Hello, Nerf-o-philes. My name is JD, and I'm a new guy around here. I introduced myself in the new members forums, and if you have any questions about me in general, you can post them
there.
I joined up here with the intention of showcasing the craft of a hobby I am starting up. My goal is to design, prototype, mold, cast, paint, and eventually sell custom designed re-skins and original Nerf-compatible toy weapons.
This thread here will document the general process of this first build. It's my intention to keep the community abreast of what I am doing and to seek feedback and criticism so that I am creating products that appeal to Nerf community. I have a vision for this hobby, in which I create collectible toy weapons that live in a fun and interesting fiction that feels as though it is a part of the N-Strike universe. I want to develop families of weapons with accessories that are both original and interchangeable with Nerf weapons. I will be housing any commercial products under a division of my business s-corp, More Bit, Inc. I'm thinking of something like More Bit Custom Gaming Arms. I know that sounds awfully serious and official, but I own the business, so why not use it?
It might be prudent to discuss the legality of this hobby as well. I imagine I'm walking a fine line. The point of creating "re-skins" is to ensure that my designs require the purchase of an actual Nerf weapon to customize. In fact, a "re-skin" is intended to be the most extreme case of a cosmetic customization. Weapons that I intend to be 100% custom (including internals) will likely be only superficially compatible with actual Nerf products, such as being designed to shoot Stefans, but will coincidentally accept Nerf darts.
My first design is this, the XB-REV-001 "Low-Barrel":
This is a rough sketch. Obviously it is a Maverick re-skin. I'm sure you can tell there is a lot of unanswered engineering problems here. For one, where will the plunger and charging mechanism be? I have 2 ideas about that. One is to put it into the grip and make part of the grip act as a slide. Another is to lower the cylindrical detail behind the revolver cylinder and fit the plunger in there. The grip should be comparable to the grip size on Nerf guns. Everything is drawn in scale to the Maverick cylinder and plunger. I also glossed over the cylinder axle and loading process. I have plans for including the Maverick loading system, including a cut-out notch that will allow single shots to be directly loaded into the next-up cylinder chamber without releasing the cylinder.
The XB-REV-001 is designed to be similar to a Mateba Autorevolver in that the barrel is aligned to the bottom of the cylinder. It also uses a snub nosed barrel that would mate with the Recon's barrel, but I intend to design a custom barrel specifically for the XB-REV-001. The cylinder is unprotected at the top to keep the weapon as streamlined as possible. I have an idea about a custom stock, but I'm also toying around with making it able to mate with the N-Strike stocks. I hope to be able to design the receiver and parts to be close to how real weapons are designed with central frame and mating solid pieces. I want to avoid clamshell construction wherever possible.
This is probably a good time to start questioning where I draw the line with making them Nerf-compatible. Do you think it's ok to make these weapons able to adapt the Nerf accessories? Or do I need to consider designing completely original accessories? I like the N-Strike system, and I'd love to unofficially expand it.
So that's about it for now. In between doing sketches, I have been disassembling my Nerf arsenal and modelling the internals to scale in 3DSMax where I will engineer the shells around them (until I begin designing my own internals.)
Feel free to comment, suggest, criticize all you want. I intend to make a little cottage industry out of this, so all of you, being potential future customers, have the most valuable opinions I can consider.
Cheers!
