airgun design
El Gamo 68/68-XP – A futuristic airgun from the past: Part 2
by B.B. Pelletier
El Gamo 68 is a futuristic breakbarrel from the past.
Mac and I couldn’t stay away from the El Gamo 68 once we started looking at it. The first thing we did was adjust the trigger so it would catch positively every time the rifle (carbine?) is cocked. When I got the gun, it failed to catch the sear several times every time the barrel was broken, but all that turned out to be was a trigger adjusted with too little sear contact area.
Trigger adjustments come in two different types. One adjusts the spring tension of the trigger return spring, and adjusting it will give a somewhat lighter trigger-pull. The other adjusts the actual sear contact area and makes the trigger release crisper without affecting the pull weight. That’s the type of adjustment the 68 has. It also has an adjustment for the length of the first-stage pull; and on this gun, I found stage one had been adjusted completely out. So, you started the pull on stage two — effectively giving the rifle a single-stage trigger.
Adjusting the trigger
The following instructions for adjusting the trigger are taken from the El Gamo owner’s manual for the 68 and 68-XP that David Enoch was kind enough to supply. They might also apply to the El Gamo model 300 rifle, which has the XP action in a conventional wood stock. I don’t know that the 300 has the same trigger adjustments, but I assume that it does.
The forward screw (closest to the triggerguard) is a locking screw that should be loosened before any adjustments are made. After all adjustments have been made, tighten the locking screw to lock the adjustments in place.
The larger screw in the center adjusts the length of the first-stage pull. Turn counterclockwise to lengthen the pull and clockwise to shorten it. As I mentioned, it’s possible to eliminate the first stage altogether.
The screw in back adjusts the sear contact area. It does not lighten the trigger-pull, so be careful not to over-adjust it or the rifle will not cock, as mine did not. Turn counterclockwise to increase the sear contact area and clockwise to decrease. Ostensibly, this adjustment would give you a crisper trigger release, but I didn’t see any difference at all. But when the contact area was adjusted too small, the rifle failed to catch when cocked.
Three trigger adjustment screws are located at the back of the triggerguard.
I was able to put back a long first-stage pull that I like; so now when the trigger stops, I know it’s at stage two and ready to break. Stage two was set with much more contact area, and now the rifle catches every time it’s cocked. I can’t detect that the pull has changed in weight or crispness. After it breaks, the trigger blade is at the end of its travel. It feels like there’s a trigger overtravel adjustment, but there isn’t.
The trigger blade is much too thin for the pull weight, which is between 7 lbs., 14 oz. and 8 lbs., 10 oz. This trigger can really benefit from the installation of a trigger shoe. I have a couple of them around somewhere, so I’ll try to find one and see if it benefits the rifle as much as I think it will.
Firing behavior
The 68 fires very quickly and ends with a sudden small jolt. The feeling is strange, because you don’t expect a rifle this small to be so quick. It’s definitely not an R7! On the other hand, there’s virtually zero vibration with each shot. You might expect it to buzz a little because it’s an El Gamo, but you’d be surprised. Clearly, this rifle’s action is made much smoother than the current crop of Gamo spring rifles.
Since I own the rifle, I’m tempted to take the action out of the stock to see what I can do to smooth the firing cycle even more. If I can get the trigger to break reliably at 3 or even 5 lbs. and still be as crisp as it is, this would be one of my better spring-piston rifles.
Balance
The 68 appears to be butt-heavy, but that’s only an illusion. In fact, it’s somewhat muzzle-heavy, which stabilizes the rifle in the offhand position. The lack of a forearm means you have to hold it more like a pistol that has an attached shoulder stock, and both hands are centered around the vertical pistol grip. I don’t care for that hold, which is why a more conventional model 300 would suit me more, if all other parts of the action remain the same.
Velocity
The gun seems to have a leather piston seal; but even if it doesn’t, it might benefit from the application of some silicone chamber oil dropped through the air transfer port behind the breech. I tested it with three pellets, both before and after oiling.
RWS Hobbys
The first pellet I tested was the 7-grain RWS Hobby. This lightweight lead pellet is often very accurate in lower-powered spring guns and gives the highest velocity consistent with accuracy. Before oiling, Hobbys averaged 612 f.p.s., with a range from 604 to 615 f.p.s. They produced an average 5.82 foot-pounds of muzzle energy and the total velocity spread was a tight 9 f.p.s.
After oiling, Hobbys averaged 592 f.p.s. and ranged from 582 to 598 f.p.s. They produced an average of 5.45 foot-pounds of muzzle energy. The spread opened to 16 f.p.s.
Crosman Premier 7.9-grain
Next came the 7.9-grain Crosman Premier domed pellet. Before oiling, this pellet averaged 570 f.p.s., with a range from 558 to 588 f.p.s. They produced an average of 5.7 foot-pounds of muzzle energy. The total velocity spread was 30 f.p.s.
After oiling, the Premier lite pellets averaged 551 f.p.s., with a spread from 545 to 564 f.p.s. The average muzzle energy was 5.33 foot-pounds and the spread was 19 f.p.s.
