Collecting
How NOT to treat your guns!
by B.B. Pelletier
Before I begin today’s report, here’s an interesting tidbit of news. The Georgia senate has passed legislation (SB 301) that will allow residents to use legal silencers while hunting game. This curious legislation is the first positive thing on silencers that I’ve seen. Does it mean that we are about the see a change in the public attitude toward silencers in general?
Today’s report
You’re on the couch, watching a typical “shootemupski” flick and the gang-banger bad guys in their wife-beater undershirts and black doo-rags are all shooting their Glocks with limp wrists and the guns rotated 90 degrees to the left, so the shells eject out the top instead of the side. You suppress a quiet snicker, knowing that this is inherently wrong, but you chalk it up to Hollywood.
What else do you know about the mistreatment of guns? That’s any gun — air-powered or firearm.
What about the guy who opens his revolver to check that it’s loaded, then closes the cylinder with a quick flick of the wrist? Back in the 1950s, the gun magazines were all loaded with warnings not to do this because of what it does to the crane. The crane is the arm that swings out of the revolver and holds the axle on which the cylinder turns. How many times have I watched a vintage black-and-white murder mystery in which the bad guy did just that to his revolver? It works in the movies because they can shut the camera off and switch guns after they bend the crane. In real life, it’s so damaging that the fit of the crane is the first thing you check whenever evaluating a used double-action revolver.
This Ruger revolver’s crane is made from steel. It’s the part that allows the cylinder to swing out to the side of the gun for loading and unloading. If it can’t take being flipped shut without bending, imagine what will happen to a softer metal airsoft revolver crane!
Mark your territory!
Here’s one all the Bubbas do to their guns. They mark them with their Social Security account numbers etched into the steel with an electric engraving pen. When asked why they do it, they always answer, “It’s mine for as long as I own it, and after I’m gone I don’t care what happens to it.” The sad thing is, when Bubba dies, he stays dead for a long time! So, that beautiful Winchester Model 1873 rifle he inherited from his grandfather in 1954 now sits in some gun store in Ft. Worth marked at $1,875 instead of $3,500, because his SS# is engraved on the frame!
Think this makes it a bargain? Think again. Anyone who buys a gun marked this way just bought it for the rest of his life, because no one else will touch it. If you want to buy a real nice Winchester 1873 lever-action rifle that has someone’s SS# engraved on it, just contact me and I’ll give you the details. It’s been in the same place for at least the past seven years.
Will someone please take the engraving pen from Bubba? This pristine Remington 03A3 rifle from World War II lost a third of its value because he marked the receiver this way.
Custom woodwork
I was once stupid enough to go “all the way” for you here in this blog and “inlet” the stock of an Air Venturi Bronco for the slide of a peep sight. I put quotes around the word inlet, because it really isn’t the right term. “Splinter-out” would be more exact, I suppose. My woodwork was approximately the same level of quality that you’d get from a rabid beaver. Pole-climbers leave smoother wood behind them.
Look, Edith, I made this for you at summer camp! Some people should not be allowed to use tools, and I’m one of them.
Soldering with the starz
I’ll never forget back in the late 1990s when big bore airguns were just starting to be the rage, and the Farco Air Shotgun from the Philippines was the current rage. One “boutique” customizer hopped up his Farco up by switching from CO2 at 853 psi to air at 3,000 psi. But the steel screw that was the safety lug on the gosh-darn bolt kept digging a channel back through the brass receiver when the gun fired. Our “hero” built-up that area with a mound of lead solder. I am not kidding — there was a lump of solder there that was an inch deep!
Think it kept him safe? Well, it’s just about the same as sealing the leaks in your car’s engine block with candle wax. All I remember was that his gun was incredibly loud when it fired and nobody would stand within 20 feet of him when he shot it.
“Sometimes, things break off”
When I was in high school, a friend’s father had a double-barreled shotgun with Damascus-twist barrels. I was reading Guns & Ammo magazine at the time and about every third article had a warning about shooting smokeless ammunition in guns with Damascus-twist barrels. So, when his dad pulled out the shotgun to shoot it one day, I cringed and ducked behind a car. His dad said, “Aw, it’s okay. Sometimes things break off, but I still shoot it.” Sure enough, he shot it once, yelled, “Oww!” and stopped shooting. I heard the metal bounce off the car body, after it sliced through his cheek.
Drop-free magazines?
Sometimes the product name, alone, is enough to cause problems. The so-called “drop-free” magazines that some airsoft guns have is one example. The term drop-free was created to describe the type of magazine that is released from a semiautomatic pistol like the Colt M1911A1 when the magazine release catch is pressed. That’s opposed to the type of mag release that’s found on a Makarov or a Ruger Mark II that’s located at the bottom of the mag floorplate and doesn’t allow the mag to clear the gun even after it’s pushed. With that kind of release, you have to actually pull the magazine out of the frame of the gun.
A drop-free magazine will actually drop free of the gun when it’s released, but nobody would actually do that unless they had the base of the magazine protected by a rubber bumper to soften the shock of landing on the ground. IPSC shooters use them on their magazines because they have to reload as fast as possible.
But airsoft shooters who pay $129 for their entire gun do not have the optional rubber bumper on the bottom of each magazine unless they buy them and install them! The fact that the gun they buy has a drop-free magazine design does not mean that they can drop the magazine on the ground. It just means that it follows the drop-free magazine design that the auto pistols have.
Getting the lead out!
How many stories have I heard about airgun repair stations that have removed dozens of pellets from an airgun barrel during a repair job? And AirForce told me they once got a rifle back with jammed pellets and burst firecrackers in the barrel!
Pellets are not croquet balls and airguns are not croquet mallets. You can’t move one out of the barrel by smacking it with another one.
If you think it’s bad for airguns, just try it with firearms sometime! Better yet — don’t! Back when I was a lot younger and less patient, I was fast-firing a .45-caliber Generation II Colt Single Action Army when I had a squibb round. That’s a round without powder where the primer alone drives the bullet up the barrel partway. Without thinking, I thumbed off the next round that did have powder, driving both the first and second bullets out the barrel. It also split the barrel along nearly the entire 7-1/2″ length, with a swelling at the point where the first bullet was stuck.
This is what happens when your trigger finger works faster than your mind. This Colt Gen II SAA barrel is split from the muzzle to the threads. The other bullet did come out, though.
I knew something had gone wrong because the gun recoiled about three times as hard as normal, and my shooting partner caught the ejector housing in his stomach. No real injuries other than pride and wallet, but it was a life lesson whose tuition has just been paid.
