PSA: Watch Out When Buying Voberry Darts

Voberry's generic full-length darts (review and part 2) have caught on, and with them, the name "Voberry" has become very familiar in the NIC. These "Voberry" darts are quite safe, with flexible dome tips similar to an Elite tip.

However, Voberry is a brand, company, or d/b/a - not a tradename for a dart design. Recently, Voberry seems to be distributing another type of dart, known in the hobby as a "full vinyl jacket" (FVJ). These things have hard tips. You wouldn't want to play a game with them without eyepro, and I would keep them away from HvZ games. On the flip side, they are very accurate, and not necessarily a bad round.

All of Voberry's listings on Amazon for these darts appear to have an image in this format showing the range of foam colors characteristic of FVJ darts including the signature "mini-mega" red:

 

Particularly beware this listing for blue-foamed darts easily mistaken for the original "High Quality" Voberry product.

If you are looking for known good Voberry darts, and not FVJs, use ONLY the original Amazon listing with "High Quality" in the title and tons of customer reviews!

Now that is out of the way, these two darts are the most common generic Chinese darts on the market by far, dwarfing the number of listings for koosh tips, and in some cases it can be difficult to tell what type you are dealing with before you buy. Note key features that can help you identify FVJs from listings:

The tip design - FVJ tips are shorter than Voberry tips, and have a more square-cut, blunter end. In listing images, they will typically appear shiny or glossy like plastic, and when viewed end-on, they may look somewhat rebated in design, with the edge of the foam visible, whereas Voberry tips almost always cover that edge.

The colors - FVJ darts, like the earlier "Sizzliz" or "4 color" darts (which BW12 still sells!), are available with multiple foam colors. They also always have orange tips. If you see a duplicate listing other than foam color for your darts, they are almost certainly FVJs. Voberry darts are currently NOT known to be available with any foam color other than blue, though images of logo-printed ones exist.


This is an FVJ:

 

And this is a Voberry:

Pay close attention!

Voberry-type darts are the most common "7.2 cm knockoff elite" on the internet - you will often find them listed on ebay. However, your mileage, as to quality control, may vary when buying from these listings.

Credit to Reddit for catching this situation quickly.

Shelf Watch and Ramble: Z-Tek Range Claims, MIA Pump Guns, Sparse Discounts at Target

Black Friday came and went, and I passed through the nerf section at the Orlando, Florida SODO Target. Nothing really of note, of course. Just a few strange happenings and general observations.

First was this Zing Z-Tek Bow. These are the little brother to the Z-Curve and the new big bad Firetek bow. Historically I caught these things at Targets before, and they had a 100' range claim on the box. Well...

The left box appears to be the newer one. Is this a real performance boost - or is Hasbro not the only spec-distorting manufacturer in the field? Regardless, I am sick of range claims and the Wild West of exactly what parameter is reported as a range claim, more than ever, what with the XD situation right now.

It's about time the regulatory hammer (...deceptive marketing anyone?) should fall.

Speak of the devil.

 

PSA: Demolishers with glue

This is going to be a quick one, and partially old news for anyone who follows r/Nerf. Some Demolishers come with glue between the outer and inner shells in the area above the flywheel cage. I discovered this while taking apart a Demolisher last weekend (serial number 41421), and a quick search revealed that Zombona has also reported finding glue in his Demolisher (serial number 40871).

Based on the porous nature of the bond and the fact that the broken bond resembles stressed ABS, I suspect solvent welding.

That's bad news; this is worse: the glue is strong enough and the shell is weak enough that breaking they glue in the usual way (attack with wedge, then pry shells apart) can cause visible damage to the outer shell. Dremeling away part of the inner shell would probably be a wiser approach.

Given that the Demolisher is the second recent blaster to sometimes have inconveniently placed glue - and that there have been many blasters which exhibit significant variation presumably depending on serial number - I wonder whether it would be a good idea for us Nerfers to always specify the serial number of our blasters whenever discussing internals and such. This would make it easier to keep track of these variations, but I'm not sure how useful this would be in the end, as a blaster's serial number usually can't be seen before purchase.