RWS Superdomes
The last pellet I tested was the 8.3-grain RWS Superdome. Before oiling, the velocity averaged 534 f.p.s. with a spread from 522 to 545 f.p.s. That produced an average of 5.26 foot-pounds of muzzle energy.
After oiling, the same pellet averaged 524 f.p.s. with a spread from 519 to 527 f.p.s. At the average velocity, this pellet produces 5.06 foot-pounds of muzzle energy.
What have we learned?
The first thing we learned was the need to properly adjust the trigger for contact surface. It didn’t change the pull weight, but it did correct the gun’s inability to cock positively.
Was it necessary to oil the gun? Probably not; but as the oil wears off, the velocity will increase again. Does the gun shoot any smoother as a result of oiling? I can’t tell any difference, so maybe this gun was working okay as it was.
The trigger could probably benefit from some lubrication and perhaps from more careful adjustment. I’ll have to see it closer to know if there’s anything that I can do to make it better.
Crosman MAR177 test report: Part 6
by B.B. Pelletier
Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4
Part 5
Crosman’s new MAR177 upper is big news!
Today’s test is shooting the Crosman MAR177 at 25 yards, both with and without the magazine. We’ll also shoot it with the best wadcutter target pellets and the best domed pellets to see what differences there are.
Rather than shoot the rifle myself, I let Mac shoot it this time. He is the better rifle shot between us, and I just wanted to see what the rifle would be like in his hands. He shot it off a bag rest at 25 yards indoors. Ten pellets were shot from the magazine, then another 10 of the same pellet were shot using the single-shot tray. Mac tested both domed and wadcutter pellets, so we get to compare the relative accuracy of both today. And the results did not turn out as I expected.
Magazine
I’d noted in an earlier report that the particular 10-shot magazine I’ve been using has two chambers with tight entrances. Mac found the same thing without being prompted by me. I had him use the same magazine as I did so I could compare his results with all other variables remaining the same.
You’ll recall that I mentioned not liking magazine guns because of how they handle the pellets. So, today was also a test between the magazine and loading each pellet as you shoot. I’m not saying that all pellets have feeding problems, but that some magazines may have a problem. But when you load each pellet singly, you have less chance of damaging the pellet.
Single-load tray
That said, the MAR177 has a gap at the front of the single-load tray that can catch the nose of certain pellets and make it very difficult to load. The H&N Field Target pellets that were the most accurate in an earlier test had this problem and had to be exchanged for a different domed pellet. The H&Ns have a semi-wadcutter rim around the head that just catches in the gap on the tray and causes the pellets to flip up and possibly get damaged on loading. I substituted 7.3-grain Air Arms Falcon pellets that fed perfectly through the tray.
On to the shooting
Let’s get right to today’s test. First, Mac tested the domed pellets at 25 yards.
Through the 10-shot magazine, 10 Falcon pellets made this 0.667-inch group at 25 yards. This is very good!
When the single-shot tray was used, 10 Falcon pellets made this 0.429-inch group at 25 yards. This is clearly better than the group made using magazine-fed pellets.
Mac tried the H&N Field Target pellets first, and they were very accurate, but a couple of them refused to feed through the magazine. But the Falcon pellets fed flawlessly, so we changed the test to use them as the domed pellet of choice. Once again, I want to say that in another magazine this pellet might have fed better, but this is a quirk you get with mags that you don’t get when loading singly.
Clearly the single-loaded pellets are more accurate than those loaded by the magazine. That may not hold from magazine to magazine; but for this one mag, you’re better off loading the pellets one at a time. Let’s see how the rifle does with wadcutters at 25 yards.
Using the magazine, 10 RWS R10 7.7-grain pellets (an obsolete weight for the R10) grouped in 0.484 inches at 25 yards. That’s great performance.
When each pellet was loaded singly, the R10s grouped 10 in 0.402 inches. This was the best group of the test!
The trend continued with the wadcutter pellets. The R10s grouped even tighter than the Falcons at 25 yards, and those that were loaded singly did much better than those that fed through the magazine.
What have we learned?
First, we’ve learned that some magazines do influence the accuracy of the gun with all ammunition — or at least with the pellet types used in this test. A different magazine might well give different results, but one thing it will never do is outshoot loading the pellets by hand, one at a time. As a 10-meter shooter, I knew this going into the test. But it was nice that we were able to demonstrate it so clearly.
Next, we see that wadcutters were more accurate than the domes in this test. Even though both pellets were very accurate, the wadcutters had the edge. That was the part that surprised me. I’d expected the domes to take over at 25 yards.
The bottom line
The Crosman MAR177 is a valuable addition to an AR and a wonderful target rifle in its own right. It was held back in this test by the use of an AR National Match trigger, which is by no means as good as a target trigger on an air rifle. Even so, we see accuracy that any 10-meter precision rifle would be proud of.
I think Crosman has made a winning rifle in the MAR177. And when they bring out more powerful versions of it in the future, it’ll be all the greater justification for owning an AR! My thanks to Crosman for the loan of this MAR177 for both this test and for the feature article I am writing for Shotgun News!