I could go on with stories of people who felt the need to refinish a collectible airgun and destroyed its value. Sometimes, it doesn’t hurt — especially if the gun is painted like so many vintage Crosman guns were. But just don’t buff off the blue of a Falke 90 and expect anyone to appreciate your work. Some things are better left as is, unless you are a most careful worker.
This was supposed to be a Friday blog, but my schedule changed at the last minute and bumped it to today. Please feel free to talk about it all weekend anyway.
Seasons of an airgunner’s life
by B.B. Pelletier
Announcement: Allen Baltzer is this week’s winner of Pyramyd Air’s Big Shot of the Week on their facebook page. He’ll receive a $50 Pyramyd Air gift card! Congratulations!
Allen Baltzer is the Big Shot of the Week. Here he’s shooting his Umarex SA177 CO2 pistol.
Before I begin today’s report, I have to tell you that this coming Monday I will show you something truly astounding. I tested an airgun at the range yesterday, and the results were so surprising that I had one target witnessed. But I told the guy who signed it to never speak of it, because people will think he is a liar—just like me.
That’s coming Monday. Now, for today.
Lately, I noticed that my viewpoint on air guns and firearms in general has taken a new turn. I now find myself wanting to trim down my personal collection of airguns and firearms and to devote more time to fewer guns. If a gun isn’t interesting, I don’t have time for it. I’ve always been driven by the clock, but recently it’s become very pronounced. If a gun can’t justify itself, in terms of shooting fun or value, I don’t need it.
That’s not what things were like back when I started out in the shooting sports in the 1960s. Skipping over my youth and going right to early adulthood, it was in my early 20s when I was in college that I got interested in firearms, mostly because of my job at Frontier Village amusement park. Back then, I wanted to try everything, sometimes just to see if it was really all that people said or wrote about it, and other times just because I was fascinated. I wanted to try a .375 Holland & Hollandto see if it would knock me down (it didn’t) and a .458 Winchester Magnum for the same reason. The .458 was sobering, but I was a reloader at the time and soon found that a certain lead bullet and a small charge of a certain smokeless powder gave spectacular results at 100 yards. I never shot a full-bore .458, again.
Then, I got commissioned and went to Germany with the Army, where I became interested in airguns through the writings of Robert Beeman in the first edition of Airgun Digest. Ironically, I was stationed in Erlangen, a city near Nürnberg and the home of the airgun manufacturer, Bayerische Sportwaffenfabrik (BSF), though I was unaware of that fact while I lived there. Instead, it was in the walled city of Rothenberg on the Tauber that I found and bought a Diana Model 10 target pistol. That pistol turned out to be so sweet-shooting that it changed my outlook on airguns forever.
Beeman was telling me in Airgun Digest about the guns I was probably passing in the night without actually seeing, and there I sat in Germany, pining for the day when I could return home to California and visit the Beeman store to buy a German air rifle! Talk about irony!
I did return to San Jose in December 1976, and the first thing I did was drive up to see the Beeman store in Santa Rosa. I bought a Feinwerkbau 124D after considerable angst deciding between it and an HW35 Luxus. It was my Christmas present to myself.
After that, it was a slow but steady ramp-up to full-blown airgun collector status, which happened around 1990. At that juncture, I wanted one of every airgun that existed, and I had no idea what existed. We didn’t have the Blue Book in those days, so my education was one of trial and error while reading everything about airguns I could find.
For the next 10-15 years, I was an active collector; and because I was also writing about them, my finds provided the perfect research material! When I discovered the Crosman 600 pistol, for example, I didn’t just want one — I wanted all three major variations! I met the movers and shakers among the American airgun collectors. Even though I made some costly mistakes, my lucky finds overshadowed them, keeping me on an even financial keel.
But about a year or so ago, the thrill of finding new guns left me, or at least it greatly diminished. Instead of many new guns, I found I am now more interested in fewer guns with which I can spend more serious time. The Ballard probably pushed me in that direction and made it easier to get rid of other guns I once thought I would never sell.
I do still have some items of interest, but now they tend to be the more important pieces that will also cost more, like the vintage 10-meter rifles I’ve been testing. The number of new guns I buy has dropped, and the pace of acquisition has slowed, but the enjoyment level has increased. I can see a day coming when I will own only a handful of guns, but enjoy the shooting sports immensely. Many of my friends are doing and feeling the exact same thing, so I believe this has to be linked to our age.
I still understand and appreciate the raw desire a person new to the hobby can exhibit for a certain gun, however. That comes through loud and clear even when the gun in question isn’t my taste. I can certainly understand how it can appeal to others.
I think there are “seasons” to an airgunner’s life, or journey through this hobby. At different times different things will be of primary importance. This might be related to the chronological age of the person, rather than to their level of experience. In other words, two 50-year-olds are more likely to view things the same, despite one of them being an experienced veteran and the other a newbie. I think this must be the case, because I’m also experiencing the same sort of thing in other areas of personal interest.
I read about Matt61’s broad firearms interests in the daily comments and am reminded of my own similar interests when I was his age. However, some of those interests, such as the fascination with the M1 Garand design or seeing beauty in the No. 4 Lee Enfield rifle, seem to be timeless — at least so far.
Many years ago, there was a book about maintaining Volkswagen cars titled, How To Keep Your Volkswager Alive — A manual of step by step procedures for the Compleat Idiot by John Muir. We called it the idiot’s book, for short. The author rambled on about karma and stuff that a straight-laced Army officer shouldn’t have been interested in, but I was! There were technical illustrations throughout the book, but there were also lots of other drawings that looked like Grateful Dead concert posters.
The point is that even though Muir and I probably didn’t see eye-to-eye on many subjects and probably didn’t support the same political ideals, I have to acknowledge that he wrote the finest car maintenance book I’ve ever had the pleasure of reading. I needed the info he was writing; but as an added benefit, he managed to put it into terms I could comprehend. Perhaps that made me an idiot, but I was so happy just to learn this stuff that I didn’t care what label I got.
Sometimes, it’s the subject (airguns in this case) that validates our interests and draws us together. But as we age, our outlook on many things changes. I still like airguns and shooting, but probably not in the same way that many of my readers do — especially if we are separated by several decades of life. So, I’ll continue to review and test airguns as I have all along, but please bear with me when I reflect on the world as I see it. It’s the same world that you see, only seen through older eyes.
What IS an airgun?
by B.B. Pelletier
Simple enough question, no? Maybe you get confused by certain air-powered tools or perhaps a slang reference to a paint sprayer, but most folks know exactly what you mean when you say airgun.
Think so? Think again.
The term airgun isn’t found in most dictionaries, yet. You’ll find your spell-checker wants you to write it as two words, but that’s not what today’s blog is about. I really want to know if you know what’s encompassed by the term airgun.
