SEA HORNET Clone from CHINA!!

[Spear One]

Originally Posted by popgun pete

Well I decided to order the 32" gun for my nephew as I can fix any problem with the trigger and he can then have a crisp new version of a gun that appeared fifty years ago and has provided good service over all those decades (probably will need a longer band on it though).

Rogers on that Pete. Replacing the spring is not super difficult for those of us who are very familiar with design. In addition, you may want to increase the depth of the the two notches in the trigger and sear where the spring sits as the current notches don’t property secure the spring IMO. Maybe .030 to .040 on each side would be plenty deep to ensure the spring stays put.

[popgun pete]

Thanks for the advice, yes those spring end locating notches will need a more positive hold if the spring is shortened. How the “Sea Hornet” mech is usually assembled is you place the two levers in the cocked position and then place the rear end of the spring in the notch in the sear lever and then push the spring at its mid-point into the gap in the sear case which causes the leaf spring to bend and then click in position on the locating step in the trigger. With this long spring I had to engage both ends of the spring in their respective locating steps with the sear pivot pin in place and then force the trigger upwards and backwards into the sear case and when the holes in the trigger and the sear case lined up then I dropped the trigger pivot pin in. This required something to hold everything in place just as the holes were nearly aligned when I picked up the trigger pivot pin so I used a thin jewellers screwdriver blade to catch the holes and keep them roughly aligned and then forced the pivot pin in when they were nearly coincident, pushing the pivot pin in accomplished the final alignment. One of those jobs where you have a few failures before everything clicks in with the long leaf spring they are currently using. There is such a bend in it that the leaf spring may fatigue earlier than it should, however its length stops it falling out while it still returns to shape after each cocking and release cycle.

[Spear One]

Pete, if you ever run low on Sea Hornet triggers let me know. I have almost 1000 of them with steel springs in them. Sea Hornet send me a batch of grips that had steel springs instead of stainless steel springs. They sent me replacement triggers but I had to swap out all these triggers myself. That was a ton of work.......

[popgun pete]

I think if you buy one of these Chinese replica guns then for peace of mind buy a genuine “Sea Hornet” trigger mechanism from Kevin and swap it over. The best and last version of the “Sea Hornet” trigger mechanisms is the “V3” which is stamped into the rear of the top tube of the sear box. Genuine mechanisms also have “SEA HORNET” stamped into the top of this tube when looking down from above the gun. To swap out the trigger mechanisms use the procedure I described here http://www.spearboard.com/showthread.php?t=93536 in post#8 and you will have zero problems. Just watch where you pop the small wire circlip out as they can be very hard to find if they fall on the ground or on a thick pile carpet.

If you like the handling of the "Sea Hornet" gun, but want a bit more grunt, then I suggest you also buy one of Kevin's "Ocean Rhino" models which, although being a different gun, was developed by looking at what made the "Sea Hornet" such a versatile gun. I have one of these and consider it a great gun which displays considerable engineering and forethought in how to make a spearfishing tool where you can concentrate on the fish and not worry about the gun.

[popgun pete]

In order to keep everything relevant on the one thread this is the dismantling procedure from that earlier thread.

Here is how to take the "Sea Hornet" mechanism out of the gun. Push the safety knob down to expose the small wire circlip on the end of the safety shaft and pop it off with a small screwdriver blade. The knob is sprung loaded, so it will push down with not too much effort. Pull the knob off plus the spring and flat washer underneath it. Push the safety shaft down and out in the opposite direction as it has a D-shaped shaft, but only on the safety knob side, so you need to push it down as the shaft is engaged into a matching D-shaped hole in the safety cam which is hidden inside the cassette. The trigger safety cam will then fall out, you will see the D-shaped hole in it. Then using the removed safety shaft as a drift you can use a plastic faced hammer to drive out the mechanism pins, there is one at each end. Once the mechanism pins are knocked out pull the trigger back to disengage its lower hook from the auto line release in the finger grip and prise the mechanism cassette up and out of the handgrip. Finger pressure should pull it out, the cassette is a snug rather than a tight fit. You can then push out the two short mechanism pivot pins, they may even fall out, then the two mechanism levers will come out of the cassette. If the spring is inside there you will see it, it is a slightly curved piece of strip steel material. Position all the removed parts on the outside of the cassette using the mechanism fixing pins as temporary pivot pins (they are longer than the pivot pins) so that you can see how it all fits together and operates. The safety cam fits in the gun so that its rounded edge revolves near the forward "post" on the cassette housing, the curved edge gives it a constant clearance from the post as the cam turns. The two flats visible on the cam are "safe" and "fire" positions where the cam abuts the front of the trigger. Looking down from the top of the gun when it is in use, rolling the safety knob forwards should set the cam to "fire", rolling it back towards you sets it to "safe". A handy memory aid is "back safe" and "forward to fire". Once the levers and spring are installed properly inside the cassette push the cassette back into the handgrip. Then you reinstall the two mechanism fixing pins, just gently tap them in with the aid of the safety shaft and hammer as before. Now that you know which way around the safety cam goes insert it into the cassette from underneath and just in front of the trigger. It takes a bit of fiddling around to get the cam in exactly the right place so that when you push the D-shaped end of the safety shaft through the hole in the handgrip, which of course will also line up on the one in the cassette, it will then pass through the safety cam. Reassemble the flat washer, spring and safety knob in the reverse order to how you took them off, then put the circlip back on. Hint: watch out for the circlip flying off, they are very easy to lose! The grass in my rear yard holds a large number of them, I lost so many that I eventually bought a bag of spare ones. Attached photo has Sea Hornet mechanism on left, right hand side is some clone I found a few years back, but never found out who made it. Springs are not fitted in the photo as they pop out unless they are trapped inside the cassette, to install them in the cassette you just engage the sear end and push the spring in and it will snap into place in the back of the trigger.