El Gamo 68/68-XP – A futuristic airgun from the past: Part 1
by B.B. Pelletier
El Gamo 68 is a futuristic breakbarrel from the past.
I told you that the Arkansas airgun show was unique in yesterday’s report. Today, I want to start a report on an airgun I bought at the show. It was on the table next to me throughout the show, and I thought for sure someone would snap it up before I got the money to buy it; but as fate would have it, the gun waited for me until the end of the show. Literally, an hour before it was due to be packed up, I made an offer to reader David Enoch, the gun’s owner, and he accepted. I now own an air rifle that I’ve been wondering about for the past 32 years.
I first noticed the 68-XP (it’s a little hard not to notice!) in the pages of a 1979/1980 Air Rifle Headquarters catalog. I was still in the Army, living at Fort Knox with my young family at the time, so the discretionary funds were too tight to buy many of the things that caught my fancy, but this gun was so odd that I both hated it and wanted to get to know it at the same time.
Note: My gun is clearly marked as a model Gamo 68. A bit of Google searching came up with an old forum posting that the 68-XP was sold only in America, but the same gun was sold in Europe as the 68. If the guns were actually marked 68-XP when they came to the U.S., then mine was made for the European market since it lacks the “XP” initials.
You could tell that the description in the ARH catalog was mostly hype (not really, but I will explain as we go); but there seemed to be a thread of truth that ran through all their tests, and this rifle was reported as being fairly accurate. I already owned a Beeman FWB 124, so I didn’t need aspirin-busting accuracy; but the thought that a $90 spring-piston air rifle that looked like something Buck Rogers carried — but could also be a shooter — was enticing. It was offered only in .177 caliber, of course, because the powerplant was barely up to launching even those light pellets, to say nothing of the much heavier .22s. Of course, things like that never stopped companies like Diana, but El Gamo was a Spanish company that seemed wedded to the smallest caliber.
In those days (around 1979), Spanish airguns were looked upon like Chinese and Turkish airguns are today. We knew the companies were able to make good guns, but they often seemed to lack the willpower to actually do it. So, I considered El Gamo to be a junk brand, and in retrospect I believe that was a serious misjudgment on my part. What they really were was a non-German airgun maker that was building accurate and solid airguns at a time when most of us couldn’t see past Weihrauch, Webley, BSA and Feinwerkbau. And when I say “most of us,” I really mean just me, because there were no airgun magazines on the market (that I knew about), nor had Al Gore invented the internet, yet. It would be another 14 years before I started writing The Airgun Letter and attending airgun shows to discover that others shared my misguided opinions.
Robert Law, the owner of Air Rifle Headquarters, did his best to convince us that El Gamo rifles were good, but he was fighting unreasonable opposition. For some reason, we all (I later learned) believed every word he said about a Weihrauch HW 55 target rifle, but thought the copy about El Gamo was nothing but hype!
He would say things like, “All El Gamo models feature a rifled steel barrel,” which sounded suspiciously similar to “Each Yugo automobile features four perfectly round tires filled to capacity with factory air.” I think that we (I) had chips on our shoulder(s) and were daring Law to be right about anything he said regarding Spanish airguns..
El Gamo?
Before anyone asks, El Gamo used to be the name Gamo used for their company. Sometime in the 1990s (I believe), they dropped the El from the logo.
The crackle finish held up well over time.
El Gamo’s logo is a stylized stag.
The action
The 68/68-XP is based on the model 300 action. ARH sold it as the 300 Target and considered it to be an informal target rifle. They claimed an accuracy of 0.22 inches for 5 shots at 10 meters after their free conditioning, but all 68/68-XPs should shoot about the same after break-in. After they’re accurized, they said the rifle would group in 0.15 inches.
Beeman also sold the model 300, and they gave an accuracy potential of 0.22 inches — so they agreed with ARH. That’s not surprising, since they bought their guns from ARH in the beginning.
The gun is a strange one. It has no true stock, as you can see. What is the stock on most breakbarrels is a cast-aluminum frame on this one. The butt is synthetic — made of two halves screwed together around the cast-aluminum frame.
The trigger has three adjustment screws. Since David Enoch was kind enough to send me the manual, I’ll know how they work when it comes time. At the forward end of the triggerguard is a hole that leads to a large screw that might look like an adjustment screw but actually is the bearing point for the cocking linkage. I’ll pull the action out of the stock to see how this works and maybe why it’s there.
Three trigger adjustment screws are located at the back of the triggerguard. The one screw that’s in front of the trigger seems to adjust the cocking link bearing point.
The little gun feels heavy. It weighs 6 lbs., 2 oz., which isn’t much, but seems like a lot for a carbine whose overall length is only 37 inches. And yet the barrel is 17-9/16 inches long, which helps bring down the cocking effort to just 22 lbs.
The sights are old-school — no nasty fiberoptics to contend with. The rear sight adjusts in both directions, and the front sight is a crisp, wide blade with sharp edges. It fits the rear notch nicely, so you can aim precisely.