Some of you have already stopped reading to formulate an official-sounding definition that goes something like this: An airgun is any smoothbore or rifled gun that propels a projectile by means of compressed air. As you stand back to admire your work, it suddenly dawns on you that your definition doesn’t encompass any of the guns that are powered by CO2. Don’t you hate it when that happens?
Airguns, it turns out, can be a great many different things. Air is only one of their defining characteristics.
Carbon dioxide
Before we move on, however, let’s deal with the CO2 issue. Clearly carbon dioxide isn’t air. If you doubt that, try breathing it for 20 minutes, and then we’ll talk. I’ve had arguments at length with airgun collectors who were stubbornly opposed to labeling CO2 guns as airguns. While that’s a fun subject for two people to banter about as they watch the fireflies rise on a warm evening, it doesn’t serve a person who is drafting state legislation regarding new hunting laws!
So, are CO2 guns airguns, or not? Well — let’s see. They’re sold by airgun dealers, they travel under the same restrictions as guns that do operate on air, they use the same ammunition and they perform similarly. And, heck, there are even a few amphibious models such as Benjamin’s Discovery that operate on either compressed air or CO2. Wasn’t it Robert Kennedy who observed that if something quacks like a duck it probably is a duck? So, yes, guns that use CO2 are also airguns.
Green gas/red gas
Wouldn’t it be nice if it ended there? Well, it doesn’t. There are other propellant gasses that power guns that must also be considered, now that the door has been opened for CO2. I’m talking about green gas and red gas. The airsoft industry hates to admit it publically, but green gas is actually propane. A tiny bit of silicone oil is added to the gas to lubricate the gun’s parts as it functions, and they leave out the odor that’s added to commercial propane to identify gas leaks (real propane doesn’t smell like onions; it has no smell at all).
The same dealers who tell you green gas is special will even sell you adapters to fill your green gas guns from five-pound propane tanks, all the while backpeddling on admitting that green gas is propane! The Orient, where a lot of airsoft guns are made, is quite good at doublespeak!
Here’s where it becomes interesting. Green gas develops a pressure of around 115 PSI at room temperature. That’s plenty of push to propel a 3-grain plastic ball (they call them BBs) out the spout at a fairly good clip.
Red gas is more exotic. It has a higher vapor pressure than green gas, so the guns that use it require some modifications. If you read all the warnings, you’ll get the idea that red gas is like nuclear fuel, but for one thing. Some airsoft guns also operate on CO2, which has a vapor pressure of 853 PSI at room temperature, which goes way beyond the pressure of red gas. To operate on CO2, airsoft guns have to be modified even more, and this is done by restricting the gas flow through special valving that has very small gas ports. There you are. Guns that run on green gas, red gas and CO2, none of which is air — yet they fall into the airgun category because there’s no other category for them.
Airsoft guns do receive special legislation of their own because many are built to simulate firearms (called “real guns” by some folks), and they’re used in force-on-force skirmishes, with people shooting at each other. There are legal issues concerning brandishing in public and special markings on the guns that are not as applicable to the kind of pellet guns I generally write about. But airsoft guns are sold by the same dealers and often made by the same companies who make conventional airguns. Again, they quack like ducks.
Catapult guns
We’re not finished with the non-air powerplants, yet, Sparky. There are still catapult guns to consider.
Catapult guns propel their projectiles by means of a spring in the form of an elastic band or even a conventional coiled steel spring. If you think CO2 guns cause controversy among the anal airgun collectors, try raising this subject and see what happens!
The most common catapult guns are the Sharpshooter-series guns dating from 1923 and produced as toy novelties in the U.S. through at least the 1980s. These guns all shot .118 lead shot, which is more commonly known as No. 6 birdshot.
This Bulls Eye pistol was the first of many so-called Sharpshooter pistols powered by rubber bands. It fired No. 6 birdshot up to ~150 f.p.s. when multiple rubber bands were used.
In most airguns, the use of dropped shot (shotgun shot is made by either dropping it from a high tower so that it forms a ball as it solidifies or forced through small holes by centrifugal force) can be a problem, because of inconsistent size. The shot can easily get jammed in barrels when it’s oversized, which is why we seldom see real BB-sized shot (shot size BB is nominally 0.180 inches in diameter) used in antique BB guns. It simply isn’t regular enough. But catapult guns seldom use barrels. They usually place the shot to be fired in a shaped seat to hold it during acceleration, then release it cleanly at the end of the acceleration phase.
The Johnson Indoor Target Gun shot conventional steel BBs from a submachine gun-looking plastic frame. It used tubular elastic bands much like modern surgical tubing to launch a 5.1-grain BB at 100-150 f.p.s., depending on the strength of the bands.
The Johnson Indoor Target Gun sold for $15 in 1949. It shot steel BBs at 100-150 f.p.s.
But Daisy made a catapult gun that used steel springs. Their model 179 is a Spittin’ Image replica of a Colt single-action revolver that I reported in this blog some time back. Instead of just flinging the BB with the force of the spring, the spring in the 179 pushed a paddle that actually hit the BB like a croquet mallet smacks a ball. Instead of just pushing the BB out the barrel (and this is one of the few catapult guns that really does have a smoothbore barrel), it was whacked out like a line drive off a baseball bat.
Daisy’s 179 was an early Spittin’ Image gun. Production began in 1960.
Rigid airgun collectors are really challenged by catapult guns, because of the Daisy connection. They don’t want to include them in the body of legitimate airguns; but with Daisy being such a key player, they usually cave.
That sets them up for a huge disappointment when they suddenly learn that in the 1840s there was another catapult gun that launched lead balls of approximately .43 caliber with sufficient force to kill small game. The Hodges catapult gun is a long gun with no barrel but with all the Victorian styling expected of a naval weapon made in the 1840s. The thought among advanced collectors is that it was a foraging gun made for naval vessels. Except for the few parts that absolutely had to be made of iron for durability, the rest of the gun is fashioned from bronze and English walnut!
The Hodges catapult gun dates from the 1840s. It was a ship’s foraging gun that made little sound, yet could take game of reasonable size without alerting hostile natives. The Roman soldier statues at the front are for anchoring the elastic bands.
The Hodges ball carrier is pushed back until the sear hooks it. Then the elastic bands are stretched one at a time to increase power. This way, the shooter can build in a lot more power than he can possibly handle when cocking the gun.
The elastic bands were anchored at the forward end by two Roman soldiers cast in detailed bronze relief. I’ve seen two such guns — the one pictured here is in remarkable preservation and the other one has been restored to working order and shot by its owner, who reports velocities in the mid-400 f.p.s. range with 122-grain swaged lead balls.
Caps!