[popgun pete]

Originally Posted by Spear One

Back when I was dealing with them on the trigger spring....they insisted on using that tip so I showed them a way to get a closing collar onto the shaft.......that they apparently did take my advice on. I told them it was not the optimal way to do it but apparently they went ahead with it.

And this was why they wanted to use that tip as they had already copied it, but apparently they had never seen the Sea Hornet fish extractor tip.

[Spear One]

Originally Posted by popgun pete

And this was why they wanted to use that tip as they had already copied it, but apparently they had never seen the Sea Hornet fish extractor tip.

Yep, the tip in the middle is the one they copied. Also, I believe the trigger mechanism they copied was the original version and not the more recent V3 version. Pete, maybe you could confirm my suspicion on this.

[popgun pete]

Originally Posted by Spear One

Yep, the tip in the middle is the one they copied. Also, I believe the trigger mechanism they copied was the original version and not the more recent V3 version. Pete, maybe you could confirm my suspicion on this.

Yes Kevin, they copied the original version. The V2 was a disaster as the levers were way too skinny and the V3 was introduced to make amends by making everything that much larger, in fact they may have gone overboard with the trigger piece as it is the broadest from a side-on view. When the V2 mechanisms were being replaced in those guns already issued I grabbed one for "the archives" as otherwise it would have been thrown out. Anyone with a V2 should replace it with a V3, the version number is stamped on the rear end of the sear box top tube.

[Spear One]

Originally Posted by popgun pete

Yes Kevin, they copied the original version. The V2 was a disaster as the levers were way too skinny and the V3 was introduced to make amends by making everything that much larger, in fact they may have gone overboard with the trigger piece as it is the broadest from a side-on view. When the V2 mechanisms were being replaced in those guns already issued I grabbed one for "the archives" as otherwise it would have been thrown out. Anyone with a V2 should replace it with a V3, the version number is stamped on the rear end of the sear box top tube.

Rogers on that Pete! Another thing I noticed from the picture of the China grip assembly you posted previously in this thread is........ the molded plastic is very smooth and glossy. This indicates to me that the plastic does not have any fiberglass in it. I believe the later Sea Hornet models and all Biller grips use glass reinforced poly pro. Glass filled plastics are much stronger/durable than non reinforced plastics. If that China version does not have any fiberglass in it....... then the sockets where the wood joins to the grip will be highly likely to split when stressed.

[popgun pete]

The plastic used seems to be hard and shiny as you say, I am wondering how it will hold up as the metal extrusion was a very tight fit in the sockets. I found that it needed a big push to seat the alloy barrel all the way in. When "Sea Hornet" made the stainless steel analog of their timber gun in the bronze colored plastic version the strain eventually cracked the sockets on the handle after many years. Time will tell I guess, but leaving one of these in hot Sun might stress the plastic even more, although aluminium dissipates heat quickly and the handles, muzzles and cocking stock butts may expand. Spearguns as a rule should not be left to cook in strong sunlight where there is no cooling effect from breezes, etc.

[Spear One]

Originally Posted by popgun pete

The plastic used seems to be hard and shiny as you say, I am wondering how it will hold up as the metal extrusion was a very tight fit in the sockets. I found that it needed a big push to seat the alloy barrel all the way in. When "Sea Hornet" made the stainless steel analog of their timber gun in the bronze colored plastic version the strain eventually cracked the sockets on the handle after many years. Time will tell I guess, but leaving one of these in hot Sun might stress the plastic even more, although aluminium dissipates heat quickly and the handles, muzzles and cocking stock butts may expand. Spearguns as a rule should not be left to cook in strong sunlight where there is no cooling effect from breezes, etc.

I doubt aluminum will expand enough to crack the plastic but lateral stresses will likely split it if it does not have any glass in it. However, wood expansion can definitely crack it. A good example of this is to look at the top of a Biller butt pad after it has been in use for about 6 months. There will likely be a white colored stress line in the plastic. This is caused by swelling of the wood even though the plastic has fiberglass in it.

[popgun pete]

Yes, wet and expanding timber could crack the sockets, and I have seen that white streak that you are referring to on a few guns where plastic parts had been forced over a slightly oversize component. As the Chinese have gone to the expense of creating an alloy extrusion to duplicate what used to be done in wood then they probably will not release a timber model of this gun.

I note the muzzle is also not of the latest type as “Sea Hornet” extended the shaft guide tube rearwards on their last guns which replaced that simple sloped shape on the rear face of their muzzle.

[Spear One]

Unfortunately the Chinese mfg’s. of this Sea Hornet knock off skipped or chose to ignore some very important details that compromise the quality, performance, reliability, and safety of the product. It’s really too bad because these issues are not very costly to fix and the price point was quite attractive.

[popgun pete]

On another thread there has been discussion of fitting a laser sighting system into a speargun. I used the images of this gun to illustrate one possibility of utilizing the hollow tubes for installation of the necessary components.

[popgun pete]

I just found these image of the V3 Sea Hornet handles when the new versions of the gun were released to hurriedly replace the unsuccessful V2 versions which were not around for very long in the marketplace. Note the Sea Hornet logo molded on the side of the handle at the front end. The Chinese clone is devoid of any markings, except for the blue lettering barrel stickers.