my father was a competition shooter for the USMC and later the
USAF, I only remember him hunting one time in my life, it was a
dovehunt set up by an uncle. However, he filled my life with
stories of hunts he had been on in younger days. I think it's a
cultural thing, like oyster diving or folk-dancing. Spear-fishing is a
natural extension of that upbringing. Time passed, I showed my son and
daughter the same things (my daughter didn't care for it, my son did and
that's OK). I want to introduce my grandchildren, I
have four now, to a world I grew up in and which so many others
take for granted. I have the utmost respect for marine life and
more importantly marine ecosystems. I firmly believe that Grouper
that I have personally taken tastes infinitely better than store bought
grouper. I am a good cook, especially when it comes to "wild
game". I have taught my children that killing anything
for a thrill is wrong. I also taught them that hunting is not
wrong but must be done with a certain finesse and taking a whole
lot of responsibility into account. I have never left game to
rot. Certainly there are more challenging ways for younger men in
better shape to hunt and I have tried or done a lot of them.
I am more serious about building a psub than you can imagine, my wife thinks
I'm crazy but it WILL be done before I turn 60. I fully intend to
give my grandchildren "rides" as they get old enough and eventually
take them hunting, if I can and they want to. And someday, maybe
I can watch them hunt on scuba from the comfortable environment of a 1Atm
sub.
My Sincerest Regards,
Cliff