The next branch on the oddity tree deviates toward those guns that shoot BBs and shot by means of the power of an exploding toy cap. Wamo made a minimum of five different models, and new ones surface every couple years. The most recent I’ve discovered shoots potato plugs!
The Kruger ‘98 was a cap-firing gun that shot No. 6 birdshot. The same gun also shot BBs and was called just Kruger. Wamo (also spelled Wham-o) made them both.
The Western Haig used toy caps to launch No. 6 shot. It sold for $2.98 in the 1960s. Sold by the founders of Wamo under a different company name and only from a P.O. Box.
If a toy cap can launch a BB, what’s to prevent it from igniting a small charge of black powder? And who decides what’s “a small charge”? There have been .22-caliber, .36-caliber and even .45-caliber rifles made by Rocky Mountain Arms Corporation in modern times that operate by means of exploding caps igniting black powder. If you go back 100 years, there were some made then, as well. They’re clearly firearms when they use black powder, but what about those using caps only?
This .22 rifle from Rocky Mountain Arms Corporation uses toy caps to ignite black powder behind a .22-caliber lead ball. They also made this in .36 and .45 calibers!
As long as we’re talking about caps, what prevents someone from using percussion caps and even primers to propel pellets and BBs? Apparently nothing, because it’s been done. Are these all airguns, as well?
Not the end!
As you now can see, the question of what constitutes an airgun is far from clear. Once you accept any of these deviations, the rest will come streaming through the same loophole. For instance, is a gun that also launches an arrow then considered a bow? And if so, is it legal to use during bow season?
It is for reasons like this that Edith and I are sometimes so rigid and precise in our terminology — because you never know what’s waiting in the wings.
FWB 300S vintage target air rifle: Part 1
by B.B. Pelletier
The FWB 300s is considered the gold standard of vintage target air rifles.
I’ve danced around writing this report for the better part of a year, and some of you have asked me when I was going to get around to it. Well, today is the day we’ll begin looking at Feinwerkbau’s fabulous 300S — considered by many airgunners to be the gold standard of vintage 10-meter target air rifles.
Today’s blog is an important resource for those who are interested in fine vintage 10-meter target rifles, because I’m going to give you the links to all the other reports I’ve done.
FWB 150
HW 55CM
Haenel 311
HW 55SF
Walther LGV Olympia
HW 55 Tyrolean
Diana model 60
There are plenty of vintage 10-meter rifles that I haven’t tested for you yet. The Diana 75, the Anschutz 380, the Walther LGR, the Anschutz 250 and the Gamo 126 all come to mind; but if you want to split hairs, there are numerous similar models like the Walther LG55 and the Diana 65 that also belong to a very long list of classic oldies. But the guns we’ve looked at thus far are a fair representation of the classic era of target air rifles. Today, we’ll look at the rifle many consider to be the pinnacle of achievement during that period.
History
You probably know the history, but if you don’t — first there was the FWB 110, a sidelever target rifle that recoiled! Yes, it recoiled. What’s more, Feinwertkbau didn’t make too many of them. The 110 is considered to be a very desirable airgun collectible today, and many advanced airgunners, including me, have never even seen one. According to the Blue Book of Airguns, fewer than 200 were made from 1962-1964.
The FWB 150 followed the 110 and introduced Feinwerkbau’s anti-recoil system. I reviewed the FWB 150 for you last June. I found it to be easy to shoot and compellingly accurate, but it wasn’t everything it could be. That honor awaited the 300S that I’m reviewing for you today.
The FWB 150 is the predecessor of the 300S. It shares a more sporterized stock profile with the interim FWB 300.
A footnote deserves to be inserted here, as the first edition of the Beeman catalog, a collectible in its own right, also mentioned an FWB 200 model, existing at the same time as the 300. A short line in the Blue Book says the model 200 was similar to the model 300 but lacked the recoil-compensation system. Until I researched today’s report, the model 200 was unknown to me and I’ve certainly never seen one. Is it as rare as the model 110? Has anyone ever seen one? These are the curious things that pop up as we research this fascinating hobby, and they’re what keeps the collector in me in a permanent state of anticipation.
The model 300 was much like the 150, in that it has a single coiled, steel mainspring and a thinner, more sporterized stock, yet it was definitely labeled a 300, rather than the 150. You don’t see as many straight 300 rifles as you do 150 rifles these days. Perhaps that’s because when the 300S came out it overshadowed the 300 and drove it from the marketplace in fairly short order. The 300S was a very different gun.
If you’re like me, you never paid much attention to the difference between a 300 and the 300S. What’s in a letter designation, after all? A lot of things, as it turns out.
Let’s start with the mainspring. The 300S has two coiled steel springs that are wound in opposite directions. It’s said they cancel the slight amount of torque at firing, though I cannot say that I’ve ever noticed any torque in my 150. The RWS Diana 48 sidelever does have noticeable torque upon firing, and you’ll feel a definite rocking to the right after the trigger is pulled. Since the sidelever already unbalances that rifle, the feeling is magnified; but the 150 doesn’t have the same feeling. At least — my rifle, which was recently tuned by Randy Bimrose, doesn’t.
The 300S stock is shorter than the stock on the 300/150. It also has a more vertical pistol grip to enhance the offhand hold. A slight flare at the bottom might go unnoticed in the catalog photos; but when you hold the rifle, the pistol grip grabs you right back.
Anti-recoil mechanism
So, how does this rifle block the recoil? Well, for starters, it actually doesn’t! All the FWB spring-piston target rifles do recoil; but in the 150 models and the 300-series there’s a special system in the stock that isolates the shooter from the movement. A set of steel rails set into the stock allows the action to move while the stock remains still. The shooter doesn’t feel any recoil and only the slightest vibration in some guns. But you do notice the movement of the action, because of the eyepiece that’s close to your sighting eye. The movement is very short — on the order of a quarter-inch or so — but if you’re close to the rear sight you’ll notice it. A rubber eyecup helps take up the shock and prevent your eye from banging into the rear sight disk, and I find it necessary to use this accessory with this model rifle.
This system is called the sledge system, after the name for a dry-land type of sled whose runners make it easy to drag heavy loads. It’s completely different from the Giss anti-recoil system, in which a counterweighted piston actually has no discernible recoil.
This mechanism is very refined compared to a similar system found on the RWS Diana model 54 Air King. Of course, that magnum spring-piston rifle has to deal with three times the power in a rifle of similar weight, so it’s actually doing quite a good job of canceling the recoil. Still, when the 300S lever is retracted, there’s no “levering” of the action required at the end of the cocking stroke like you have with the Diana 54. The ratcheting anti-beartrap safety that prevents the sliding compression chamber from smashing your thumb during loading does not need a separate button to release the cocking lever after you’ve loaded. The only extra step the 300S does have is a small locking latch on the sidelever that unlocks the lever at the start of the cocking stroke. The 150 and 300 cocking levers both have an end section that pivots outward to unlock the cocking lever and achieve the same thing.