Pictures after the jump:

Yutoys (Type B) Koosh Dart After-Action Report

This post was a bit delayed and doesn't have much to say in this case, but I figure it is called for, since the Kooshes went with me to own some zombies recently.

The short answer is that they made the grade, and for what they are they are not easily beaten, but I am not blown away.

As usual, I used the Tacmod shooting 110FPS and 600RPM full auto, and Hasbro 18 round mags from all 4 major generations. This was a zombie event, so some desperate close quarters stuff happened.

Reliability was observed as 100% with zero FTFs, zero shake'n shoots and zero gremlins in general.

By contrast, I had a mag of J-code Hasbro Elite that farked up at precisely the wrong moment and contributed to my death in the arena.

On that note, I am encountering increasing, and insidious, reliability problems with the J-code Elite Standard, even the newer stuff I observed as better. New ammo is fine. A little wear and you are guaranteed trouble - and the past few games have seen a few frantic grenade transitions because of J-code jamming, and not just from me. I am going to drop recommendation for Hasbro Standard Elite as of this post due to poor reliability and this will be reflected in the upcoming Stock Class Ammo Roundup post. If you are going to run Hasbro ammo, it's ZombieStrike Elite or buy new J-code for critical games or bust.

Back to the Yutoys koosh dart, while they ran well, they do have a quite Elitish and fragile foam, and a tacky, rubber (not PVC) tip - which is distinct from the eBay/beautifulwoman2012 sourced Koosh tips which are slicker! Thus they are not inherently a reliabuilt round like the Voberry is, and I would expect normal Elitish attrition rates with wear and normal Elitish lifespan out of these.

They also cost 2 cents per round more than Voberry, and the tip glue materials and workmanship aren't perfect either.

Now what I expect everyone wants to know, accuracy. Out of the Tacmod, they were decent. Not amazing, not the most consistent shooting ammo I have ever used, and you could get easily 10 feet of sideways spread downrange. This doesn't however seem to be a stability issue, more that these tips do not mix with inner barrels well and tend to grab and exit erratically - I was running a straight fluted inner, by the way. From a Retal they are a massive improvement over the usual short-barrel blasty wildness of elite-type darts. Meanwhile, some old scavenged and repaired BW12 kooshes (slick tip variety) are much nicer from the Tacmod (as long as you don't use a stupid rifled inner!), evidently linked to the tip situation. So that is a consideration for all you flywheelers, if you use a RS and aren't worried about .500 bore springer compatibility or eliminating tip regluing you may want to buy BW12's koosh darts rather than Yutoys. BW12's darts and their utter crap tip glue are also much easier to disassemble and clean up for proper rebonding of the tips which will give results far superior to the stock Yutoys tip glue.

Conclusion

These are perfectly serviceable, cheap, decently reliable darts with somewhat improved ballistics over the common dome tip Elite, and unlike other koosh-tip darts they are usable from the factory and compatible with stock springer barrels, but they are not perfect, nor are they the clear recommendation among all the stock class ammo I have ever used.

If I was going to buy a ton of darts tomorrow for HvZ, they would probably be Voberry's product, which may not be the cutting edge of performance and QC but does exactly what HvZ ammo needs to, which is fire every single time you pull the trigger, cost practically nothing ($16 to fill up my whole combat load worth of mags) and last practically forever compared to Elite.

For stock class? Considering that I use flywheels with inner barrels primarily, assuming BW12's koosh darts are unchanged from a few months back, I would go for BW12 koosh with reglued tips, for maximum accuracy and best ballistics with my gear.

Devcon, eh? Methyl Methacrylate north of the 49th

If you search for "Devcon" or "plastic welder," you'll find plenty of places where you can buy methyl methacrylate adhesive for about the same price as a tube of epoxy - if you are in America. For Canadians such as myself, absurd markups and/or high shipping prices are the norm.

That isn't to say that you can't find MMA at a reasonable price up here - as I just found out, Home Hardware carries a "plastic epoxy adhesive," which can be found here. You can find the MDS here (links on page will download a PDF). Note the words METHYL METHACRYLATE in the section composition/information on ingredients. I've ordered a tube, tested it, and found that it set hard. Yes, this is the stuff we're looking for. Interestingly, the model number given on the home hardware page is 84125, whereas Permatex has information for items numbers 84145 and 84115 - probably because 84125 is the model number for a single tube (cream colour) and the other model number are for packs of 12.