The rear sight is adjustable both ways. Though it looks like most modern open sights, it seems crisper than most.
The front sight is exactly what you want in a sporting front sight. Why did they ever change?
The ARH catalog says the gun holds well for offhand shooting, and I saw that when I shot it twice at the Arkansas airgun show. I was surprised when my pellets went into the same hole at 15 yards, because I’m not normally that good offhand. So I hope there’s a real surprise in store for us as far as accuracy is concerned.
There’s a scope rail on this one, so I’ll mount a scope after trying the open sights. They had scoped air rifles back when the gun was new; but they were still in the very early days, when not a lot was known about scoping airguns. Today, I have access to BKL scope rings, which overcome the lack of provisions for a mechanical scope stop.
The butt frame is aluminum, with two-piece synthetic shells that are screwed together.
Bottom line
You can’t buy one of these except as a used airgun, but it has so many of the features that I want to see in every lower-powered spring rifle that I wish it was still being made. If you don’t like the unconventional look of the 67/68-XP I’m testing, the action is identical to the model 300 that comes in a classic wood stock. So, let’s see how El Gamo made themback in the 1970s!
2012 Arkansas airgun show
by B.B.Pelletier
Every airgun show is unique. I’ve said that many times before, but it’s always true — and this one was no different. What I look for when I try to describe an airgun show is how it stood out from all the others. That’s what I’ll do today.
An airgun show is small, in comparison to0 a regular gun show, but there are more airguns on a single table then you’ll see at most big gun shows. And the guns range from inexpensive Daisys and Crosmans to then most exotic airguns imaginable. So go to gun shows for and crowded aisles, but to airgun shows to find airguns.
I didn’t get away from my table for the first half of the first day. When I finally did, the show immediately began to reveal itself. It was jam-packed with big bore air rifles! I mean jammed! Dennis Quackenbush and Eric Henderson are always the mainstays of the show; but this time I met Robert Vogel, whose business is Mr. Hollowpoint. Robert casts each bullet by hand from lead as pure as he can make it. His bullets mushroom on game perfectly and rip huge holes in living flesh, making the most humane kills possible. I bought a bag of 68-grain .308-caliber hollowpoints for the Quackenbush .308 test I’m conducting, and he threw in a second bag of .22 pellets for free. These will have a special debut in a smallbore test in the near future.
Robert Vogel (standing) is Mr. Hollowpoint. He has thousands of different bullets for big bore shooters to try.
But Mr. Hollowpoint wasn’t the only bullet maker at the show. Seth Rowland, the show’s host and promoter, also supplies the big bore airgunning community with cast bullets in numerous sizes and shapes. And their customers can hardly appreciate the untold hours they spend at the lead pot, casting and sizing these silver slugs one by one.
Need bullets? Seth Rowland has them in different sizes, shapes and weights.
10-meter guns
Another theme that’s common to all airgun shows is 10-meter target guns. This year’s Arkansas show had plenty of them, both from dealers like Scott Pilkington of Pilkington Competition Equipment in Tennessee, as well as numerous private individuals. I mentioned several weeks ago that Mac was bringing some recently overhauled FWB rifles to this show, and on day one an interested buyer sought him out. This man was serious about buying a target rifle, and he had done his research on the internet. But this was the first time he’d seen, felt and shot these rifles.
Mac took him out to the shooting range to try out an FWB 150 and a 300; and from his testing, he decided the 300 was the gun he wanted. Because it lacks the barrel jacket, it’s lighter than a standard 300S. He was buying the rifle for his wife to shoot in competition. They made a deal, and he went home with the exact target rifle he wanted — an overhauled ex-club rifle at a price that was several hundred dollars below what he would have paid for a gamble on the internet. For this man, driving all the way to Arkansas made good sense.
I’m sure that same scenario was played out numerous times at this show, because that’s what happens at an airgun show that also has a shooting range. You get to try out the guns before you buy — something that’s impossible at a regular gun show.
The odd and wonderful
You never know what you’re going to see at one of these shows, but there are a few people who always seem to have interesting things. Larry Hannusch, the top airgun writer for the past 30 years, is one person who can always surprise you. This year, our tables were together, giving me the opportunity to look at his guns more closely than normal. He had a Crosman 113 bulk-fill CO2 rifle, which isn’t unusual, except the owner of this one had inlet a pellet box into the right side of the stock — much like the patchbox found on certain muzzleloading rifles.
Some owner made this patchbox in the stock of his Crosman 113 bulk-fill rifle.
He built the “patchbox” with a built-in spring. There were pellets inside.
When was the last time you saw one of these? A French ball-flask pistol from the 1700s.
The big find
Often there will be a big find of some certain airgun that shows up at a particular show. I remember one year someone was selling piles of brand-new-in-the-box S&W 78G and 79G pistols. There were at least 50, but as my memory serves there might have been as many as 100 brand-new guns that were at least 20 years old at the time. Another year, it was Scott Pilkington who brought almost 300 club target guns for sale. You could buy an FWB 300 for $150-$200! Of course, it would have been a beater and would have needed to be resealed, but it certainly was the budget way into a 10-meter gun.