Press down on the cocking lever latch to release the lever for cocking and loading.
The sidelever on a 300S is also much shorter than the one on the 150, yet the cocking effort remains as light. Obviously, some geometry was changed when the model was updated.
Daisy gun
My 300S is a Daisy gun. While many were imported and sold by Beeman, many more came into the U.S. through Daisy when the company was trying to establish itself as a target gun company. The FWB name trumped the Daisy name, however, and a Daisy FWB is exactly the same as one from Beeman or one imported directly from Europe.
This 300S came from Daisy.
No piston seal
Another odd but not unique feature of these rifles is the lack of a conventional piston seal. Instead of a traditional seal, they use a metal ring much like those found on an automobile engine’s piston. These rings will last for millions of cycles, as some club guns have demonstrated, though other parts like the breech seal will eventually have to be replaced. And the coiled steel mainspring set needs occasional replacement, as well.
Many Webley pistols and a couple of the older Webley rifles have the same design, so piston rings are not unique in the airgun world. They are, however, features that are found only on guns of quality.
Trigger
When the 150/300 was new, American airgunners were not used to light target triggers as a rule. They were accustomed to a 3-lb. pull being considered light. So, when they encountered the FWB trigger that releases at ounces rather than pounds, they were astounded. In fact, if they’d been accustomed to shooting the older target rifles from the 19th century, like Ballards, Maynards and Winchesters, all of which had fine double-set triggers, they would have been less impressed.
The 300S trigger has a nominal pull weight ranging from 3.5 oz. to 17.7 oz. (an optional trigger spring boosts that range from 10.6 oz. to 52.8 oz.). In target rifle terms, even the lighter range is not very light, though I find it just right for me. The trigger on my rifle releases at a satisfying 4.4 oz. It’s a two-stage pull with stage two being very definite. With practice, you can get on target and “think” the trigger off as the sight picture becomes perfect.
The 300S trigger also adjusts for position, cant and first-stage travel — all things that the 150 trigger does not do. Although the 150 trigger is just as light and crisp as the one on the 300S, you can’t reposition it. It’s also curved like a sporting trigger instead of straight like the target trigger found on the 300S.
The trigger of a target air rifle has no lower limit, the way a target air pistol does. In the ISSF rules for air pistols, a match pistol trigger must break at more than 500 grams (17.64 oz.). This is done in the interest of safety, as the muzzle of a pistol is too easy to move while on a firing line. But a rifle like the 300S is more obvious and easier to control, so there’s no lower limit. Some target air rifles today are releasing at less than 50 grams (1.76 oz.) of force.
Stock configuration
The stocks of the vintage target air rifles show a fairly broad latitude of design, but they stop short in a few important areas. Tyrolean stocks are not permitted in World Cup and Olympic matches, nor are butt hooks. Today’s rifles are studies in ergonomics applied against these rules. Today, a 300S looks fairly normal to eyes that are accustomed to wild aluminum stocks with numerous adjustments; but when it was new, it seemed to push the envelope of possibility. I suppose it’s equivalent to how the finned cars of the late 1950s appeared when they were new compared to how we see them today.
Sights
Another drastic measure was taken at the World Cup level in the realm of target sights. For a brief time, the tube-type rear aperture sight was used, but complaints that it gave an unfair advantage caused a ruling that it was no longer permitted. This is very odd, since tube-type sights have been in use since at least 1776 and were in widespread use in target matches throughout the 19th century. But the ruling was made, and today’s rear sights cannot use tubes to enhance the sharpness of the sight picture.
FWB target rear sights looked as exotic as a Rolex watch when they were new in the 1970s. Today, they seem almost simple, but they still do the job. The click detents are nowhere close to the thousandth-inch measurements of the Vernier scale peep sights I showed you recently; but since you’re shooting 10 meters instead of 1,000 yards, they’re more than adequate for the job.
Unfortunately, these rifles were also sold without sights for a slightly reduced price, and many buyers mounted short scopes on their 11mm sight dovetails. While they may have been pleased with the gun that way, they created a shortage of sights for the future that is difficult to resolve. Until five years ago, you either had to install a hoplessly crude rear sight made either in Spain or China and live with the problems of adjustment backlash, or you had to pony up almost as much money as you paid for the entire rifle just to buy a set of precision sights.
AirForce corrected that lack for you with their adaptive rear target sight that fits most 10-meter guns. For about a third of what a German rear sight costs, you get a unit that’s the equivalent of the vintage FWB rear sight; and as a bonus, it looks at home on any rifle. An additional feature that never seems to get mentioned is this sight can be removed from its base and installed in a standard one-inch scope ring — multiplying the possible applications greatly.
The front sight looks more conventional and is of the globe design with replaceable inserts. On the 300S, it’s part of a larger aluminum barrel sleeve that makes it proprietary. When the globe on an Anschütz or Weihrauch target rifle slides onto a dovetail, this globe actually fits only the 300S barrel.
The front sight on this HW55 attaches to two dovetails of standard width. All Weihrauch rifles that have dovetails can use this sight.
The FWB 300S front sight globe is integral with an aluminum sleeve that fits over the barrel. It’s either this or nothing!
The front sight is pinned to the barrel through the sight base. On some versions of the 300S, like the Universal and the later Match, this pin is at the bottom of the barrel. On my rifle it’s located at the top.
You may have also noticed that the 300S has a blued barrel sleeve that’s slenderer than the one on the 150. Only toward the end of the barrel does it swell a bit. That’s because the 300S barrel is longer than the one on the 150, so there has to be less sleeve material to balance the weight correctly.
But the real test of this airgun comes with shooting. I’ve already shot this rifle several times, so I know what’s in store. You should feel eager expectation for the next two installments, because this rifle wants to shoot!
The difficulty of selling quality
by B.B. Pelletier
Announcement: Randy Stratman is this week’s winner of Pyramyd Air’s Big Shot of the Week on their facebook page. He’ll receive a $50 Pyramyd Air gift card! Congratulations!
Randy Stratman took this week’s winning photo.
I made a remark in a comment this week that surprised me. Blog reader /Dave asked me to approach Crosman about resurrecting the Sterling rifle and I told him the following:
I doubt anyone will ever make this airgun again. As well-made as it is, this would be a $500-600 air rifle.
It’s sad that it’s just too nice to be made today, but that’s probably why Crosman decided to drop it when they took over. After the initial 300 sold to enthusiasts, they would sell maybe 50 a year. They need numbers of a thousand or more.
