Posts Tagged ‘youth gun’
Air Venturi Bronco with optional target sights: Part 4
by B.B. Pelletier
You know how your wife buys a new trash can for the kitchen, and it doesn’t match the front of the old refrigerator that you’ve been talking about replacing for several years? So, you buy a new fridge, but you want this one to have an ice dispenser in the door; so, you hire a plumber to run the water lines; as long as he’s there, you decide it’s time to replace the chipped sink with a new stainless-steel double sink; but as long as he’s under there, you might as well have him replace the water supply lines and the waste pipes. Then, your wife doesn’t like how the new sink looks against the old green Formica counters, and she wants those granite countertops you’ve been promising her ever since you forgot your 17th anniversary; but the new countertops won’t look right on the old painted cabinets, so you decide on some Scandinavian teak cabinets with glass doors; and now the chipped dishes look out of place. [Note from Edith: This is hypothetical. It's not a true story about us!]
So, seven months later, the total bill for the new trash can comes to 70 thousand dollars? Well, that’s what I seem to have gotten into with the Air Venturi Bronco. I was just testing the new Bronco Target Sight kit on the rifle, and I raked back the compost pile a little too far. So, today, you’re going to benefit from my puttering gone amuck.
I took a lot of heat from you guys in my last report. You didn’t like how I did things, plus I introduced the new Air Venturi Pellet Pen and PellSet and called it maccaroni without any warning! Well, shame on me!
I began today’s test by mounting the Hawke 4.5-14×42AO Sidewinder Tactical scope on the rifle. The Bronco has a hole for a vertical scope stop pin, so I was able to anchor the two-piece mounts rock-solid.
I thought I would back up just a bit and see just what the best pellet is for this rifle, and then see if there’s a difference between seating that pellet flush and seating it deep. I started at 10 meters with five-shot groups, just to weed out the pellets that were not worth pursuing. They were all pretty good, but the lightweight Air Arms Falcon was just a bit better than the rest.
I realize that this is a test of a peep sight, but my last report raised some questions about the rifle’s accuracy that I felt needed to be laid to rest before the test was continued. I’m validating the rifle before I continue reporting on the new sight.
Then, I backed up to 25 yards and shot two 10-shot groups. One was with the pellets seated flush with the end of the breech, and the other was with the pellets seated deeper, using the PellSet. Let’s look at my results before I analyze them.
Ten Air Arms Falcon pellets seated flush with the end of the barrel went into this 25-yard group that measures 0.531 inches. The group is reasonably round.
Ten Air Arms Falcon pellets seated deep with a PellSet made this 0.821-inch group at 25 yards. Nine of the ten pellets went into a group measuring 0.564 inches.
Conclusions?
Looking at both the shape and size of these groups, I would be tempted to say the flush-seated pellets shot best. And there’s no doubt that this Bronco can shoot. But let’s not make up our minds just yet.
See that “flyer” in the deep-seated pellet group? It wasn’t a called flier. The hold and release were perfect. There is no reason that pellet should be that far away from the rest of the pellets at 25 yards.
What I’m not showing you are some other 10-meter groups with different pellets that also had strange fliers like this one. I had removed both the front and rear sights, so we can’t blame the front sight screws for being too long. But something is happening with this rifle that’s unusual.
Edith questioned me in the same way that I know the rest of you are going to question me. Didn’t I have good groups in the past? Why is this rifle suddenly shooting like this?
I went back and looked at the groups I shot in Part 3 of this report. If you do the same, you’ll see a couple “fliers” in those groups, as well. The difference is that those groups were shot at 10 meters instead of 25 yards.
So, then I went back to the 7-part report I did on the Bronco and examined those targets. In Part 5 of that report, I shot the rifle with a scope at 25 yards and guess what? There are “fliers” within some of the groups.
What’s happening?
I think the Bronco I’ve been testing is extremely accurate, but it has also been throwing fliers like this all along. I chalked them up to my poor shooting instead of something else. Now that I’ve examine the rifle under the microscope, I’m not so sure it was me. I think this rifle has been tipping pellets all along. It’s only when the gun is fired at 25 yards that this becomes evident.
I think this has gotten worse recently, but I cannot say with certainty what’s causing it. It’s clear from the two groups shown here that the rifle can really shoot, but I think it can do even better than it currently is.
I have a plan to try to remedy this situation; and, at the worst, it will not affect the accuracy of the rifle. But if I succeed, this rifle could shoot smaller groups than you see here.
