Board Thread:General Nerf discussion/@comment-27306930-20160109065227/@comment-27306930-20160114034507

Hamburger, you are absolutely correct. The pre-cocking thing is an issue with almost all blasters. I read a white-paper on the compressive strength of spring steel. When you compress a spring, the effective kinetic energy degrades over time. As much as 45%. I'm guessing Hasbro uses a relatively low grade spring steel to minimize costs. So it's especially evident for us Nerfers (if that's what we call ourselves).

I mentioned something similar about CS-35 drums. Kids store their darts in these high capacity drums, then leave them for long periods of time. The springs crap out after a few months. Then the parents put them on eBay, and the sucker who buys them gets an impotent drum. I know, I've been the sucker far too many times ;-)