The best in history
How did the Timeline come about?
When I joined the hobby in 2020, I made it a mission to try and break the record for most powerful nerf blaster. After a few months of trying and failing, I finally managed to take the top spot from Remzak and Cartaya. Pretty soon after that I became more interested in the history of this segment of the hobby and noticed a lack of any resources regarding other high-power builds or the history of these mods.
Over the past couple of years, I’ve been researching and creating a timeline of the history of the world’s most powerful nerf blasters—specifically spring powered ones.
6/6/2009 - Madmax is the first person to chrono a +200fps springer
This video done for a school project shows Madmax trying out a new method to find the dart velocity of his ‘95 Kenner Bow. In doing this he finds the velocity to be 230.7fps, making it the first springer confirmed to be shooting over 200fps and setting the bar for all future records
11/14/2011 - Daniel Beaver is the first person to chrono a +250fps springer
This wasn’t Daniel’s first potentially record-breaking blaster, but it is the earliest footage showing a springer surpassing 250fps, reaching a maximum of 251.4 and an average of 238.5fps from his snapbow prototype using homemade slugs. This would mark the first example of a power focused blaster being directly measured by a chronograph and would go on to be the longest standing max fps record
4/26/2015 - Chris Cartaya barely edges out Beaver
A few months after starting work on his Bird of Prey prototype, Cartaya finally broke 250 with his BoP Type-L reaching a maximum of 252 and an average of 229.9fps using Xshot darts. It’s uncertain whether this did actually break Daniel’s record as the highest shot was recorded as being 0.6fps faster and Cartaya’s chronograph only measured in whole numbers. The following month Chris would again post a video showing the power of this blaster, with it hitting a max of 251
9/6/2015 - Birch decisively takes the record
Despite the fact that the 270fps is only an approximation, this K25 rainbow was definitely more powerful than either Beaver’s snapbow or Cartaya’s heavily modified Starshot and was generally as the most powerful springer of the time
4/7/2016 - Cartaya’s new Bird of Prey is even more powerful
Cartaya has tuned his newest Starshot, the BoP Type-LT to hit 286fps using Xshot darts, placing him back at the top of the fps charts
8/17/2016 - Cartaya becomes the first person to break 300fps
Cartaya once again upgrades the BoP Type-LT, now to the point where it hits 303fps using Xshot darts
7/21/2017 - Alex Kong takes the record
Alex Kong manages to reach 323fps with his upgraded Longshot firing elite darts
7/22/2017 - JT Nerf immediately breaks the record
The very next day after Kong’s record, JT Nerf reaches 329fps with his Dualstrike also firing elite darts
7/23/2017 - JT Nerf immediately breaks the record again
For the third consecutive day the record is increased. This time JT Nerf’s Dualstrike reaches 335fps, again with elite darts
2/7/2018 - Rowntree becomes the first person to break 400fps
With the ‘Power War’ in full swing, Rowntree uses a 36kg springload Longshot to fire an elite dart at 404.2fps, shattering the previous record by an astounding 69.2fps. There’s likely some missing data between this entry and the preceding one because while 30fps jumps in the record have been seen before, an almost 70fps jump is otherwise unheard of
4/22/2018 - Remzak sets his legendary record
Remzak started the K14 Caliburn craze, so it’s only fitting that he sets a seemingly unbreakable record with one. However, judging from comparisons to other data as well as some of his comment immediately preceding the record it’s now thought that he used a 40kg setup to achieve this. Despite this the 440.8fps set with Worker Gen 2 darts would enjoy its spot in history as the longest standing modern fps record. In the past couple years there have been debates as to whether or not Cartaya’s Longshot ‘Big Blue"‘ ever managed to beat this, as Cartaya had switched to only reporting averages by this point. Reporting an average of 435fps with elite darts, this meant that for a while both had a legitimate claim to the title of ‘highest fps springer’
3/3/2021 - kerb23 becomes the first to break 450fps
After years of the fps record standing virtually unchallenged, kerb23 finally managed to knock Remzak off his top spot, primarily by being able to follow along with Remzak’s build and making some minor improvements with the help of Radioactive. kerb’s Caliburn ‘Anesidora’ managed a maximum of 456 and an average of 440fps using afpro darts and a 40kg springload