I need to try my remedy before returning to finish the report on the peep sight kit, because I think it has been affecting the results. And there’s a second problem I’ve identified with the peep sights that has nothing to do with the sights, themselves, but with how I’ve been sighting the gun. I’ll describe that problem in detail for you and tell you how to easily avoid it.
Til then!
Air Venturi Bronco with optional target sights: Part 3
by B.B. Pelletier
Today is the day you find how I improved the accuracy of the Air Venturi Bronco rifle I’m testing with the Bronco Target Sight kit. I asked you to guess what I did to get better groups, but only Fred of PRoNJ got it right. I thought this would be a straightforward test and that one range session was all I needed for this rifle. After all, I already did a 7-part report on the gun, so there’s been plenty of time to get to know how it shoots. In fact, I even installed a Williams peep sight on the gun, so I even know how it shoots with that. This was just supposed to be a test of the Bronco Target Sight kit and nothing more. But man plans, and God laughs!
Yesterday, I told you about the front sight screws and the barrel that obviously needed cleaning. Afterwards, I was not rewarded with those perfect groups I’d anticipated. The groups I got were better than before the rifle was cleaned, but they were still bad for an accurate rifle at 10 meters off a rest. Something else was needed.
The artillery hold
How many of you guessed that the secret to good shooting was the artillery hold? Guess again, because I saw no difference between resting the rifle on the flat of my palm and on the backs of my fingers.
One thing I did rediscover was the need to hold the Bronco absolutely “dead” in my hands rather than with any tension built in. For its power level, the Bronco seems to be on the twitchy side as far as hold sensitivity goes. So, before you shoot, it’s imperative that you relax all the way and allow the rifle to settle in wherever it wants to. Then, you have to shift your hands and body until it settles in with the sights very close to on-target.
But that wasn’t the secret I was looking for because the groups were still on the large side. Then, something cool happened. As you know, my friend, Mac, has been visiting us; and while he was here, I got a couple spring-piston air rifles to test before they come to market. I’ll be starting some reports at the end of this month, so I asked Mac to test the rifle while I worked on other things. It’s never difficult to get him to test a brand-new airgun!
One of the pellets he selected to test the rifles with was the venerable RWS Hobby, which is the lightest all-lead pellet around. Hobbys are often among the most accurate pellets for spring-piston airguns, and they did really well in these new rifles, so his choice seemed obvious. Since the Bronco is also a spring-piston gun, I wondered if Hobbys might do well in it.
Did Hobbys shoot better?
Yes, they really did. They gave groups that were in the ballpark for the rifle as it was now performing with the clean barrel, but they weren’t the groups I’d hoped for. But something drove me to continue to shoot them. I guess I was thinking about the pellet seasoning effect we talk about. As I was shooting, another thought popped into my head.
Two years ago I was testing a Hy-Score 801 — a Belgian-made breakbarrel spring-piston air rifle that has a pellet seater built into the gun. It sits above the breech and swings down to push the pellet deep into the breech. When I tested it, the seated pellets increased in velocity by 100 f.p.s. and also grouped closer. Could that same thing be true for the Bronco, I wondered?
Well, it didn’t take much to test the pellet-seating theory, because I’ve been testing the Air Venturi Pellet Pen and PellSet for some time. But this was the first time I had occasion to use the adjustable PellSet tool to push a pellet into the breech of an air rifle! Until now, I’ve always used a Bic pen, but this new tool is adjustable so I can control the depth to which each pellet is seated. And once the tool’s adjusted, every pellet gets seated to exactly the same depth. Consistency is paramount to accuracy, so that’s very important.
Success!
The moment I began seating the pellets deeply with the PellSet tool, the groups shrank to an acceptable size. It looked like a television infomercial, because the difference before and after was night and day. I shot another group but didn’t seat the pellets. I held the rifle as carefully as I had when the pellets were seated deep, just to eliminate any bias. I’m not saying there still isn’t some bias in my testing, but the results of seating the pellets looks very promising!
This PellSet tool is an adjustable pellet seater that hangs around your neck and seals each pellet to the correct depth in the breech. Using it immediately tightened the Bronco’s groups!
When you load a pellet manually, you seat it flush with the breech like this.
The PellSet tool enables you to seat each pellet to the same depth in the bore. The tool is adjustable so you can fine-tune it.
Ten RWS Hobby pellets seated flush with the end of the barrel grouped in 0.916b inches at 10 meters. While not a great target, this demonstrates that the Bronco wants to shoot Hobbys well, because 8 of the 10 pellets made a group about half the size of the large one.
