Sun May 15, 2011 12:27 am
Hi, Sitka!
Are you wanting to restore the arb to its original state for display or do you want to actually use it to poke fish? Rene Cavalero's arbalete, as it came from Champion Watersports, was certainly the most popular speargun in North America in the 1950's - it was distributed by Rene Sports, then USD and outsold all others by a wide margin. By the early 60's, there were some other guns available; notably the guns originally sold by Spearfisherman, then Pacific molded products and finally by Voit. The arbalete had a lot of problems - starting with the hard trigger pull on the standard and the deluxe models,( the sear-link design sucked!) real problems with dissimilar aluminum specs in the cast handle and muzzle vs the extruded barrel - this caused the handle to literally fuse to the barrel unless it was taken apart frequently and greased. Once frozen, it can sometimes be removed by taking out the line-clip bolt (which also holds the barrel onto the handle) stick the handle up to the trigger guard in a container of cold water and then heat the barrel immediately in front of the handle with a propane torch - then get someone to quickly hold the muzzle while you give the handle a sharp sideways wrench. This often worked even after penetrating oil failed.
The fine threads in the muzzle that held the kettle-cured rubbers were prone to corroding and/or stripping - also, those same rubbers had a hard contraction that often caused the gun to fire high. Many spearfishermen replaced the standard rubbers with surgical tubing which gave a long cast rather than a short snap and helped a lot with the trigger pull problem. To replace the standard screw-in factory rubbers - take a 10-32 X 1/2" or 3/4" long, push the bolt head entirely into the surgical tubing - hold tightly with your thumb and forefinger as someone stretches the tubing to about the barrel length - then (with your other hand) wrap a number of wraps of thin monofilament line on the shank of the bolt just behind the bolthead - trim the tubing to expose about a 1/4" of thread, drill holes in the muzzle rubber threaded socket (parallel to the barrel)put a stainless washer and nut on the front of the muzzle (or an acorn nut if you wanted to be 'uptown')This was all pretty easy once the surgical tubing loop slings with wishbone aready on became available - 'course by the time they became available, good guns were also available! Prior to that, the standard way of attaching the wishbone to the tubing was to take a heavy chromed brass fishing swivel and insert the eye and the swivel barrel into the tubing, leaving the other eye sticking out - stretch the tubing with assistance and wrap the monofilament line between the expose eye and the barrel and tie off. Stainless bicycle spokes made the best wishbones.
I shouldn't be down on the old arbs - I killed a very large number of fish with these early guns - If there are Lingcod in heaven . . .then I could be in big trouble down the road.
If you need parts - let me know I still have half a dozen or more arbaletes kicking about.
Hmmmm . . .Yet another manuscript reply!
Phil