Board Thread:General Nerf discussion/@comment-32312218-20170617101639/@comment-27306930-20170627023657

Elliottw wrote: That's a good question. I've always had the sense that the NIC in general was opposed to dry-firing. I've witnessed the phenomenon several times on this wiki myself. But I suspect it's a myth promulgated by preadolescents. Hey, lookit ! Not judging, just observing.

I think it's more accurate to say that dry-firing modded blasters poses a more significant danger. And even then, I'm a little skeptical.

Let's take my EXDAT for example. It has a 7kg spring, no AR, and nothing special about the plunger. The difference between firing it with a dart in the chamber, and empty, is surely negligible. Remember Newton ??? Equal and opposite ???

Face it, how much resistance can a foam dart pressed into a similarly sized plastic tube provide against an unrestricted 7Kg plunger ? Umm ... lemme think ... uhhh, none. If I had to hazard a guess.

So yeah, I'm thinking the whole thing is a giant myth. If your blaster is unstable, it's going to be unstable whether there's darts in the chamber or not. You'll wreck it regardless. But if it fires, and it's consistent, it'll probably be consistent for quite some time.

Just speculatin' of course 😉 Okay, that post seemed a lot meaner in the naked light of sobriety. My point was, darts offer very little in the way of resistance for a blaster without its Air Restrictor. If your modded blaster is going to have a problem, it's not because you forgot to load darts. It's because there's a problem with the configuration of your spring/plunger/trigger/sled.

For instance, I had a Vulcan with an upgraded spring and an air restrictectomy. It fired great ! Twice. Then I snapped the plunger rod. It wasn't because there weren't darts in the clip, it was because the spring was too strong for the plunger rod. It would have happened with or without darts loaded in the clip.

I had a similar problem with Shredder, my CycloneShock. I busted the plunger rod pretty badly. It wasn't because I didn't have darts in the chamber. It was because the force of the upgraded spring was too much for the priming mech. Darts be  damned, er, I mean darned.

So I'm sorry if I sounded snarky. That wasn't my intent. I was just commenting on basic physics. Next time I will endeavor to be kinder 😉