Then there was the year that someone had over 20 Johnson Target Guns, the submachinegun-looking plastic catapult BB gun from the late 1940s. They were all new in the box, and the cloth backstop that was in the box to stop the BBs inside the box lid that also served as a backstop had turned to dust. But they were complete. To collectors, they were a wonderful find. I actually saw two of these at this year’s Arkansas show; so even after more than 10 years, they’re still slowly dissolving into the collector population.
Two brand-new Johnson Target Guns in the box with all the literature and accessories.
When I walked into the second large room in this show and turned the corner, I ran into Randy Mitchell’s booth, where he was selling a pile of recently discovered TS45 sidelever air rifles for $20 each! I blogged this rifle several years ago, and Vince also wrote a guest blog about the same rifle. Until now, there were no new guns you could buy. You had to find one by chance and would always be one somebody had owned and possibly modified. Now, Randy Mitchell, who runs his Adventures in Airguns store, has a huge pile of these rifles to sell. They aren’t very safe and are the very guns that chopped off thumbs when their anti-beartraps failed; but if you cock them safely and load while restraining the sidelever, they’re fun to shoot and are often accurate.
Randy Mitchell found these old/new TS45 sidelevers and brought them to the show. It’s stuff like this that keeps me going to every airgun show I can make!
Collectibles
Of course, there are too many modern guns to name here, but know that at any show you’ll find almost every modern classic airgun for sale. If you’re looking for good TX200s or old R7s, they’re usually available — and they were at this show, too. But what you also see are airguns that are so rare and hard to find that some of them won’t even be seen in airgun books. This yearm Ingvar Alm had both a Winsel CO2 pistol in the box and a Giffard CO2 pistol from the 1870s on his table. Giffard invented the application of CO2 for gun use, and Winsel made only 50 guns in the early 1950s. Neither gun is represented well in any airgun book I know.
The Winsel pistol was a bulk-filled CO2 pistol that required the owner to mail his tank back to the company to be filled. Yeah, that’s going to work! They made 50 and quit. Today, they’re a prized collectible.
Giffard pioneered the use of CO2 in guns in the 1870s. His pistols are many times rarer than his rifles. The empty pop bottle is for contrast — like Cindy Crawford’s mole.
Big bores
There were more big bores at this show than I see at other shows. Perhaps, that’s because the focus of big bore airgunning seems to center around Texas, where the LASSO match is held. Dennis Quackenbush delivered his guns to eager buyers, but the only rifle he had to show was his own .308, which he doesn’t want to sell. Eric Henderson and Big Bore Bob Dean were both there with some guns to sell, as well as Robert Vogel. But the one maker with a lot of guns on display was Jack Haley, whose table was a rainbow of laminated stocks.
Jack Haley’s table was a colorful display of big bore rifles.
Oops!
Then there was the big bore that has been a joke in the airgun community for many years. The gun itself is fine. It was made back in the 1980s by Ben Patron, whose name is clearly on the side of the receiver. Somewhere along the line, some person got ahold of it and displayed it at the Springfield, Missouri, gun show as a “U.S. military .50-caliber sniper air rifle.” The label for that display was still inside the guitar box that held the gun, and Dennis Quackenbush remembers seeing it at the Springfield show. After that, it somehow ended up in an Arkansas pawn shop where Big Bore Bob found it and bought it.
Some previous owner had concocted a colorful background story for the Patron big bore of the 1980s.
The drawing
Many shows have a drawing, but airgun shows are so lightly attended that you actually have a chance of winning! This year, they gave away several very nice prizes at the close of the show, including a scoped TalonP pistol from AirForce! Then came the drawing for the frame-extended silencer for the Talon SS. I knew before the little girl picked my ticket that I would win it. How ironic is that? I’m testing a Talon SS with a bloop tube right now, so of course I’m going to win another one! But the supreme irony came when Randy Mitchell, a big bore hunter, won the .50-caliber Dragon Claw donated by Pyramyd Air.
Randy Mitchell (right) won the Dragon Claw. Show host, Seth Rowland, standing, ran the drawing. The young lady added a lot of sparkle and enthusiasm to the show. I see an airgunner in the making!
On the trip home, Mac and I relived the show many times. That’s another benefit. I can remember snippets from most past shows, and this one will now be filed away in the library.
AirForce Talon SS precharged pneumatic air rifle: Part 4
by B.B. Pelletier
I’m on my way to Malvern, Arkansas, for the airgun show on Friday and Saturday. If you’re going to the show, please stop by and introduce yourself. I’ll have limited time to spend answering the blog comments, so I would appreciate it if the blog regulars would help answer questions from newcomers and new shooters. Now, on to today’s blog.
AirForce Talon SS is a whole shooting system.
Today, we’re going to change the stock 12-inch barrel of our AirForce Talon SS for an optional 24-inch .22-caliber barrel. The caliber will remain the same but the barrel length will double. That will demonstrate the benefits of installing a longer barrel on a PCP.