When the Hobbys were seated deep into the breech, they grouped into this 0.72 inch group. This is much better than the first group and clearly shows what deep-seating can do. But notice there’s still one flier in this group.
When I saw the difference between the deep-seated and flush-seated pellets, I believed I was on to something. But one result doesn’t make a conclusion, so I shot another two groups. This time, I was very careful with each shot to apply the artillery hold correctly.
The second group of flush-seated pellets was tighter than the first, though not as tight as the first group of deep-seated pellets. Only a single flier this time. Group measures 0.845 inches between centers.
The second group of deep-seated pellets gave this 0.516 inch group. No fliers at all. This is the accuracy potential of the Bronco!
Conclusions
There was a lot to cover in this test. First: I found that the longer front sight screws do not present any problems as far as accuracy is concerned. That was a needless concern.
Next, I discovered that the barrel wasn’t just dirty — the bore was actually constricted at the muzzle. Cleaning the bore (but not with J-B Non-Embedding Bore Cleaning Compound this time) did improve accuracy, but not as much as I’d hoped. Something else was needed.
I had shot decent groups with this rifle in the past, so it is accurate. After cleaning the barrel, I almost got groups as good as before, but not quite. However, I’d been shooting 10 shots at 25 yards before and only five shots at 10 meters. Any direct comparison between before and now was impossible.
Switching to RWS Hobby pellets was good, though Hobbys may not be the most accurate pellets for this rifle. But by staying with them, I eliminated any other comparisons that might lead me astray. I also seasoned the bore, so no one can say that accuracy suffered from switching pellets.
Finally, I used a pellet seater, and not just any seater, but one that’s adjustable so I can set how deep the pellet goes. This tool has a lot of potential for improved accuracy in lower-powered spring-piston airguns, and I plan on using it in a lot of future tests.
Bottom line
The Bronco Target Sights are a nice addition to the rifle and far less expensive than any alternatives. A scope would work well, too, but for those who like iron sights, this sight set might be the best way to go.
Air Venturi Bronco with optional target sights: Part 2
by B.B. Pelletier
We get requests all the time for basic maintenance articles and fundamental articles about how to diagnose an airgun and make it shoot better. Often, I refer readers to blog reports I’ve done in the past, but today (and tomorrow!) is a blog report with something for almost everyone. It started out as a simple test of my Air Venturi Bronco rifle with different sights, but it blossomed in several different directions — answering many questions and raising issues about which many readers have indicated an interest in the past.
I didn’t plan on this report turning out the way it did. This special two-part report (today and tomorrow) is a serendipitous journey of airgun discovery. It began when I mounted the optional Bronco Target Sight kit on my rifle and thought I would be demonstrating just how accurate a Bronco can be. (The Bronco is also sold with the target sight kit installed.)
Heck (I thought), there’s no risk here. I’ve shot this same Bronco before and I know how accurate it is. What could possibly go wrong?
What, indeed. If you click on the link to Part 1 of this report provided above, you’ll see that the first groups I shot with the Bronco and its new target sights were anything but encouraging. If this had been a different rifle I might have been tempted to write it off as inaccurate (I said tempted — not a sure thing), but because I’ve shot this exact same Bronco several times in the past with great results, I knew it was something other than the rifle’s inherent accuracy at fault.
Back-bored muzzle
You readers guessed what the problem could be, and Mac and I conversed at the same time. Mac owns a Bronco, too, and he knows how accurate it is.
One early theory was that the new longer front sight mounting screws might be protruding into the rifled barrel and clipping the pellet just before it leaves the muzzle. I had noticed when mounting the four front sight riser plates that the screw holes are drilled deep, so I checked them and discovered they are drilled all the way through the barrel. The kit has two longer screws that are needed because of the four riser plates, so was it possible that one of those screws was hitting the pellet as it passed through the bore?
The four front sight riser plates require longer mounting screws. Was one of them touching a pellet?
But Mac told me the barrel was back-bored. The muzzle is not where you think it is, but it’s about seven inches deep inside the barrel — behind the front sight. Back-bored means that instead of being crowned at the end of the barrel, the muzzle is sunk deep inside the barrel with a deep-hole drill. Doing this protects the muzzle from damage and preserves accuracy longer. It can also restore accuracy to rifles that have been cleaned from the front instead of the breech. When cleaning rods scrape against the sides of the muzzle they wear the metal and cause accuracy loss. Mosin Nagant rifles are often found with back-bored muzzles.
