Notes From a Maker

The Pittsburgh Automatic Center Punch is a cheap automatic center punch found at Harbor Freight. Like other automatic center punches, you simply press the handle down on the place you'd like to punch a mark, and an internal spring loaded hammer will drive the tip into the workpiece.  Construction The construction of the center punch is quite solid, and the solid brass handle feels weighty in the hand. The tip is relatively sharp and made of Chrome Vanadium steel, and is more than hard enough for marking most materials. The knurling on the handle offers a good grip. The handle can unscrew into three parts, which allows the user to replace the tip or any other internal components.  Disassembled punch Build quality is pretty good considering the price. The entire handle was turned on a lathe based on the machining marks left over, and the threads and knurling are clean. While there's a few marks and marring on the brass handle, it's not that bad, and is nearly unnoticeable unl...

  The Nerf Hammershot is a five round revolver released in 2013 as part of the Zombiestrike line. Notably, it was the first Nerf blaster to use a hammer cocking system, which allowed it to be primed with only one hand. There were other single handed priming mechanisms used in the past, such as the trigger pull mechanism used on the Dart Tag Snapfire, but the hammer prime allowed for much more power and greater springloads, while having one of the best triggers in the business. Three new colorways were released in 2020 as Amazon exclusives, and I picked up the "Caution" colorway during a sale. Here we will be taking a deep dive at the internals, with detailed notes and disassembly instructions. Plenty of reference photos will be provided along the way. Disassembly Disassembly starts with first removing nine screws on the shell, labelled below. The screws are the same throughout the exterior of the blaster. The nine screws holding the bottom shell together Once that's been ...