I made that comment rather quickly after reading his request; but after I read what I had said, I thought about it for a long time. Is quality really that difficult to sell today?
You might argue that it isn’t and use any one of a number of products to support your point. Rolex has long been a name used to connote quality among watches, though there are other makers like Audemars Piguet and Patek Phillippe whose products are made just as well if not better. And in the world of automobiles, Rolls Royce is the name everyone thinks of when they think of the best.
I could go on, but I’m sure you see my point. So, why do I say it’s difficult to sell quality?
Because it can be.
It’s particularly difficult to sell quality when the brand name is either not known or when the name has been used to brand similar products of a lower quality to benefit from the marketing cachet of the original good name.
What’s in a name?
Take the name Luger. The name Luger was never officially applied to the handgun we all call the German Luger. Lugers weren’t called Lugers — they were the model P08. But the Stoeger Corporation purchased the rights to the Luger name in 1923 and has used it ever since. Ask any gun collector whether a Stoeger Luger is a real Luger, and you’ll get a laugh. Yes, the guns they sell are legally Lugers, but no firearms collector categorizes them that way.
Here is another example. In the 1960s and ’70s, Daisy was very interested in getting into formal target shooting in a big way. One thing they did, and it’s a mistake that a lot of companies make, was to import FWB target rifles with the Daisy name imprinted on them. Those guns sold — not because they said Daisy on the outside, but in spite of it. The Feinwerkbau name was so well-known in the world of target shooting that it negated the Daisy name on the gun. To American shooters, the name Daisy is forever connected to inexpensive BB guns. Hence, the reason Daisy created their Avanti line — to distance their own name from target guns.
Back to quality
But this report isn’t about brand names — it’s about quality and how difficult marketing it can be. Let me illustrate the problem with a couple hypotheticals.
Let’s say Crosman decides to remake the Benjamin Sterling. This time, they’ll “do it right.” They won’t just use a Lothar Walther barrel — it will be a match-grade Lothar Walther barrel. And yes, there is a difference. They have the Sterling drawings, and they decide that much of the gun can be made on a CNC machine — lowering production costs in the end. They currently own several CNC machines, but all of them are operating at full capacity, so this project requires the purchase of a new six-axis, dual-spindle machine that can handle all the machining operations. It will cost them $330,000.
They’ll make the trigger on an EDM machine that they are using only 75 percent of the time, so figure $5,000/month for that. They calculate that the special dies they will need for various small parts like the sights will cost $115,000. The time spent inputting the drawings into the CAD software and debugging each routine will cost another $50,000. And so on. Let’s say that after the miscellaneous tooling gets added in, the cost is up to $600,000. That’s just for startup.
Now, let’s build the gun. The barrels will cost $71 each, unfinished. That’s the price when you buy 1,000 at a time and guarantee at least 5,000 per year. Finishing adds about $8.50. The other raw materials for the action will cost $86, and the additional processing costs on all of them will add $157. The walnut stock blanks will cost $27 each, and the processing costs for shaping, inletting, checkering, sanding, sealing, staining and finishing will bump that up to $49. Add all the material costs together and the labor required to assemble, test and package each rifle and the number comes out at $401 delivered to the loading dock. Crosman adds their markup on top of that, and their top-tier distributors are able to purchase the rifle for $512 (I’m being extremely conservative — they would want to make a lot more than that for an expense this large!). So the lowest street price you will ever see for this new model is $635.
But this new rifle is wonderful! It’s easy to cock, smooth-shooting and has a delightful trigger. On top of that, the finish is flawless and the woodwork is stunning. It compares visually to the TX200, which is a simpler design because of not having the Sterling’s bolt. But the new Sterling is also 11.5 foot-pounds, at best. Think of an 8-grain .177 pellet traveling 800 f.p.s.
Why did they do that? Why would they build a marvelous air rifle like this and leave it anemic? Well, they tried to boost the power, but it required either a larger-diameter piston or a longer stroke. Either modification added hundreds of thousands of dollars to the development costs. You and I look at an extra inch of spring tube and figure five dollars, and maybe that’s all it costs to buy the raw materials, but the cost to redesign all the powerplant parts that have to be changed to accommodate the extra inch is what the manufacturer has to think of. The piston, piston rod, cocking lever link and perhaps other parts all have to be changed just to accommodate the extra inch. And they need a new longer stock blank to hold the longer action, so all that work must be redone, as well. And all those parts have to be entered into CAD software and input into various CNC routines and then debugged, etc.
Now Crosman tries to market this beautiful new air rifle and what happens? They’re met with a hailstorm of criticism on airgun forums all over, telling them what they should have done. And people are leaving snide remarks that say, “If only they built it this way, I would buy two!”
TWO? With over half a million dollars of development costs and a large part of their engineering time invested, they really need to sell more than just two. Or two hundred, or even two thousand.
Before you manufacturing guys jump down my throat, I’m aware that the whole purchase cost of the new CNC machine doesn’t have to be paid off the first year, and yes, they will probably schedule the machine to support other product lines at some point. But when you’re standing before the CEO pitching your “great idea,” these are the kinds of things he’s going to want to know.
Quality lesson two
There’s a better path to quality, however. Let’s say you have a company called Mendoza building airguns for you, and let’s say their guns have some important features. They have accurate barrels and wonderful triggers. One day they send you a rifle that looks like it was designed by Pablo Picasso on an acid trip. But take the barreled action out of the stock, and you have a nice youth-level rifle for a very affordable price.
You get a custom stockmaker to build you one custom western-looking stock for the rifle that you then send back to Mendoza and say, “Make them like this.” You also ask them to leave out the fiberoptic sight elements and eliminate the oil hole on the side of the spring tube. You keep the name Bronco, and add a bucking horse to the spring tube. A new model is born.
This “development” cost only a couple thousand dollars (because of a consulting trip for the designer and several iterations with the manufacturer sending samples back and forth), and you’ve got a spring rifle for older youth and adults that can sell at an extremely competitive price. Why was this so easy?
Mendoza was already making good barrels. They already had a wonderful, if somewhat quirky, trigger reminiscent of the Savage Accu-Trigger. They had superior metal finishing on their existing guns, so nothing had to change. The modifications you made didn’t disrupt their business in a major way. The biggest thing that changed was the stock, but you worked with them to accommodate their existing plant, tooling and personnel. So, after getting a commitment to purchase X-hundred rifles per year from Pyramyd Air, they began production of the new Bronco.
The lesson?
The lesson is that you don’t ask Rolls Royce to make shopping carts and don’t ask McDonalds to cater the Oscars. Quality is hard to sell, but not impossible. If you spend the time and money to build and promote a high-quality product, people will buy your Rolexes. But if Rolex starts making pastel plastic fashion watches tomorrow, or if they outsource their main watch models to China, I give them one year before their name is utterly destroyed.