The true muzzle of the barrel is located at the tip of the cleaning rod. So, the front sight screws are not interfering with pellets before they leave the barrel.
Look inside the barrel
Once I confirmed where the true muzzle was, it was obvious the front sight screws could not be interfering with the pellets before they left the muzzle. But what about after they left? Could a pellet still be touching the edge of a screw after it exited the muzzle?
This time, the answer was less exact. From what I could see with an endoscopic light down the bore, the screws were probably not protruding deeply enough to touch the pellets in flight unless the pellets were yawing wildly. And if they were yawing wildly, they were never going to be accurate anyway. So I stopped looking at that and checked the cleanliness of the barrel next.
Surprise!
The barrel had a constriction right at the muzzle! A brass bore brush passed from breech to muzzle (the true muzzle — not the end of the barrel) stopped abruptly at the muzzle. Something was constricting the barrel right at the point the pellet exited. The barrel needed to be cleaned, but this constriction was so abrupt that it felt like a large burr had been raised right at the muzzle. But the muzzle is seven inches deep inside the barrel, so that’s next to impossible!
The only solution was to clean the barrel, and I started with a clean brass bore brush. Don’t waste your time with a nylon brush. It isn’t stiff enough to remove the metal if there’s any. As long as the barrel is made of steel, like the Bronco’s barrel is, you cannot damage it with a brass brush.
After 20-30 passes the brush was meeting no resistance, so I then cleaned the barrel with Otis bore solvent until the patches came out clean. Now, the barrel was ready to perform at its best!
On to shooting
After all of this, I felt ready to shoot the rifle and expected it to do well. A quick read of Part 1 showed me that I tested it with H&N Finale Match Rifle pellets and JSB Exact RS pellets. Those were the first two pellets I shot. The range was 10 meters, and each group got 10 shots.
I would have loved to have shot two beautiful targets and ended this test right there, but that didn’t happen. Yes, the groups were somewhat smaller than those shot in part 1, but they were not good groups — not for a Bronco, anyway. The H&N Finale Match Rifle pellets grouped 10 in 1.059 inches — compared to the group in Part 1 of 1.668 inches. And the JSB Exact RS pellets grouped 10 into 0.82 inches this time –compared to 1.169 inches in Part 1. Yes, these are smaller groups, but they aren’t small enough for the Bronco at 10 meters. Something else had to happen.
I found the secret
This is where I’m going to end the report today. Tomorrow, I’m going to tell you what happened to change the outcome of the test. Yes, a different pellet was used, but that wasn’t the big news. In fact I’m convinced that I’ve found the secret to increasing accuracy with any Air Venturi Bronco — shooting any pellet!
You have a day to wonder, ponder, guess and discuss. Let’s see how smart you guys are.
What did I do that was different? A hint — I’ve done it before with similar results.
Daisy’s Red Ryder: Part 3
by B.B. Pelletier
Announcement: Kyle Ioffrida 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!
BSOTW winner Kyle Ioffrida shows off his home shootin’ range…much of it built with recycled materials.
Daisy’s Red Ryder is the best-known airgun of all time. This one is from the 1940s.
I must love you guys — I really must. Otherwise how could you explain me going to the trouble of mounting a Daisy model 300 telescope on my Red Ryder just for this test? I can’t explain it any other way.
Was it hard?
No — adjusting the valves on a V-12 Ferrari is hard. This went beyond hard.
Okay, I’m exaggerating, but it wasn’t easy switching over the scope from my 1936-model Daisy No. 25 pump gun to the Red Ryder. After I did, though, I realized that the mount on the No. 25 has always been wrong. It was really a Red Ryder mount — based on there being two screw holes in the mount base instead of just one. The No. 25 doesn’t have a screw hole at the top of the receiver like the Red Ryder.
But crying time is over. What have we got with the 300 telescope? Well, for starters, I think we need to consider the history of the scope. When the model 300 was first brought to market, rifle scopes looked a lot different than they do today. And the 300 attempts to follow the lines of the day, being long and slender, as well as having its adjustments built into the mounts rather than the scope.
The gun looks sophisticated with the scope mounted. How can you miss with something like this?
It clamps tight to the “barrel” (the sheetmetal outer tube of the gun) in front, and has the facility of angling both up and down on a trunnion contained in the front mount. That is needed because the rear mount is a cam that adjusts the scope’s elevation. No windage adjustment is possible, though the whole scope can be shifted slightly right or left on the gun, then clamped down again.
The front mount clamps to the outer tube of the BB gun and has a trunnion built in, so the scope is free to pivot up and down without straining the tube.