Changing the barrel
AirForce barrels are held in the gun by two bushings around the barrel. These center the barrel inside the tubular aluminum frame. The SS frame is equal in size to the Condor frame. All that differs is the Condo scope base, which is longer. A 24-inch barrel fits the SS frame quite well.
Step 1: Make the gun safe
The first step is to ensure the gun is not cocked or loaded. The safety will be off for this procedure. Dial the power adjuster to zero to take tension off the barrel.
Step 2: Remove the end cap
The end cap is held in place by one 2mm Allen screw. Remove it, and the end cap comes out. It’s held tight by an o-ring to prevent vibration, so just pull a little harder than you think you should, and it’ll slip out.
Remove one screw, and the end cap comes off. You’ll have to pull because the o-ring holds it securely.
Step 3: Remove the forearm
One 2.5mm Allen screw holds the forearm in place. Remove it, and the forearm comes off the gun.
One screw, and the forearm comes off.
Step 4: Remove the barrel
The barrel is held in place by either two or four 2mm barrel bushing Allen screws. The first guns, like mine, had just two screws, located in the channel under the forearm. Later guns had two more very short screws on the left side of the gun. They were just 1/8-inch long and beared directly against the side of each bushing. Today’s guns have two longer Allen screws in the same place, and they fit into holes in each bushing.
Two or four bushing screws, and the barrel is free to come out.
The barrel now comes straight out of the frame. If it is tight, just bump the muzzle end of the frame on thick carpet a couple times and the barrel will slide out. You only have to do this with the 12-inch barrel, as all other barrels come out to the end of the frame or past it.
The barrel is out.
The barrel is out, and you can install the new barrel. Since I’m installing a 24-inch barrel that will stick out of the frame by 6 inches, I can just slide it into position and fasten the screws. If I were installing the 12-inch barrel, I would need some kind of pusher because the 12-inch barrel sits down about 4.5 inches inside the frame.
The new bushings (top) are held on with screws and have two screw holes, each. The older bushing was pressed on and had just one screw hole.
The assembly is the reverse of the disassembly, but here are some tips.
1. Coat the thin section of the barrel with diver’s silicone grease or o-ring lubricant, because the bolt that slides on this section has two o-rings to seal it.
2. If you’re installing a 12-inch barrel, the alignment of the screw holes in the bushings is critical, because you won’t be able to turn the barrel when it’s inside the frame. So, check that before the barrel goes in.
3. Watch through one of the screw holes for the bushing hole to appear. Align it and install one screw. After that, all the other screws should be perfectly aligned.
4. When you install the forearm, don’t tighten the screw too much. It holds only by a couple threads; and if you tighten too much, you may cause firing problems.
The first time I swapped barrels, it probably took me 30 minutes, because I went very slow and was super-careful. The second time, it took seven minutes (I timed it) — and after that it took less than five minutes.
How does it work?
We have data from the 12-inch barrel, so now let’s shoot the gun on the same power setting with the 24-inch barrel.
Crosman Premiers
With the 12-inch barrel, 14.3-grain Crosman Premiers came out at 854 f.p.s. They gave an average energy of 23.16 foot-pounds.
With the 24-inch barrel on the same setting, the same pellet averages 1027 f.p.s. f.p.s., for 33.5 foot-pounds of energy.
JSB Exact 15.9-grain domes
JSB Exact 15.9-grain domes averaged 823 f.p.s., producing 23.92 foot-pounds of energy.
With the 24-inch barrel, they average 991 f.p.s and make 34.68 foot-pounds.
Because the 24-inch barrel is so much more efficient, I can load the heaviest pellets and still shoot them with the SS powerplant. The 28.4-grain Eun Jin pellets that I would not shoot in the 12-inch barrel average 814 f.p.s. on the highest power setting and produce 41.79 foot pounds of energy. That’s not quite the 45 foot-pounds I’ve been reporting, but the Eun Jin I shot isn’t the heaviest .22 pellet, either.
The 24-inch barrel does improve the power with no other change to the gun. Next, we’ll see how it shoots.
Crosman MAR177 test report: Part 5
by B.B. Pelletier
Crosman’s new MAR177 upper is big news!
Today, we’ll look at the Crosman MAR177 upper shooting domed pellets at 25 yards. I’ll be using the 10-shot magazine, so we’ll get to see that in action, as well. I’ll tell you right now that today was a learning day that spawned another report that’s still to come. Read on to learn what it is.
As you know, the Crosman upper receiver is attached to a lower receiver that I built on a Rock River Arms lower receiver shell. I used Rock River parts, and the trigger is an upgraded two-stage National Match trigger, also from Rock River.
National Match?
To the uninitiated, the term National Match sounds like the finest possible precision. Well, it isn’t! A National Match trigger in an AR is about like a John Deere tractor — strong and effective, but as far from real precision as it is possible to get and still have a good trigger. My trigger has a light first stage and a crisp release in stage two, but it’s not what any target shooter would call precision. The break point is right at 5 lbs. My Trapdoor Springfield, which was made in 1875, has a trigger just as nice. My 1879 Argentine rolling block’s trigger is lighter and crisper, now that I have replaced the heavy service-grade trigger return spring. So understand that National Match does not mean the same as precision. You owners of Rekord triggers don’t know how good you have it.
