I love Velocity... but its hard as an amateur to justify $800 on one effect. Since I know a moderate amount about paintball guns I decided to try to build my own,

If it works out, I won't be sharing the design as there is no question in my mind that I am reverse engineering Bob's work. I doubt I would have thought of this without seeing Velocity performed so, as long as its still on the market, it seems a bit unethical of me to release mine.

HOWEVER in the process of assembling the parts for my version I needed something I had seen before but was at a loss to find-- a small pipe clamp that clamped and unclamped with a lever. Ideally I wanted it to look fairly sturdy and to be made out of black metal. I knew I had seem something like this before.

Last night I found it, its a bicycle seat clamp!

I thought this might be useful for other projects so I thought I'd post a pointer

http://www.amazon.com/Sunlite-Bicycle-Qu......5&sr=1-5

I'd love to know how this works out for you. This product has always seemed like something someone with basic skill could create using an original method which would not be limited to one particular gun, as Velocity apparently is. I wish you the best of luck.

It would certainly be possible to perform pure sleight-of-hand as the original Bullet Catch was.

But to allow the spectator to load the gun requires gimmicking the gun. To retrieve the shot without putting your hands anywhere suspicious requires a further gimmicking. I'm fairly certain I know what Bob's gimmick's are. The first is probably the same or similar to mine. The second is a bit higher-tech then mine. But I think mine will be perfectly serviceable. It will just require a touch more misdirection.

We'll see if it works!!

Update. The first gimmick is done and the part of the second gimmick that isn't part of the gun is done.

The last modification is one that I am not entirely sure adds enough to be worth the added potential for exposure it creates. I'll do two versions, one with and one without and field test them.

Total cost for this project to date is about $150.00 and about 6 hours of work.

So if this works out, that's about 108.00 an hour

Version 1 is complete and works nicely. I'm waiting for the bicycle seat clamp, which is really just a piece of added safety hardware, to arrive and then I'll shoot some pictures and eventually maybe a performance video.

Total parts cost is about $170.00 including two paintable masks, one of which I've modified by Dremeling out the mouth protector.

Version 2 requires my buying a replacement part to modify, which was another $20.00. It actually wouldn't be necessary to buy if I didn't want to keep the original part unmodified.

That's "paintball mask". Stupid spelling checker.