This speargun has very good provenance. The history of this fine piece of spearfishing equipment is well known compared to some other artifacts which we have encountered. In 1955 Chuck Blakeslee, editor and founder of Skindiver Magazine commissioned Wally Potts, of the Bottom Scratchers Dive Club in San Siego, to a build a big game speargun. This documentation shows the gun which was built. Over the years, Chuck brought in many fish taken with this implement. Although Chuck modified the gun somewhat to adapt to his personal hunting style, it remains a fine example of what an original Wally Potts gun was like.
This fine old speargun was made by Wally Potts. Although earlier versions exist, it is believed that this particular gun was the 6th or 7th one which Wally Made. It is of all stainless steel fabrication which solder was used to fasten components together.Earlier versions of this gun had handles which were TIG stainless welded onto the handle tube. For reference see: http://rocknfish.com/Prodanovich_Potts_Early_Guns.html
In subsequent editions of this gun, all stainless steel components were fastened with 95/5 Tin/Antimony solder. The use of solder upon stainless steel is still a very functional method of joining this metal. We will soon see more examples of this technology as applied to spearguns.
The gun body of the Wally Potts gun was based around a length of Douglass Fir wood dowel. This coniferous wood has good structural properties and is used on boat constrution. It's important to mention that Chuck Blakeslee modified this gun to customize it to his preferences. He added a gun butt extension with a tennis ball as a pad at the back of the gun. The original length of the front gunbody was around 48". The rubber pull was about this distance in the original gun. The handle tube is 6 inches in length. After the gun butt extension was made, the overall length of the gun was 70 3/8". It carried 3 surgical latex tubing bands in the nosepiece and used solid metal wire wishbones which hooked into notches in the spearshaft. The nosepiec of this gun can be seen having a flared stainless steel tube through which the shaft was guided. This gun also had a grooved track down the dorsal surface of the gunbody, but that may have been installed by Chuck Blakeslee himself since the alignment of the mechanism does not work with the track.
The color of the gunbody was probably originally black color like the one which was built for Bottom Scratcher 'Bo Smith' (see previous link). The camoflage paintjob was also an addition by Chuck Blakeslee.
Wally Potts was a professional metal fabricator who work for the Solar Aircraft Plant in San Diego. He also owned his own set of machine tools which were in his home garage workshop at Point Loma San Diego. You can see by the craftsmanship in building spearshafts that Wally was a competent machinist.
Notice the badly bent shaft end. It was well known in the 1950s that "big fish would bust-up your gear". A diver would have to take extra spearshafts just in case a large fish bent his spearshaft. These shafts are made from corrosion resistant Type 304 stainless steel (probably). They are not heat-treated 17-4 stainless which is commonly used for spearshafts today. In the old days the diver would have to straighten out his spearshafts after big fish. Wally was good at straighting bent shafts.
Some of the details of the Metal work are interesting. Please see a close-up image of the slide ring stops.
The slide ring allows a line to be fastened to the spearshaft. In the case of these guns, this slide ring fit around the spearshaft just in front of the tubular stainless steel nosepiece. When the spearshaft was fired, the slide ring stop came through the nosepiece and picked-up the slide ring and line in it's trajectory toward the fish. As you can see one of these slide ring stops was made from wrapped copper wire which was soldered into place. After many years of hard use on very large fish, this copper wrapped slide ring appears to never have slipped off the spearshaft.
It is remarkable how well the solder has held up over the years of work. Another point to remember is that this is a low temperature process and does not warp or damage the stainless steel.
This fine close-up image of the copper wrapped and soldered slide ring stop shows it has seen much abuse over the years, but still seems to have pretty good integrity. "They don't make'm like they use to!"
An image of Wally with a few of the Bottom Scratchers and friends can be seen at http://rocknfish.com/Bluewater_Fathers.html
Thanks, Wally, for showing us the way. Thanks to Chuck Blakeslee for making this gun available. Thank you again to Ron Mullins who has generously provide visual access to artifacts and historical information on this and a number of important links to our spearfishing heritage.