As a final note, you younger readers may not believe what I am about to say, but when I was a kid in the 1950s, the term Made in Japan meant something was cheap and worthless. When Japanese cars first hit the U.S. shores, they were too small, underpowered (remember the Subaru 360?) and had the dark cloud of Made in Japan hanging over them.
This past Christmas, my gearhead brother-in-law was so proud to show off his new/old Lexus—a 12-year-old creampuff sedan he recently acquired, which his wife wrested away from him the day he got it. This guy who used to restore vintage ’50s T-Birds and Vettes as a hobby now refuses to drive anything that isn’t made by Toyota.
It’s possible to go both directions on the quality highway. Going up can take decades. Going down happens overnight.
Sterling HR-81 .177 underlever air rifle: Part 3
by B.B. Pelletier
The Sterling by Benjamin Sheridan is an air rifle not many have seen or even heard about.
Say hello to my little friend! We last saw this Sterling 11 months ago and discovered during testing that the velocity was very unstable. Variations of 61 to 147 f.p.s. were found in the 10-shot strings, even though the rifle had been recently tuned by reader Jim Grossman (Jim in PGH). Clearly, something seemed to be wrong. I stopped the test right there because I didn’t want to damage the mechanism, and I set it aside for later when I could I eventually look inside.
Well, our No. 1 tuner and all-around good guy — blog reader Vince — stepped forward and offered to have a look at it for me. He told me he’d worked on another Sterling, and I was relieved because I didn’t have to learn the complexities of yet another odd spring-gun mechanism. This one is odd because, in addition to the underlever that cocks the mainspring, the gun also has a bolt-action that opens the breech for loading a pellet. It’s quirky and unlike just about any other airgun you’ve seen.
Vince was as good as his word, and the gun is now back with me. I’ll let him tell you what he found inside and what he did to the gun at his convenience. I just want to get back to the original test.
An odd duck
The Sterling is an odd spring-piston mechanism, to say the least. As I said, it cocks via an underlever but is loaded in a trough on top of the action by retracting a spring-loaded bolt; so when the handle is lifted, it jumps back out of the way and exposes the trough for loading. The trough is sculpted to make it easy to roll in a pellet, so loading is a snap.
The Sterling bolt is spring-loaded to jump back and open the scalloped trough, which easily accepts a pellet.
The rifle was made both in the UK and in Racine, Wisconsin, by Benjamin-Sheridan before Crosman bought them. It’s a large, solid rifle that looks and feels like a magnum, though the performance is strictly under 12 foot-pounds. One attractive feature of at least the American-made rifles is the barrel from Lothar Walther. It should be fairly accurate.
The UK Sterling suffered from a lot of quality issues, the greatest of which were a very buzzy action, a trigger that tended to fall apart during use, sights that fell off and a rear sight that is apparently of very low quality. I can’t comment on the sights; because when I got the rifle, all that remained was the hollow shell of the globe front sight. Benjamin Sheridan was frustrated by front sights falling off, so they engineered a solid front piece that includes the globe for the sight within the same piece that serves as the catch for the underlever.
The front sight globe is made as a unit with the underlever catch.
Trigger
In the first part, I complained that the single-stage trigger was a little creepy. Well, either I was being overly critical or Vince did something. Although it still breaks at 2 lbs., 8 ozs., this trigger is now pretty crisp! I’ll learn more during the accuracy test, because that’s when I become intimate with the trigger. For now, I’ll just say that it’s a good one.
Cocking effort
The rifle cocks with 26 lbs. of effort, though it feels a little lighter. That’s probably because most of the effort over 20 lbs. occurs in the last 20 degrees of lever arc. There’s no anti-beartrap device. The bolt-action design keeps your fingers without one, so you can uncock the rifle at any time.
Velocity
When we last looked at the American-made (Benjamin) Sterling, I shot it with three different pellets to obtain the velocity/power rating, so that’s where I’ll begin today.
Falcon pellets
First, I tried the 7.3-grain Air Arms Falcon pellet. In the test done before this work, the pellet averaged 626 f.p.s., but the velocity ranged over 147 f.p.s. The average velocity equates to a muzzle energy of 6.38 foot-pounds.
With Vince’s work, the Falcon pellet now averages 754 f.p.s. — a 107 foot-second gain. The spread was reduced to 23 f.p.s., from a low of 738 to a high of 761 f.p.s. That’s quite stable — especially in light of the former test. The current muzzle energy is 9.22 foot-pounds.
JSB Exact 8.4-grain dome
The next pellet tried was the 8.4-grain JSB Exact dome. In the earlier test, this one averaged 597 f.p.s. with a 61 f.p.s. spread from 564 to 625 f.p.s. The muzzle energy was 6.65 foot-pounds.
In the current state, this pellet averages 704 f.p.s. with a 19 foot-second spread from 696 to 715 f.p.s. That is another gain of 107 f.p.s. And the muzzle energy increased to 9.25 foot-pounds.
You don’t normally see a heavier pellet making more energy than a lighter one in a spring-piston powerplant. It’s indicative of a heavy piston, which is perhaps the reason the rifle has a pronounced froward jump upon firing.
Is it hard to believe that heavier pellets typically produce less energy than lighter pellets in spring-piston guns? While this is not 100% the case, it’s probably the case 9 times out of 10. Spring-piston guns do not transfer their potential energy very well, and therefore lighter pellets that offer less resistance are usually slightly more efficient. In pneumatic and CO2 guns, the reverse is true: heavier pellets produce more energy most of the time.
Crosman Premier 7.9-grain lites
The last pellet I tested was the 7.9-grain Crosman Premier lite. In the first test, these averaged 580 f.p.s. with a 144 foot-second spread from 467 to 611 f.p.s. I tried flaring the skirts of these pellets to get a better seal in the bore, but the average velocity increased to only 584 f.p.s., while the total variation increased to 152 f.p.s.
In this test, Premier lites averaged 705 f.p.s., and the spread went from 698 to 712 f.p.s. — a 14 foot-second spread that was the tightest of the entire test. The gun now shoots 119 f.p.s. faster than before. The average muzzle energy is 8.72 foot-pounds — the lowest of the three pellets tested.
The evidence is overwhelming that Vince made some important changes to the Sterling’s performance. I’m sure his account of what was done will be of great interest.
Bottom line
My research into the history of this fascinating airgun revealed that very few airgunners who know about the Sterling are neutral about it. They either love it or hate it. Blog reader Robert from Arcade also expressed an interest in the design, as did a number of other readers, I believe. That’s why this test is so important. It’s been more than two decades since I read about this air rifle in the British press, and I have always wondered what the truth is. Now we can all find out together.