The National Match AR trigger is quite a bit better than the single-stage trigger that comes standard on a military or civilian AR, but it isn’t a target trigger by any stretch. I tell you that so you’ll understand what I had to deal with in this test.
10-shot magazine
The MAR’s magazine is the same one that a .177 Benjamin Marauder uses. It’s wound under spring tension as it’s loaded and advances by spring power as the bolt is worked for each shot. Remember that on the MAR, the bolt is retracted by pulling back on the charging handle — the same as all other ARs.
The 10-shot magazine comes from the Benjamin Marauder and is completely reliable, as well as quick and easy to load. Here the last shot is in the magazine, holding it in place. The clear plastic cover is rotated to drop in the other 9 pellets.
To cock the MAR the charging handle is pulled back.
The mag loads easy once you know the right procedure. A couple of the chambers were tight, so I used a mechanical pencil to push in the pellets. Once they cleared the lips of the tight chambers, they dropped into place easily. There were no feeding problems throughout the test, which entailed about 90 pellets, give or take.
The scope
I mounted a Leapers 4×32 mini scope on the rifle. It’s not a scope that Pyramyd Air stocks, but it would be similar to this Leapers scope. You may criticize my choice for some lack of aiming precision; but when you see how good the little scope looks on the rifle, I think you’ll understand why I went with it. It allowed me to use medium scope rings and still clear the magazine that stands proud of the receiver top. If I were hunting feral hogs with a 300 AAC Blackout or a .50 Beowulf cartridge, this is the scope I would use. No, it doesn’t magnify as much as a good 3-9x scope, so we may have to take that into consideration when we look at these groups.
This mini-Leapers scope looks perfect on the MAR. The two-piece rings have to be close to each other because the scope tube is short.
Sight-in
I sighted-in at 12 feet, using my 10-minute sight-in procedure. If you haven’t tried this yet, you need to. It took just three rounds to get on target; and although a bit of luck was involved, this sight-in procedure always cuts time from the front-end of my scope tests.
Air Arms Falcon
I used the 7.3-grain Air Arms Falcon pellet to sight in. The scope seemed right on for elevation, but off to the right. I dialed in some left correction and shot again. Almost there, but not quite. One more adjustment put me at 6 o’clock, as far below the aim point as the center of the scope was above the bore axis (approximately). I knew I was safe to back up to 25 yards and start shooting.
The next 7 shots made a group measuring 0.422 inches between the centers of the holes farthest apart. It was an auspicious beginning for the test!
Three shots to get on target, then a great 25-yard, 7-shot group of Air Arms Falcons.
It was also the best group I shot with the Falcons. The other two opened up to over three-quarters on an inch, so although they made a good first impression, Falcons were not the best domed pellet in the rifle I’m testing.
JSB Exact 8.4-grains
I also tried JSB Exact 8.4-grain domes. They put 9 pellets into 0.495 inches, but threw the tenth shot low and right, opening the group to 1.047 inches. I detected no reason for this wild shot, so I’ll have to chalk it up to the pellets — maybe.
BSA Wolverine
Next I tried some BSA Wolverines. This is yet another JSB dome that sometimes out-performs anything else. But in the MAR, they were just satisfactory, putting 10 into 0.642 inches.
JSB Exact RS
Another tantalizing group was made by JSB Exact RS pellets. We’ve learned over many tests that the RS is one of the best pellets for low- to medium-powered springers, and the MAR177 shoots at the same velocity, so I wondered how well it would do. Nine shots went into 0.474 inches, but the tenth shot opened that to 0.874 inches. It was a second instance in which 9 shots were tight and the tenth was a flier. I cannot say where in the string the wild shots occurred, though, because the scope couldn’t see the pellet holes as they were made.
Nine were tight, then a tenth opened the group. JSB Exact RS pellets
H&N Field Target
Next, I tried H&N Field Target domes. A reader recently asked me why I don’t try these, as he had good success with them. I responded that I had, and had not experienced the same success; but when I checked my pellets, I discovered that I’d been shooting H&N Field Target Trophy pellets. The Field Target pellet tin was unopened. See what confusion a small name change can make?
Best group of the day was shot with 10 H&N Field Target pellets. It measures just 0.441 inches across.
These 8.5-grain domes gave me the best 10-shot group of the test — a stunning 0.441 inches between centers! This is a pellet I will work into future tests, you can be sure. This also serves to demonstrate that although the scope only magnifies four times, that’s good enough.
I was starting to tire from all the concentration, so this was the place to stop. I would say that the MAR177 made a good showing, but also raised some questions.
What comes next?
The performance of the rifle in this test was so intriguing that I want to reshoot the same test, only using the single-shot tray next time. Then I will know for sure whether or not the magazine has any influence over the group size. I’ve always had reservations about magazines in any rifle, and I really want to see if there’s any discernible difference. If there is, I may have to do a lengthy test of magazines vs single-shot operations in PCPs.
