Early Asian Rollergun in Jack Prodanovich's Collection
I visited with Jack Prodanovich recently to talk about spearfishing and speargun design. While I was there, Jack brought out a beautiful little antique from his personal collection. It was a little rollergun. By today's standards this implement for spearfishing would be considered a mere toy, but some of the design features are certainly worth revisiting.

This gun was without rubber bands. It is easy to perceive that there were two seperate rubber bands attached to the sides of the gun at the metal loops. Each band would go around the small brass roller on eachside of the front of the gun and then hook onto the shaft carrier mechanism. We understand that the bands were not round, but flat.Was it possible that the bands never left the carrier? Does anyone know today? How was the shooting line rigged? We could not figure out if there was a line release. There appears to be a primative "safety" under the gun. A twisted wire loop that was fastened to the trigger was engaged by a movable hook (like a gate hook) preventing the trigger from being pulled back.

I will leave the rest of the dynamics of this classic little antique to your imagination, including the name plate words? What do they say?

Basic layout of the Early Asian Rollergun in Jack Prodanovich's personal collection.

As you can see the size and scale of this Early Rollergun is quite small. Note the layout of the metal components.

The front of the gun shows an anchoring plate for the two metal rods that the shaft carrier rode upon as well as the position of the rollers and front line fastening point. The spear shaft has a small slide ring. The stop for the spearshaft is back by the notch. It is a small rod that sticks downward into a recessed track, but the shaft does not ride in the track.The track is only to provide clearance for the slide ring stop. Please notice there is a plate at the front of the speargun. No large holes have been bored through the wood weakening it. Band anchors are D-shaped metal rings attached to the side of the gun.

The underside of this antique speargun shows the layout and position of the rollers.

The top back of the gun shows the spearshaft carrier mechanism as well as the two runner bars that allow the carrier to slide forward. The spearshaft is split for a short way allowing the carrier to engage it. The one-piece trigger-sear engages a small notch on the underside of the spearshaft.

This image shows the carrier has moved down the rails, just past the trigger-sear. It can be seen that the carrier is propelling the spearshaft toward the front of the gun.

On the side of the gun is a nicely printed metallic lable. As none of us understand the 'characters', the words are a mystery.
 
I have gotten a considerate contribution from 'Samson' in Hong Kong. As he is Cantonese he was able to read and translate the nameplate. The characters are written in Cantonese language.

Samson translates, "The first row 5 Cantonese words, in white color, mean: "I'm on a licenced hunting trip." The second row 3 Cantonese words in white color mean:"big fish" - it's the name of the speargun or the ship they used, people always want a lucky name, they hope they can hunt big fish, so they give their weapon / boat a name of "bigfish". The second row, last word in black color means,"model" - the model of the speargun"

Thanks to Samson, more of the history and significance of this early speargun has been provided. We all appreciate this information. I will send it along to Jack Prodanovich. Thank you Samson!

Other translations for the word TAIRYO are "Big Fish Harvest" - from an Okinawa Sushi restaurant.

For additional information and views of another Asian rollergun in Ron Mullin's collection see page: http://rocknfish.com/Early3.html
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