Are vintage Sheridan pellets better than modern pellets?
by B.B.Pelletier
Announcement: Mathias Moe Varga is this week’s winner of Pyramyd Air’s Big Shot of the Week on their facebook page. He’ll receive a $50 Pyramyd Air gift card.
Mathias Moe Varga submitted the above photo of Miles Alexander Varga, who got in some shootin’ with his Crosman XT air rifle.
Today is Friday, and I’ve already written a couple reports this week that belong on a Friday blog, but a question came in from a shooter who will probably never read this report — yet, it was so intriguing that I wanted to answer it for you today.
This shooter owns a vintage Sheridan multi-pump pneumatic, and he’s been perplexed for years because .20-caliber Crosman premier pellets are not carried in stores. He remembers the old cylindrical pellets that used to come in the red and white tins and later in the yellow plastic boxes, but he doesn’t know if any .20-caliber pellets are still being made today.
This is the box that vintage Sheridan cylindrical pellets came in when Sheridan was still in business (before Benjamin bought them…and then Crosman bought Benjamin).
Vintage Sheridan cylindrical pellets. Notice the small driving band at the base, which engages the rifling.
Of course, they’re being made and in greater diversity than ever before. But you don’t typically find .20-caliber pellets at a sporting goods store, and they’re never found at a discount store. The best selection will be found on the internet.
His question made me think of this: Are today’s pellets better or worse than those of long ago? What I thought I would do today is find out which is better — the old pellets or the new.
I have been telling people for years that the .20-caliber Crosman Premier pellets in the cardboard box are noticeably better than the older cylindrical Sheridan pellets, but are they really? The only way to find out is to shoot some and see what happens.
Twenty-caliber pellets
I bought my Sheridan Blue Streak in late 1977, though I have also owned a vintage Silver Steak that was made between 1950 and about 1960. I no longer have that vintage gun, but the ‘77 Blue Streak is still here, so that will be the test bed.
I used to buy Sheridan pellets in yellow plastic boxes of 500. They were the only .20-caliber pellets on the market when I bought them, but Dr. Beeman changed that in the 1980s when he began bringing in European spring guns in .20 caliber. Twenty caliber still occupies third place out of the four smallbore airgun calibers (.177, .20, .22 and .25) in terms of popularity, and its position is currently being threatened by a resurgence of interest in .25 caliber. Both .177 and .22 calibers are so far ahead of these other two calibers that there’s really no comparison when it comes to sales and usage.
Beeman’s pitch was that the .20 caliber was a great compromise between .177 and .22, but that pitch never quite caught on. Many shooters felt the truth was just the opposite — that .20 was both more expensive than the .177 and not as effective on game as the .22. You can argue this all day long and never change anyone’s opinion, but the truth is that there just aren’t as many great pellets in .20 caliber as there are in .177 and .22.
However, if there’s even just one good pellet, maybe that’s all we need. And the Crosman Premier pellet may just be the one.
I thought I’d test-fire several groups with my Blue Streak at 25 yards. Because it’s a multi-pump that takes some time for each shot, I’m going to shoot only 5-shot groups, but I’ll shoot several with each pellet. I’ll pump the rifle 6 strokes per shot because I’m shooting at 25 yards. That should give me decent accuracy, though I’m only using the open sights that came on the gun.
As I write this, I’ve not yet fired the rifle, so I have no data to consider. I do think the Crosman Premier will shoot more accurately than the old cylindrical pellet, but we’ll have to test it to see.
Let’s shoot
It’s been about two years since I shot the Blue Streak, so I oiled the pump head with Crosman Pellgunoil before starting. Then, I fired a single shot at the bull 25 yards away. It hit within about one-quarter inch of the aim point, so I finished that group and changed targets for the next.
The first three groups are all Crosman Premiers. I think the groups speak for themselves.
These three groups of Crosman Premiers were easy to put side-by-side because they’re so small. They were shot in order from left to right. The groups measure from left to right — 0.749 inches, 0.911 inches and 1.088 inches between centers.
Next, I tried the vintage Sheridan cylindrical pellet. Once more, I verified that the first shot was close to the aim point, then no more checking.
First group of vintage Sheridan cylindrical pellets looks like I wasn’t trying! It measures 2.63 inches between centers.
The first group of Sheridan pellets looks like I wasn’t trying, but I assure you I was. I really gave each shot everything I had.
This second group of Sheridan pellets was better than the first, but still not good. It measures 1.66 inches between centers.
Group two was better but not really good. I was relieved to discover that the reason was the pellet and not me. However, it gave me an idea. After group three with the vintage pellets, I would shoot a fourth group of Premiers, just to see if I could still shoot. I thought I might be getting tired at this point.
The third group of vintage Sheridan pellets measured 2.133 inches between centers. It was in-between the first group and the second.
The third and final group of vintage Sheridan pellets confirmed that they’re not that accurate. It was in between the first and second group, even though I was doing my best to aim precisely.
Was I tiring out? I had to know, so I shot a fourth group of Crosman Premiers that had established themselves as accurate pellets.
This final group of Crosman Premiers shows that I was still shooting about the same as at the start of the test. It measures 1.106 inches between centers, which fits in with the first three Premier groups.
As long as I was shooting the rifle, perhaps I should shoot a group with one other pellet that’s given good results in the past. The .20-caliber Beeman Kodiak is actually a medium-weight pellet — at just 13.27 grains. I shot only one group, but it seems to confirm that this pellet is in the same class as the Premier for accuracy.
Five Beeman Kodiak pellets made this 1.143-inch group. It’s close in size to the Premier group and should be considered for this airgun.
An interesting pattern
When I took the last target down from the pellet trap, the pattern in the fresh cardboard that backed all targets was quite interesting. Though I made no attempt to mount each of the eight targets in the exact same place, the cardboard tells the whole story about where all the pellets went.
Here’s the history of where each of the 40 shots went. Though no attempt was made to position every target in the same relative position, I find this is an interesting record of all the shooting.
Final thought for the day
This was written and tested on a Thursday — yesterday to everyone who is reading it on the day it is first published. I had been planning on going to the range to shoot some firearms yesterday, but the weather wasn’t cooperating, so I shot at home, instead. I’d planned to shoot my .32 cap-and-ball rifle, and shooting the Sheridan was very similar. You have to take time before each shot to get the gun ready so you’re extra careful to make every shot count. Also, going at this pace calms you and soothes you. I felt wonderful after this shooting session. Contrast that to shooting some uber-magnum springer that cocks like the bow of Hercules! Give me the slow lane every time.