It’s not a scope!
Technically, the model 300 is a tube sight rather than a scope, but I’m sure Daisy didn’t intend little boys to think of it that way. It has only one plastic “lens” in front, where the objective bell is, and nothing at the eyepiece. There’s no magnification, but inside the tube is a post for sighting. You sight in so the BB strikes the point where the top of the post rests on the target. As long as the scope is on left and right, you should do at least as well as with the open sights. Having used a thin post front sight recently with great success, I have high hopes for this one.
I have owned two others of this model scope, and on one of them I had a reproduction of the original rubber eyepiece that really makes the scope look right. Someone reproduced a couple hundred of those rubber eyepieces a few decades ago, and they’re now valuable additions to the scopes that have them. But it’s still easy to use the scope without the eyepiece.
The scope is 18 inches long and has a tube diameter of 0.984 inches, so call it one inch. The tube is made of folded sheet steel — the same as the gun, and it’s blued in the same way. It adjusts only for elevation, using a clever captive cam arrangement on the rear mount that raises and lowers the rear of the scope. As mentioned previously, the front mount has a trunnion, so moving the scope up and down doesn’t put a strain on the tube.
In this view, the scope is adjusted down as low as it goes.
The scope has been adjust up about halfway by rotating the cam. This is a very subtle and precise way to adjust a scope. I see from the photo that the rear base screw needs to be tightened some more.
And how does it work?
I shot the same course as the first time, but using the scope instead of the open sights. It looked like I was getting more precision this way, but the results on the target don’t bear that out. Out of five 10-shot targets, the best I was able to do at 15 feet was 10 into a group measuring 1.163 inches between centers. That was offhand.
The best target I shot with the Red Ryder is this one that measures 1.163 inches between centers. This is offhand at 15 feet.
The average group was closer to 1.30 inches this time. That would make the scope about equal to the open sights. The only advantage I can see is a clearer sight picture.
Sanity check
I wondered how well I was shooting this day, so I brought out my Daisy Avanti 499 Champion to use as a check against the Red Ryder. But I used the same Daisy zinc-plated BBs instead of the Avanti Precision Ground shot that’s made especially for the 499. So both BB guns were on an equal footing.
The 499’s trigger is very long and creepy, but it’s much lighter than the Red Ryder trigger, and the gun felt easier to shoot, as a result. This time, 10 BBs went into 0.429 inches, which will easily fit inside a dime.
The only target I shot with the Daisy 499 to check myself was this one that measures 0.429 inches between centers. Also shot with Daisy zinc-plated BBs at 15 feet.
Summary
Daisy’s Red Ryder is certainly an iconic BB gun. It has been in existence since 1939 and is still Daisy’s strongest seller. It’s not a target gun by any means, but a shooter can bond with it like few other airguns.
Air Venturi Bronco with optional target sights: Part 1
by B.B. Pelletier
Today’s report is about mounting the new Bronco Target Sight kit on an Air Venturi Bronco and seeing how it works. The kit consists of a peep sight for the rear and four riser plates with two long screws to raise the front sight high enough to work with the rear.
I tested the Bronco extensively in 2010 and wrote seven reports about it then. If you’ve been a reader for some time, you may remember that I even mounted a Williams peep sight on the rifle and tested it for you. So, today’s question isn’t whether the rifle can shoot with a peep, but rather how this new sight and riser plate set attaches and works with the gun.
The installation is pretty easy. Just unscrew the two front sight screws and attach the four riser plates under the front sight base with the longer screws. It took less than five minutes and there were no tricky parts.
The Bronco front sight as it comes from the factory.
These four riser plates lift the front sight up to work with the rear peep sight.
The installation of the riser plates is quick and easy.
Once the plates were installed, they were rigid and looked like they belonged there. They’re keyed to each other so they don’t slip around once the screws are tightened.
The rear sight
The rear sight is really what this kit is about, both because it is much less expensive than the Williams rear peep sight that is, unfortunately, no longer available and also because it does exactly the same thing. Since this is a cheaper sight that could be just as good, it would would be a find if it proves true.
The sight is made more rugged than the Williams sight and mounts easier. Where the Williams has two very small screws pushing on a dovetail for mounting security, the Mendoza sight is made with larger parts. The screws are also proportionately larger.
Like the front riser plates, the rear sight was a quick installation. Just slip the dovetails into those on top of the Bronco’s receiver and tighten the two screws.
The rear peep sight attaches with two screws. The adjustment knobs are knurled.
Is this a better sight?
