Hi, I’m Luke. Today on Out of Darts: Do you ever feel like one mag and one magwell isn't enough.
Well, the Chelicerae has got you covered. Let's get going!
This is the Chelicerae. The Chelicerae is a dual magwell talon mag flywheel-powered blaster.
It features two independent flywheel systems powered by Flywheel the World,
so inside, we've got micro wheels. The motors are oriented one, two, three, and four. It's
got two independent barrels that fire at the same time, and it is driven by a Flywheel the
World solenoid in the back. This thing is one of the more unique blasters I have seen in a while.
This was sent to me by John “Mags,” as he's known,
and I wanted to say thank you for sending this over to check out. I did not purchase this,
so keep that in mind, but I am giving this back -- or passing it on to the next reviewer, rather.
The Chelicerae name comes from the fangs on arachnids, and this is something that John had to
point out, the designer himself, because I didn't know that from the default. But it's kind of a
cool play on words because the blaster strikes twice each time you fire it, just like the fangs.
I love getting to check out other designers' aesthetic and design approaches and 3D printing
because there's always something you can learn from somebody else,
and this is certainly a unique blaster.
It's got a single trigger pull rev fire. It's a semi-automatic blaster with the solenoid,
of course, but each trigger pull fires one dart from each of your magazines.
It's, of course, talon short dart only, which is at this point probably my favorite ammo type.
It's got a few other unique features which I’ll go over here, and it's quite the unique blaster.
Starting from the basics, it features a
fairly large battery compartment in the back. We've got room for easily fits a
1,500 milliamp-hour pack, but I think you could probably cram a 2,200 in there if you wanted.
In the back, we've got a standard voltage meter, and down in the gripwell here (grip guard),
we've got three switches here, which are independent for turning on the various features.
The very first one is the voltage readout, so I can turn that on
and off if you don't want to look at that. The middle one is the front-firing light-up
muzzle, which I think is a really nice touch. I would love to be playing at night and see
this blinking at you as you're getting chased down by some zombies or something like that.
and then the last one is the top slide which, when it revs, we've got this animated LED,
and I think that combined effect is really cool when you rev up the blaster
Now given this is a solenoid, the rate of fire is quite decent. I think I could
pull off about seven or eight rounds a second, so you're gonna dump these
magazines fairly quickly. it is semi-automatic, but the trigger feels very good. It's very snappy,
and overall, it seems to perform fairly well.
Performance is in the 120 to 130 range (we'll put the actual
20-shot average up on the screen here). For the average, we'll just chronograph one barrel,
so we don't get any misreads coming from both at the same time.
The blaster has kind of a unique aesthetic. It's a very blocky, very sort of futuristic cyberpunk
kind of feel to it. Up top, we've got all these massive heat sinks which kind of give it like that
railgun aesthetic. All of this is just cosmetic. The heat sinks aren't actually doing anything.
It's really just there for the visual aesthetic of the blaster. For the flywheel motor leads,
we've actually got external ones, which kind of add to that aesthetic, and I think it's kind
of a very successful approach because it is very unique from everything else. I think
there's some nice detailing around the blaster, but it is a very blocky, chunky feel overall.
Now I’m sure some of you are thinking, “why won't you throw the Tachi mags in there?” unfortunately,
it looks like the shape of the pusher is a little too wide to fit through our feed lip properly, so
it doesn't seem like these are directly compatible. I can occasionally get some shots off.
But I think when you've got both pushers moving at the same time when you've got two loaded,
the catch is great, but at times it doesn't want to get both of the followers
into the magwell. So, maybe the follower could just be redesigned and made a little smaller,
and that would probably solve the issue.
That said, it doesn't have to work with my mags to be super
cool. I think it's a really interesting blaster.
The ergonomics of it do leave a little bit to be desired. As a lot of you know, I’m kind of
obsessed with ergonomics, and this really comes down to personal preference. I expect the designer
John his hands are probably a little smaller than mine. it's this thing that keeps classically
happening, but if you look where my hands rest, I literally just cannot… I can't put my pinky
into the triggerwell here -- the gripwell because if I do it, then the actual rev switch will hit
my [ring] finger. So, I kind of have to hold it like this, which is a little awkward overall.
But again, if you had smaller hands, it would probably feel just fine, and I expect this is very
comfortable for the creator’s hands because you're always going to design stuff for yourself first.
John told me that this was his fourth blaster that he's designed,
and it's a completely original blaster. Everything is built from the ground up,
and I think that's really cool. I love seeing different approaches like this,
and unique approaches with the dual magwell. I had this actually before the Hasbro blaster
came out that's got two magwells, so we've been holding on to this review for a little while.
I have to say I really like the magwell tolerances on this blaster. It is rock solid with both this
mag and with our Tachi mags. There are a lot of different approaches on the actual magwell
tightness, and a couple of you may remember when I did my Payara video, it's got a pretty sloppy
magwell, and so much so that they frequently drop out, and our Tachi mags occasionally have
issues catching. But it's just pretty sloppy as far as tolerance. This is really rock solid. It
seems like John's really got the tolerance down, and yet they still gravity drop, which is really
nice. There's no extra play in here, they're not wobbling around any more than necessary, yet
it still can do an actual gravity drop. So, they really took the time to make the tolerances right
on that magwell and make sure that the mag release was strong enough, and I like seeing that a lot.
In the end, I think this is a really unique blaster. This hobby has just
become absolutely amazing. I think it's like every other week we get a new blaster, and
seeing things like this that aren't just copies of stuff that's already been out is probably my
favorite part of all of it. Thank you so much for sending this to me, John; I really appreciate it.
I hope you all enjoyed a look at this blaster. If I had to give this a rating, I’d say 4 out of
5 stars just for uniqueness alone; there are some minor tweaks and things I would do here
cosmetically, and just ergonomically as far as my hands, but again that's as always very personal,
and it's going to vary depending on you, and your ergonomics, and sizing of your hands.
Lots more to come. We are toning back the reviews, trying to do only a single review each month,
and then focus more on mod content, behind-the-scenes, and original designs.
Until next time, I’m out of darts.