Portal: Golden Maverick

We're closing out 2011 with some shiny blasters, thanks to our recent submissions.  Spread the word and have your blasters featured here on the blog!  It's what we're here for!

Though I'm personally not a fan of "Dowse the blaster in one color" paint jobs, this Maverick that was given to Portal has that "Trophy" look to it thanks to the Golden paint job.  All it needs is a pedestal and you could give it up as an award of some sort!  It's not a perfect repaint, but it's still nice.  Portal had this to say about it>

"This is a golden spray painted maverick that a friend gave to me. You have no idea how cool it looks in person. It still has stock internals although I plan to change that. As it was spray painted the paint job wasn't done correctly. It serves its purpose but it needs to be refurbished. No areas were missed accept the barrel here. It's pretty cool. When and if I refurbish it it might have a little easter egg here or there. If I do that a little hint is that I got the new Zelda game game. Gold and Zelda equals awesome."

See you all next year!  Have fun on this last day of 2011!

DarthRambo: Glitter Gun!

I can't say I've seen anything like this before, but Darthy has submitted a blaster that I think is quite festive!  Especially since it was made for someone else!

I made it for my sister for christmas.  This gun can shoot one dart by loading it into the front of the barrel.  You might be asking what that thing is coming off the barrel.  Well this gun shoots glitter and/or sprinkles depending on what the situation calls for.  The clear bottle unscrews and can be loaded with the particulate matter of your choosing.  
It works using the Bernoulli principal, deals with air flow mechanics and might actually be useful to nerfers in some way because shooting glitter is not.  Faster moving air actually drops in pressure when it is flowing freely.  This creates a vacuum in the barrel.  Hole in the top of the clear canister allows air to flow in as it is pulled by the vacuum.  The air forces the glitter up the tubing inside the bottle and up into the barrel where the air stream shoots it out. 

The dart gets ranges of about 25ft, The glitter gets about 6-8ft

So yeah this is pretty much just for lols

I'll say I'm a fan, especially considering the amount of know-how he has to build something that is, inevitably, silly!

Happy Holidays from the UN Staff!!  Keep those submissions coming!

Icicle: Minimized Firefly

This was a giveaway on the blog "Tactical Tag" that was built by Icicle of Arctic Nerf.  The blaster has been cut down a bit and has incredible power.  Firefly's in general are excellent blasters, but the strength of 3 springs in there plus an O Ring seal improvement really punches those darts out there.  Icicle reports that it achieves ranges over 100 feet.  While the Minimization may not look like it removed a whole lot, retaining the stock on there helps the user hold it steady to increase accuracy.  Also, for those with bigger hands, the trigger grip can get uncomfortable, so I'm glad the minimization covered that issue.  More pictures after the jump!

TestamentSeven7: Tactical Light

I've seen a lot of these done, but everyone seems to do theirs a little differently.  Here's TestamentSeven7's take on a useful-ified  Tactical Light.

"One day I had an idea, gut my recon tac-light and put in the parts from a gutted flashlight, it worked, but not well, and looked ugly from where I added an external switch.  The housing still bares that scar.

Recently I got a better ides, inspired largely in part by the Tactical Light Bazookafied gave away to a lucky winner not too long ago.

Instead of a gutted flashlight, it's a custom built light circuit consisting of 4, count them 4, High-brightness LED's from radioshack, soldered to a round pcb, also from Radioshack, and making the whole thing look as clean as possible, though it clearly still bares scars from my earlier work done to it.  The pictures don't do justice to how bright this thing is now, but I tried anyway."

And for additional Pic Spam of this fella...

TestamentSeven7: Maverick Mod

Another submission! Thisn's done by TestamentSeven7, just in case you have an irrational fear of titles and automatically skip them. ;0)
Also, just in case you have a strange aversion to photos along with your fear of titles, it's a Maverick, painted redn'black and with all yer yummy internal mods done an' the barrels separated.

TestamentSeven7 says,

"This maverick was a thrift store find, and was inspired by Drac's "Fanger" maverick, minus the LED's

The AR's and dart pegs have been removed, barrel drop mod, 3 pennies behind the spring, barrel separation mod, and black/red paintjob thats...fairly mediocre but i like it.

The tactical rail on the priming handle is unpainted, because it worked.  The barrel piece is also unpainted, for obvious reasons."

I like this blaster. The color scheme is a nice choice, and I really like the rings of red around each of the barrels. Nice job, Testament!

Pause: Minimized Nite Finder

Once again, a nice, clean mod by Pause, this time a Nite Finder minimization. Personally, I'm not a huge fan of Nite Finder minimization (I'm still not completely sure why, either...), but I really like this one.  Something about how it's cut really appeals to me. I also like the priming arm. It looks a lot cleaner than your standard ring pull style.






