Pros: None
Cons: None
Best Blowgun
Previously I had a thin walled 0.4" x 3 foot blowgun that had arrived bent into a bow and even after straightening, was not accurate. Thus, I found the Cold Steel site while looking for a better replacement. The bigger bore in the Cold Steel blowguns was desirable, because heavier darts fly farther and are therefore more accurate at reasonable distances. Then I was faced with the question as to which length to buy and whether to get a regular or thicker-walled professional version. So I bought a 4' regular, the 2' extension and a 5' professional!. While it will never get bent, I found the professional too heavy with not much advantage in accuracy over the also difficult to bend 4' model. However, the increase in accuracy when adding the 2' extension to the 4' blowgun was dramatic. Since aiming must be done with both eyes open, one always needs to flank the target spot with the double image of the tip of the blow gun. Thus, with the longer blowgun, there was less separation of the images of the tip of the blowgun, making it much easier to aim accurately. One slight problem was that the extension joint has a couple of slits cut on one end with the "land" in-between bent-in sightly to grip the inserted tube. This setup apparently caused a slight deviation from straightness at the joint. I was able to minimize this by rotating the extension to find a position of minimum deviation. I also removed the mouthpiece from the 4' blowgun and placed it on the extension so that the dart traveled through the longest straight portion last. The only other problem was that 90% of the stun darts stuck in the blowgun rather than falling through freely. It was impossible to blow these darts, so I attached the orange cones to my high speed multitool and while using a metal ring to press down on the cone, briefly pressed the wide end onto 320 grit sandpaper, resulting in a perfect fit. I noticed that one set of 10 darts that came with the blowgun nearly all fit, but almost none fit out of a package of 50. It may be difficult to get all lots to be precisely sized, so in my opinion it was best they were slightly oversized, as one can then adjust them as needed. I highly recommend this combination. Plus, the 4' length makes a perfect length walking stick using the supplied end cap and the removable extension makes it very portable.
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