That’s a question I’ve heard several times in reference to this sight. What does “better” mean? This sight does exactly the same thing the $60 Williams peep sight did, yet it costs a lot less. It has target knobs, which only the more expensive of the two Williams target peep sights had. Each knob has crisp detents, so you can feel the adjustments as they’re made. Everything works as it’s supposed to, and the machining is excellent — this sight is the equal of the more expensive and now unavailable Williams peep sight.
The one drawback this Mendoza-made rear sight had that the Williams didn’t was the inability to adjust low enough to work with most front sights. The Williams could be modified to go very low and this one can’t. Well, that’s what the riser plates are for, so that problem has been solved.
Testing the sight
Naturally I had to test the new sight set as anyone would, and I expected no problems. We already know about the legendary accuracy of the Air Venturi Bronco, so this sight should help it shoot its best.
I can tell you that the adjustments do move the impact of the pellets in the directions they should. And the movements are small, as you would hope from a 10-meter sight.
Not today!
Unfortunately, I was not up to the task of shooting today. I don’t know what the problem was, but I could not get the new sight set to give results that were even as good as I got with open sights back in 2010. If I hadn’t shot several extremely tight groups at 50 yards with my new Remington model 37 target rifle just last week, I would wonder if my accuracy was slipping, but I know it isn’t. But something is wrong, because I’m not getting the tight groups I got two years ago with the same rifle.
Ten JSB Exact RS pellets made this 1.169-inch group.
Ten H&N Finale Match rifle pellets went into 1.668 inches at 10 meters. Nine of them went into a group measuring 1.114 inches.
These are not good 10-meter groups, yet we know from past experience that this exact rifle is very accurate. So the thing that’s changed is either me or the sights. I re-read Part 3 of the Bronco report and discovered the rifle likes to be shot off the backs of the fingers. That’s an alternative artillery hold that I didn’t try yet, but I’m going to.
So, there’s more to come. But at this point, I can say that the new sight set is a good one and it works as you would expect. It’s a shame I didn’t get the performance we were expecting from the gun in this test, but I remain confident that it’s me and my technique and not the rifle.
That’s why this is Part 1.
Daisy’s Red Ryder: Part 2
by B.B. Pelletier
Announcement: Chris LeGate 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!
BSOTW winner Chris LeGate holding his .22-cal. Benjamin Marauder mounted with a Leapers 3-9×40AO scope with illuminated reticle. He also got a tin of JSB TEST Sampler pellets and an Air Venturi hand pump.
Daisy’s Red Ryder is the best-known airgun of all time. This one is from the 1940s.
I’m going to combine velocity and accuracy testing for the Daisy Red Ryder, because I want to do a third report with the Daisy model 300 scope mounted. After examining the mount on my 1936 No. 25 that has that scope, I see it has the same base as the Red Ryder. So, the switch should be easy.
My Red Ryder hasn’t been shot in a great many months — perhaps over a year, so I expected to find the leather piston seal dry. But it wasn’t. I got that telltale wisp of smoke that told me the seal is still full of oil. However, I wanted to test the gun both before and after oiling, so that’s what I did.
I used the pellet/BB trap that was given to me by Jim Contos at last year’s Malverne airgun show (don’t forget, it’s coming up next month on April 27 and 28). It’s full of duct seal; but because I would be shooting BBs at low velocity and didn’t want any to bounce back off the lead already in the trap, I put a half-pound smear of fresh duct seal over what was already in the trap. I’ve now got between 5,000 and 10,000 shots on this trap, and it’s holding up fine. For those who need to build an inexpensive yet rugged trap for both BBs and pellets, click here for instructions on how to make one.
Before oiling
I shot Daisy zinc-plated BBs for all tests you’ll read today. Before the gun was oiled, it gave an average of 302 f.p.s. The spread went from a low of 290 to a high of 306 f.p.s. At the average velocity, the 5.1-grain BBs produced 1.03 foot-pounds at the muzzle.
I removed the shot tube and dumped out all the BBs. Newer BB guns have a hole on the side of the barrel jacket for oil, but older ones like this one don’t. You must remove the shot tube and drop the oil straight down the open end of the barrel jacket, where it can soak into the leather piston seal.
I used 3-in-One oil for this job. At the low velocity the Red Ryder generates, common household oil is fine for oiling the piston seal. There’s no danger of a detonation, and you can use enough oil to really soak that seal. I used 12 drops just to see what would happen.