Pause says:

"The goal of this mod was to out-do my previous Nitefinder, which (I think) I achieved with flying colors.

This one is smaller, more accurate, shoots farther, and will last a lot longer."

Also, if you didn't notice, this is prepped for painting... He just doesn't have a color chosen, and isn't sure what color to go with. Any suggestions?

Rolley: Custom Gear Up! Recon

While this wasn't officially entered, I thought I'd share something neat that I've found as well as a plug for a great blogger, Rolley.  He heads up Street Tag Warfare and has done something similar to my Yellow Longstrike barrel repaint to match his rare Gear Up! Series Recon CS-6.  In fact, I got the initial idea to do that repaint because of his Longstrike Barrel.  Not only is it nice rare proof of this blaster's existence, but it's a neat-yet-simple repaint of one piece that changes the whole look of the blaster.

I pulled these pictures from his Strikefire Review as well as his Gear Up! Recon review.  He's a great photographer and certainly has a knack for aesthetics, which I can appreciate.  That Longstrike Barrel is simple to repaint if you just remove the blue panels and paint them on their own.  These photos are just proof of how much potential it has to make any stock blaster unique.

Nerfenstein: Rayven CS-18

As part of Urban Tagger's Christmas Giveaway contest, the first prize has got to be one of the most impressive prizes I've seen given away in a long time. A repainted, unreleased Nerf Blaster that's had EVERYONE talking since news of it spread this past fall.  The repaint is by Nerfenstein, who has already done some impressive works before for Nerf Blasters.

 UT previously just had a teaser picture of the repaint prize, but now their Facebook page has revealed the full paintjob on it.  Complete with a Urban Taggers logo on the left side!  Impressive enough for me to share on Universal Nerf! This blaster was won by Tristan Cavanagh.

Pause: Hoppered Big Blast

Here's another Pause creation, this time it's built from a Big Blast!  Designed to look like the Lego Atlantis Harpoon blaster, this 4b packs a punch!  It's got a 1/2 inch PVC Coupler and is hopper clipped.  I'm always a fan of how clean these mods are that Pause sends in.

I absolutely love/fear this gun.
I love it when its in my hands, and fear it when its in someone else's.
Ranges are insane.

 Check out more at his blog for this> Hoppered Big Blast <

Ironjaw: E-11 "Black Raider"

Here's another mod by Ironjaw, this time, an aesthetic mod! It's a very nicely done Raider, done in a weathered black, a scope attacked and foregrip removed... Just in case you've suddenly lost your eyesight due to very-nicely-painted-Nerf-blaster syndrome. It's been known to happen.*

Ironjaw says, "I don't do many large Nerf gun mods, but I have done my fare share of painting. I try to go for clean and simpler paint jobs, but I find the weathering an important part of showing the lines and curves of the guns.

I was really impressed with several painted raiders I had seen online, they reminded me a lot of an E-11. I decided I wanted one that was as close to an E-11 as I could get without any major modification."

Overall, this is a very well done paint job. Nice'n clean, and a good job on the weathering. The Raider really is a good choice for an E-11.


*Really! It's true. I promise.**

**Absolutely no guarantees guaranteed in this post.

Echo57: Minimized Nite Finders

Ah, the nostalgic feeling of our first mod. Whether they were successful or not, they certainly gave a sense of accomplishment. Not to mention, once you mod, there's really no going back to stock.

Both of the Nite Finders together.

Here we have two such mods based off of the lovable Nite Finder EX-3! This submission from Echo57 showcases his first set of modifications. Both are minimized versions of the blaster with paint jobs using Krylon Fusion paint. The black version is more heavily modified, with a marker barrel replacement and the removal of the front of the trigger guard.

Detailed look at the red version.

Both blasters have air restrictors removed and can fire distances of up to roughly fifty feet.

For first modifications, Echo's blasters are pretty solid. The paint jobs are really smooth and firing ranges are pretty great!

Let this be a message to new Nerfers and modders: don't be be afraid to send us your first creations!

Bazookafied: Blue Spectre

Earlier on Tactical Tag, I had been brainstorming on what the best route to take with my Spectre Rifle look, which uses a Raider-style stock and a Longstrike barrel.  The solution that I came up with then was a Yellow-painted Longstrike barrel to match the yellow Spectre and Raider Stock (the yellow one that came with the Value Pack Barricade).  I liked the look of it, but I decided to try out another option, which was to use the Blue Raider Stock and Longstrike Barrel with a blue-painted Spectre.

