Anyone here have a Puma pump?

[DocsMachine]

The old Puma, the original, not the ICE/ICD semiauto.

I mentioned in another thread I had a pair of Puma pump pistols, I've had for many years, and have recently started thinking about finally putting therm back together. I couldn't initially find them, but after more digging (hey, I'm a packrat) I managed to locate them.



The problem is, what you see is all I currently have. I'm pretty sure I had at least enough internals to complete one, when I got them, if not both. (Save for the CO2 plug/cap thing.) Those parts have gone missing- though I'm continuing to look. Being a packrat, it's unlikely they got tossed, but it's entirely possible they wound up in a different box somewhere.

I know Bacchi has a complete one (or did a while ago) and two parts guns in the store. I sent 'im an email, and hopefully he can get back to me, but in the meantime, does anyone else happen to have one of these antiques?

They had a poor rep back in the day, and it's likely that one of these hasn't been actually used on any field in about thirty years. Anyone got a wall-hanger I can open up and measure to copy the missing bits?

Doc.

[Pyrate Jim]

I Have one buried in the pile. It was heavily modified prior to my ownership (wirestock, etc.), but I'm pretty sure all the internals are original.
I'd have to dig as deep as you did to find it, but if I can, I'll try to post pics. Something I don't do well.

[DocsMachine]

I'd appreciate it if you could PyJim. I might need more than just pics, though- Dan Bacchi sent me some internals pics of his Puma several years back, so I know what they look like. And, if I have to reverse-engineer from scratch, it'll be a big help.

But, considering I'm probably going to have to make the whole works, it'd be a lot easier if I had the parts I could directly measure from. If you can dig it up, what's the chances I could borrow it for a bit?

Doc.

[DocsMachine]

Bringing this one back up for the moment... Believe it or not, I actually found one of these for sale on eBay. It's been butchered a bit, somebody tried to make it direct feed back in the day, but it had most of the CO2 plug (commonly missing) and it would appear all the internals are there. Combined with mine, I should be able to make one nearly-entirely-original out of them.

And, of course, while I have them apart I can measure for the missing pieces, and fab the bits to put the second one together. Toying with the idea of making a custom one- it'd be pretty much the only custom Puma ever.

And, question for MCB At Large: Does anyone know anything about these guns? Who made them? What happened?

All I know is a very early issue of APG (maybe the first?) had a review of almost all the markers commercially available at the time. One of which was the Puma, showing both the short barrel version (seen here) and the rare long-barrel. They jokingly referred to it as having "space shuttle" seals (in reference to the Challenger disaster) and suggested they tended to leak and were unreliable.

Bacchi had a post over on the Guild, years ago, taken from the even-older rec.sport.paintball, that suggested the maker was based out of Cincinnati, and poured a lot of the profits from a field into making the guns. Which must have been some heavy coin, as the bodies are custom extrusions, the pump grips and grip panels injection-molded, and the grip frames die-cast. That cost somebody some serious money back in the day- with machining, in today's prices, I could see that being a quarter million invested before the first gun hit the field.

Supposedly the fellow up and disappeared one day, after it came out how many problems the guns had- I'd expect the returns, repairs and 'warranty' issues rapidly exceeded the profits (and very possibly some loans, but that's a guess) and the dude slunk off into the night.

That would have been the mid to late 80s, for those of you that might think getting shafted by an airsmith or manufacturer is a 'new' thing.

Does anyone know more than that? Details, names, a closer time range? Can anyone find that early magazine article, or a more in-depth review in other magazines? (All my magazines are in deep storage, and the APG one is the only article I can recall.)

Thanks! This is a bit of interesting paintball history, long forgotten, and I'd like to put together a nice write up of it.

Doc.