After oiling
After the gun was oiled, the velocity was no higher than before. The average now was just 300 f.p.s., but the total velocity spread tightened just a bit, from 16 f.p.s. before oiling to 11 f.p.s. after. The spread went from 293 to 304 f.p.s.
So oiling made little difference. As I noted, the presence of a wisp of smoke after every shot alerted me to the fact that the gun had all the oil it required.
Accuracy
I set up a 15-foot range, because that’s the standard distance for guns like this Red Ryder. The aim point was a Shoot-N-C black paster, peeled off a 3-inch bullseye card. It’s ever-so-slightly larger than a U.S. nickel coin, and I wanted to follow Mel Gibson’s advice from the movie The Patriot, “Aim small. Miss small.”
I shot offhand, and the first group is larger than it should be because I didn’t apply myself on every shot. I didn’t expect much accuracy from this BB gun, so I let a couple shots wander more than they should. The resulting 10-shot group measures 1.597 inches between centers. But within that group, there’s a cluster of five holes that measures 0.453 inches between centers. That encouraged me to knuckle down and give it my best effort on a second try.
The first group measures 1.597 inches across for 10 shots at 15 feet, but look at where five of those shots went. That hole measures 0.453 inches across.
The second group measures 1.483 inches between centers, so not a lot better than the first. It looks better because the shots seem to all be in a big cluster, but the measurements tell a different story.
Target two looks better than the first, but it isn’t by much. Ten shots went into this group measuring 1.483 inches between centers. Four of those shots made a much smaller 0.371-inch group.
Notice, though, that the BBs seem to go to the same place in both groups. This gun wants to shoot slightly above and to the left of the aim point with the 6 o’clock hold I’m using. Remember these sights are not adjustable, but I can use Kentucky windage to move the point of impact around a little. I think this gun is the kind that a little boy would soon learn to shoot, and before long he would be doing impossible things with it at close range.
Summary
This test turned out differently than expected. I thought the Red Ryder might get up as fast as 350 f.p.s. after a good oiling, but that didn’t happen. And I thought the accuracy would be a lot worse than what you see here.
We’re not done yet, because in the next installment I’ll mount the Daisy model 300 scope and shoot some more groups for you. I’ll also give you photos of this unique scope and mount that seems to copy the old buffalo hunter scopes of the 19th century. Til then!
Daisy’s Red Ryder: Part 1
by B.B. Pelletier
Announcement: Adrian Cataldo Beltrán 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!
BSOTW winner Adrian Cataldo Beltrán shoots his .22-caliber Benjamin in his backyard.
“Between the dark and the daylight,
As the night is beginning to lower,
Comes a pause in the day’s occupations,
That is known as the children’s hour.”
— Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Sit back and enjoy your hot cocoa, kiddies, because this is it! This is the airgun that probably started it all for many of you, and darned near all of you ought to know it by name — I don’t care where you’re from. Coke, Levis and the Daisy Red Ryder are the DNA of America.
We’re older and sadder now — having matured through some of the same flaws and foibles that older societies had to endure. But the name Red Ryder still rings a happy bell in the backs of our minds. It reminds us of the poem that promises “…somewhere the sun is shining.”
What is a Red Ryder?
Asking what a Red Ryder is, is like asking which Elvis you liked best — skinny or fat. The truth is, there wasn’t just one Red Ryder — there were many. The first gun (and it’s a gun for certain, because it isn’t rifled) was Daisy’s No. 111, Model 40 — first made in 1939. It had a copper-plated “golden” band around the front of the wooden forearm and the barrel, a saddle ring on the left side with a genuine leather thong tied through it and a Red Ryder brand burned into the left side of the stock. There are numerous variations of this early model, and the very first one also had a cast-iron cocking lever.
If you’re an old guy like me, you can still remember that those early Red Ryders were very difficult to cock, because they still used the heavy wire mainsprings from the earlier guns. Over the years, the gauge of the wire was thinned to help kids cock their guns and also to slow down those steel BBs that really could put your eye out. So, if the cocking on your gun seems stiff, it’s an early one.
World War II
Daisy played a large and patriotic part in World War II, including the grandson of the founder becoming one of the first pilots to break the speed of sound during a test flight of a P38 Lightning over England (in a steep dive). So, production of the Red Ryder halted in 1942 and resumed again in 1946.