After sanding off the warning labels, priming it, setting the silver details and using masking tape to cover up said details and the trigger handle, the Spectre is blue now.  However, now I know why my original plan with the Yellow setup was the better choice.  The first is that the priming handle tears into the blue paint job a little, which is a bit of a downer considering how nice the paint job turned out.  The second issue is that I couldn't really find a shade of blue that matched the plastic of the stock and barrel, so it looks a little bit off.  As a standalone blaster, it looks great, but I'm a little disappointed overall that the blue I settled on didn't match better.

To top it off, I can't find my good camera for some reason, so I had to settle with my iPod camera to take these shots.  If I can find my camera and my blue Longstrike Barrel, I may take a few more pictures.

Ironjaw: CQB Raider

Shows how he got the stock attached. Very clean!

This is a pretty spectacular minimization by Ironjaw. The LongStrike stock is my favorite, so of course I absolutely love the stock choice and how he attached it.
The priming handle transplantation is very slick as well, and I'm quite amazed by how small this whole package is. Who knew you could cut down a Raider this much?

Over all, this is just a gorgeous mod. Excellent work, Ironjaw!

Nice view of the whole thing. It's a pretty lookin' thang, aye?

I also like the Bionicle pieces on the desk. It's a great toy choice. ;0)

Pause: Modified Titan/Maverick Combination

Our first article has been submitted!  This one is from Pause, who has his own blog you can find here.  What strikes me most about this mod is how clean the integration is.  There's something to be said about a blaster that could pass for being stock and, while the design looks a bit unorthodox, it's got a nice stock-looking finish to it.  Pause had this to say about it.

Not much has been done to the Titan, the main mod here was re-shelling it into the Maverick shell.  All that was done to the Titan was adding a coupler and plugging the pump (which I regret doing). 

You can check out the full details and photos of this at his blog.

A Warm Welcome to You

Modders, welcome to Universal Nerf.

“What is Universal Nerf?” is the natural question. Well, thankfully, I’ve got an answer for you. (Which is a good thing, seeing as I’m one of the Modmins.) Universal Nerf (UN, for those of you who are obsessed with acronyms—Oh, wait. That’s the entire modding community, isn’t it?), is the collaborative brainchild that was spawned from a series of conversations in the chatroll that lives in jerm781’s blog, Nerf Mods and Reviews. Basically, it was brought up that there are many flash-in-the-pan Nerf modding blogs, Here today, gone tomorrow, that sort of thing. Seemed like everyone wanted to show off their mods and become the next jerm781, or the next Drac, or the next (insert hero here). It was the common consensus that this was silly and sad, and there should be another way for all of these people to share their ideas. After some debate, it was decided a blog should be formed… Which seems kind of silly, right? Another blog, after all of the talk about how there are too many blogs? Th’thing is, this blog was planned to be a hub for all of those modders so desperate to show what they can do. A blog for the modders. A blog for you. This is a spot for you to show off your work, and get other modder’s feedback on it. It’s a place to show off your zany mods and discuss new ideas. A home for all y’all. 

“Whoa, cool! How does it work?” Haha, yeah, it is pretty cool. And it works pretty simply. You click the big, shiny submit button over on the right, and send us your awesome mod. We (the Modmins) will review your idea, and then, if it’s worthwhile (which should be pretty much everything), we’ll share it on the blog. Bam. Everyone gets to see your moddin’ skills, and tell you what they liked, whether they want to try/improve it, etc. Feedback and encouragement. Yummy.

“Modmin… You keep saying that word. I don’t think it means what you think it means.” Ah, yes. Modmin. Well, guess what? I am. Sorta. Modmin is a term for talking about MODerators and adMINistrators collectively.* Except in this case, mods and admin are actually the same thing. Another neat thing: it’s got a double meaning here. We’re modders too. We like to read about your work just as much as you like sharing it. So, yes. The Modmins. We’re here to read your stuff, then write up a post showing off your awesome modified Nerf blaster. We’re here to encourage discussion and quell dissention. To show off your extreme mod, that you put so much work into, and inspire feedback and constructive criticism. We wanna make sure your ideas are given some time in the limelight.

“Okay. So you keep saying ModminS. Who are the other ones?” Good question! There are three Modmin currently. Bazookafied, Jetcell, and yours truly, △ (although you can call me Triangle. Or, if you really want, Jo**). Yes. We are the Modmins. And we want to see your mods.

I’m sure ‘Zook and Jet back me up when I say:

Welcome to Universal Nerf.

*Bet you didn’t know that. I sure didn’t. I randomly combined the two together, and then looked it up later. Lo, and behold, it was actually being used by others on the interwebs. Go figure.

**No, that is not my real name. If you want the story behind it, feel free to ask. (It's not very exciting, though.)