Most stores don't have it in stock but will order it in if asked. Just be sure to have the product code to hand: 8698046. Also note that the packaging is labelled Permapoxy even though the company that makes it is Permatex. You might be better off ordering a tube in than finding a store that has them on the shelves, as MMA has a short shelf life.

The above won't be much help for Nerfers looking for Devcon in the rest of the world, but I can offer some advice: search for "plastic wielder" or "plastic bonder" rather than the brand-specific "Devcon" and don't forget to check whether your local hardware stores can order it in as well as searching local shelves/amazon/ebay/etc.

[Review] The Clipfire - not bad

The Clipfire is a serviciable single-shot blaster. Although the stock range is sub-par, some easy modifications can dramatically improve its performance. A modified Clipfire can reliably hit a human-sized target at a greater range than a Nerf blaster due to the greater inherent accuracy of BoomCo darts.

Koosh Dart (eBay/yutoys) Initial Test

My next step after trying out Voberry's darts was to revisit the well-known "koosh" dart.

The term "koosh" is never found in any listing or advertisement; it is an NIC nickname, due to the bristled impact surface (vaguely similar to a Koosh ball) as an alternative to the traditional air-filled dome.

If you are not familiar, these are more or less a third-generation stock type tip design, supposedly developed by the Chinese to solve the Elite's accuracy problems - and that they do.

However, there are two ongoing and widely reported quality problems with the final product darts made from these tips. One is undersize foam, which is not a big deal for flywheels but is no good for springers unless you want to go changing barrels to an uncommon small bore size just to accomodate them. The other is weak, inadequate or uncured tip glue, which leads to darts falling apart in use. Obviously, that is a critical issue that breaks the whole deal for any kind of HvZ or serious gaming.

Previously I have reported on the issues these darts have caused as a result. I had planned to buy koosh darts from common sellers, disassemble them and remount all the tips with the contact cement/CA method to explore the viability of such a process for average nerfers, since the accuracy benefits of the tip design are significant.

However, I encountered this thread on Reddit in which a user found one seller's darts to not have undersize foam. This seller is yutoys, on eBay. I ended up ordering from this seller.

Cost was $19.96 per 200 rounds, about 2 cents per round more expensive than Voberry's offering.

I received my order of darts in a little over a week. Shipped by China Post, this time with a working tracking number. As usual, they come in 10-round packets.

I can confirm the foam is not undersize on these. It is very similar to elite foam, definitely lower density and larger cell size than the Voberry stuff, and probably will hold up more like an elite than like a Voberry foam.

Here's where I was surprised. The assembly quality is not what is typically expected. The tip glue is well cured, if not terribly well applied and still far weaker than that used for other common darts. No tips arrive falling off with these. Tips are installed decently centered and square. Overall length is typical for koosh darts, about 2mm shorter than a dome tip elite. The foam length is slightly longer than an elite foam.

Chrono shoot

These are approximately 1.2g. Consistency was good across the board, although snap test numbers were lower than elites on the Tacmod.

In the process, note that compatibility with stock and typical springer barrels was verified, Rapidstrike reliability was verified, and the backstop was a wall a few feet behind the chronograph - and I did all the tests with the same 10 darts, straight out of the packet, with their factory glue holding the tips on. None of them failed during the test and I pulled out only one to be reglued before being sent out to the field (it was lacking a full application of glue under the tip).

Speaking of gluing tips to foam, I recommend the Remedy Metal contact cement/CA process:



Accuracy is very good for a stock type dart, that is all I will say at this point until I can develop a procedure and get numbers for common darts in the upcoming ammo roundup post.

I got some heat on Reddit by mentioning the state of my general opinion prior to the field test on the last ammo review, and for good reason. Apologies if the Voberry posts were a bit variable in conclusion between bench and field tests, so official recommendation will be made in the followup. For now, let's just leave it at these being the familiar "koosh" tip, with standard bore size foam and decent glue.