My Red Ryder is a variation from 1947. It has a blued steel finish and a plastic forearm, with a wooden buttstock that carries the Red Ryder brand. The cocking lever is cast aluminum and painted black. Within a few more years, Daisy would start electrostatically painting the entire gun, so I feel fortunate to have the model I do. I know my gun is from 1947 because it came in the Model 311 Red Ryder set, which also included a scope, a cork tube and a steel target holder — all packed in a large brown cardboard box. There’s a later gun that has all the same features as this one; but since the set stopped being produced in 1950 and the later gun didn’t begin production until 1952, I know I have what the Blue Book of Airguns calls Variant 5.
The sights are fixed. Even though the No. 25 slide-action (pump) gun had adjustable front and rear sights in 1913, the Red Ryder lasted for more than a decade before it got them. You just had to learn where to hold to hit your target.
Next!
In 1955, Daisy introduced an interim Red Ryder based on the Model 94. It was a painted gun with plastic stock and forearm and painted logos on the frame. Of course, the plastic stock couldn’t be branded with a hot die (branding iron), so the logo was cut into the mold and the resulting lines were painted gold on the stock. It had a leather buttpad called a boot that was removable, and I believe this is the only leather buttpad on any Red Ryder. This model was short-lived and died out in 1962. As far as I can tell, the No. 111 Model 40 was produced right alongside this one; so for a time, Daisy actually had two Red Ryders in their lineup.
In 1972, the Red Ryder model changed to the Model 1938. It was very similar to the earlier gun, but there were manufacturing changes made to speed up production and adaptations to new ways of building BB guns. Plastic buttstocks that had been on the guns since the 1950s were applied interchangeably with wood stocks and even walnut stocks from time to time.
The Lightning Loader ends
The Lightning Loader is the separate tube under what looks like the barrel. It’s where the BBs are loaded. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, watch Ralphie load his new Red Ryder on Christmas morning in the classic movie A Christmas Story. But in the movie, Ralphie has to “cheat” the loading scene, because his Red Ryder is really a model 1938B, which doesn’t have a real Lightning Loader. Instead, it has a plastic door that’s opened to dump BBs into the outer tube — what looks like the barrel to most folks. The tube under the barrel is entirely cosmetic.
The 1938B is the Red Ryder of today, and the look has changed a little. We’re back to a wood stock and forearm, and the Red Ryder brand is back on the stock. It’s easy to burn in a brand when the stock is wood, and wood is what the customers want, so Daisy’s accommodating them. Blued steel comes back from time to time, but I don’t think we’ll see it on anything more than a special commemorative gun in the future. The electrostatic paint Daisy uses is far more durable than chemical bluing anyway. If you take care of the gun, the finish will outlast the original owner.
The gun
The BB gun I’ll be testing for you is my 1947 model — not the current gun. If you’re interested in the current model, we have an excellent two-part review by our own BG_Farmer for you to read. He compared a 1938 model with today’s 1938B, so this look at a No. 111 Model 40 is actually a test of a different airgun.
Daisy’s Red Ryder is the best-known airgun of all time.
The brand was on the left side of the stock. Today, it’s on the right.
Turn the muzzle to open the Lightning Loader. Though it looks like a tube running the length of the barrel, it’s just a ramp to dump BBs into the hollow outer barrel jacket.
Yes, they had plastic in 1947. It wasn’t as good as it is today, and many of these old pieces such as this forearm have warped over time. This one is still good, but it looks incongruous with the wood butt.
In fact, the gun I’m showing here is really different from any other Red Ryder, because this one was made specially for the model 311 Red Ryder set mentioned earlier. What sets this gun apart from all others is the presence of the permanent rear mount for the long Daisy Model 300 telescopic sight. That mount attaches with two wood screws. If I remove it from the gun, I have a hole in the comb of the stock where the back of the tang was and the forward screw doesn’t run all the way down to the receiver. In other words, this gun was made this way at the factory. Like it or not, that rear scope mount has to remain in place or I have to seriously bubba the gun to eliminate its presence. Doing that would be like converting the gullwing doors on a Mercedes 300 SL to open to the side! So, this Red Ryder will always look different than the others.
The rear scope mount is built into the BB gun and can’t be removed without making the gun look incomplete. Other Red Ryders don’t have the backstrap seen here, and removing this mount leaves a deep hole in the wood. This is a rare gun since the set it came in was made for only a few years.
One final comment before I end this report. While photographing the BB gun, I noticed that the finish really does look blue — not the black oxide color seen on today’s firearms. It’s well-polished and looks very classy after seeing nothing but modern airguns for a long time. I can see why kids were so outraged when Daisy stopped bluing their BB guns and went to electrostatic paining.
Next time, I’ll check velocity, accuracy and cover a maintenance tip or two.