The next test that will also offer an opportunity to pit wadcutter target pellets against the best domes at 25 yards. I’ve always maintained that 25 yards is about the maximum distance at which wadcutter pellets are accurate, and we even shot a segment on the American Airgunner TV show in which we put that to the test. The domes were clearly superior to wadcutters at 35 yards, so this test will be at a closer distance and indoors. It should prove interesting.
AirForce Talon SS precharged pneumatic air rifle: Part 3
by B.B. Pelletier
AirForce Talon SS is a whole shooting system.
Today, we’ll take our first look at the accuracy of the AirForce Talon SS precharged pneumatic air rifle. Since I just returned from the NRA Annual Meetings and heard from a lot of owners what they think about this airgun, let me tell you what they all said. Many of them said they’ve never seen a more accurate airgun. Some do own other precharged air rifles, but admit that the Talon SS is equal in accuracy to the best of them.
A few years ago, I used to hear some criticism about the Talon SS trigger since it isn’t adjustable, but I guess people are shooting it more these days, because everyone I talked to at the NRA Show loves their trigger. They all confirmed that the trigger and safety both get lighter, smoother and easier to use as the rifle breaks in. One man was awed that his rifle had held air without leaking for seven months. Then, I told him about the prototype rifle I once found in the factory when I worked there. It was tucked under a work table and was covered with dust. It was still holding a charge after more than five years! So, they do hold their air indefinitely.
Many perspective buyers came up to me knowing a lot about the gun already, yet this was the first time they’d actually seen one. And a great many of them went to the airgun range and shot the Talon SS that was available to the public. After that, some of them came down to the Pyramyd Air booth and insisted on writing an order on the spot. If there had been working guns to sell, I estimate we could have sold quite a few during the show. And .22 caliber was the overwhelming choice of all buyers.
Scope
I used an obsolete Leapers Accushot 4-12×44 Mini SWAT mil-dot scope (without illuminated reticle) on the rifle. I mounted it in two-piece Leapers 30mm medium-height rings. Most shooters feel they need higher rings than I use because they don’t hold their rifles the same way I do. I get by with much lower rings because of this hold, so you may need more height than I do. Consider that when you buy one of these rifles.
I normally recommend an AirForce 4-16×50 scope for this rifle. It helps with the longer distances. But both of my AirForce scopes are on other airguns that are also being tested, so I had to use something different this time.
Sight-in
As I mentioned in the last report I had to install the factory 12-inch Lother Walther barrel that comes standard for this test, because I keep an optional 24-inch barrel in my SS at all other times. The benefit of almost doubling the power with the same amount of air is too good to pass up. I didn’t show the barrel changing process, but I will show it when I switch over to the 24-inch barrel in the next report.
So, the new barrel is in the gun and how many shots did it take to sight in? How about two? That’s correct. After two shots, all pellets were landing where I intended. This was not in the center of the bullseye, as I didn’t want to destroy the aim point.
Accuracy
As I mentioned in Part 2, there’s just one pellet for this rifle — the JSB Exact 15.9-grain dome. It’s true that the 14.3-grain Crosman Premier was once the most accurate pellet for the rifle; but as I mentioned, this particular JSB has replaced it in my rifle.
There were already 35 shots on the tank from the velocity test and two from the sight-in, but I dialed the power setting to 6 and proceeded to shoot a 10-shot group at 25 yards that measured 0.296 inches between centers. Getting 47 accurate shots on a single fill is pretty darned good.
Not too shabby for 10 shots at 25 yards! Group of 10 JSB Exact 15.9-grain pellets measures 0.296 inches between centers. Notice how round it is.
Then, I filled the tank and shot the next group on power setting 10. Same pellet, just going faster. And naturally because I said in the last report that power setting 10 was the most accurate, this time it chose not to be. A single pellet turned a 0.33-inch group into one that measures 0.394 inches between centers. Again, the group is fairly round, telling me that the gun has no hangups and is performing up to snuff.
On power setting 10, ten JSB pellets went into this group that measures 0.394 inches at 25 yards.
I mentioned earlier that I used to shoot 3/8-inch test groups at 23 yards when I set up a new rifle for an AirForce customer or when I tested a customer’s rifle after repairs, but that was always a 5-shot group. Three-eighth’s of an inch is 0.375 inches, so I’m actually getting 10 shots into about the same size group as I used to get 5. I guess what that says is that you have to move back farther to really test an air rifle this accurate.
What’s next?
If this was the final report on the SS, I would go into some other things…but there’s more to come. So, that’ll be it for today.
I’ve already been asked by one reader to test the CO2 adapter on the gun. As long as I’m doing that, I think I’ll ask AirForce if I can borrow a Micro Meter tank and test that for you, as well. Next up will be the gun with the 24-inch optional barrel, which is the way I keep my SS set up. It effectively doubles the gun’s power and makes a rifle that I believe to be the most flexible in the PCP world.