4/1/2021 - kerb23 uses the highest springload of anyone so far
Upping Anesidora’s springload to 51kg led to kerb reaching a maximum of 487 and an average of 468fps using afpro darts. Now firmly in the ‘Second Power War’, the Race to 500 was started between kerb23 and Jordan Manzan, with the goal of hitting a 500fps average with some restrictions in place. Primarily, elite darts would be disallowed and a maximum springload of 60kg was set. Soon, many others would join in on the race
6/23/2021 - kerb23 becomes the first to break 500fps
Using a new 51kg Caliburn called ‘Antaeus’, kerb managed to hit a maximum of 505 and average of 491fps using elite darts. Despite the fact that it reached a maximum of over 500fps it’s important to note that this blaster didn’t qualify for the RT500 given it was using elite darts and didn’t manage to break the 500 average benchmark
9/10/2021 - herbmeister builds a monstrous ‘pistol’
herbmeister had previously built a 370fps rainbow pistol to handily win an fps/dollar competition and decided to use those skills to take the overall record. In October 2021 herbmeister unveiled a massive blaster based around the rainbow pistol platform that he called ‘3TSNB’ or ‘The Thing That Should Not Be’. Using a 40kg springload this blaster managed a maximum of 520 and an average of 503fps using elite darts. Once again, this record would not count towards the Race to 500 due to using elite darts, which are well known for reaching higher numbers than other darts by virtue of being much lighter weight than standard
1/28/2022 - The rollback
In early 2022 there was discussion over what should qualify as a springer and how fps performance should be measured. Through a series of community polls, it was decided that (a) a minimum dart weight of 0.95 grams should be imposed. This would allow ‘game viable’ darts like Dart Zone half lengths and Worker half lengths, while disallowing underweight darts such as Elites. (b) performance should be measured via average shot speed rather than maximum shot speed. This would help reduce the impact of outliers and ‘magic darts’ and would give a more accurate view of the blaster’s performance. A minimum of 6 shots is now needed to get an average for a record attempt. (c) stringers and aegs are allowed to compete in the same category as conventional springers.
Due to these changes, the record would briefly be reset to kerb23’s 468fps average set on 4/1/2021. This average was set over only 4 shots, but it wasn’t seen as an issue given that this new benchmark was expected to be beaten fairly quickly
2/15/2022 - Ian Whitehouse takes the record by a huge margin
Ian Whitehouse had steadily been climbing up the top 25 leaderboard over the early months of 2022 before finally claiming the #1 spot with a 485fps average out of his 40kg Caliburn V4. This would also be the first appearance of the red Dart Zone Max darts
2/19/2022 - Ian Whitehouse improves his record
When testing different types of darts, Ian managed to string together a run of seven shots averaging higher than his record from 4 days ago, reaching 489fps. Otherwise, there were no notable changes from before
10/2/2022 - largomath unexpectedly takes the top spot
At the start of October an as of yet unknown modder surprises the community by posting a video of his JMJ Warhammer firing an average of 491fps using worker HE darts, though admittedly with a very high fps spread. The JMJ Warhammer is a new blaster to the timeline, though for all intents and purposes it can be described as an injection-molded caliburn
10/23/2022 - Tinkershot drops the hammer
After months of tuning and designwork, Tinkershot unveils his newest blaster—the 557MachUp. On its maiden test it reached a 6-shot average of 502fps using worker bamboo darts and brought an end to the nearly two year long Race to 500
10/29/2022 - Tinkershot’s current record
After a few more days of tuning Tinkershot had managed to improve the MachUp even further, and after this display the Race to 500 channel of our server was archived and the Race to 557 opened for competition with the following message
@_tinkershot wins Race to 500fps with an average of 509.53fps using 1.016g Red Worker Bamboo darts. His blaster of choice was a custom built 3d printed monster using incredibly long draw and a thin plunger tube, playing into the efficiency gains found through messing around with the worker swift. He used a 36.2kg spring. As follows are the numbers from the winning blaster over 20 shots, with the 541fps reading being removed as an outlier, and the links to both videos.