Posts Tagged ‘Airguns’

A question from a reader – Part II

Monday, April 15, 2013

From last week’s blog, remember that Blair wrote in, asking:

  1. In your experience, what would you recommend as the best gun (top 3 in order) and caliber to purchase in order to maintain a regular food supply? I live in Georgia in a suburban area with woods all around. (squirrels, turkey & smaller deer) I don’t plan on being a collector of numerous airguns however, price is not a limiting factor.
  2. What are your preferred scopes and range finders?
  3. Since, in theory, the electricity may be out, I will need to hand pump the rifle. What is the best (most efficient, easiest to use and reliable) pump available?

Until recently, Blair, I would have recommended a multi-stroke pneumatic rifle as your first choice since they are self-contained and easy to shoot well, but my thinking has changed. The reason? One of my favorite MSP rifles failed simply by being stored in a gun closet. One of the seals failed, and the rifle would not pump and hold air.

And that is a problem with all MSP, SSP, CO2, and PCP airguns – they are seal dependent. If a single seal fails, the air rifle may quit functioning entirely, ruining its ability to gather food for your family. So unless you intend to stock a spare seal kit and learn how to repair the air rifle you choose, I would not recommend for your purposes an airgun with an MSP, SSP, CO2 or PCP powerplant. Don’t get me wrong: there are many wonderful MSP, SSP, CO2 and PCP airguns out there, and it gives me great joy to shoot them, but in the scenario that you describe, Blair, with the lights out and the need to gather food urgent, I would go with the most reliable airgun powerplant I could find.

Spring-piston air rifles (springers), on the other hand, tend to be fail-soft. You can burn a piston seal, kink or break a spring, and they will continue to launch pellets, albeit at lower velocity. I once asked Robert Buchanan, maximum leader at Airguns of Arizona which was the most reliable airgun powerplant, and he said, “Springers. We never get them back for service.”

So I would recommend a medium-power springer in .22 caliber. Specifically, an RWS34 in .22, a Weihrauch HW95 in .22, or, if you want a somewhat lighter, less powerful air rifle, the Weihrauch HW50 (the Brits, after all, have taken a lot of game with 12 foot-pound air rifles). As to scopes, the good folks at www.airgunsofarizona.com have more experience with the reliability of different kinds of scopes than I do, but I can tell you that my very first high-quality airgun scope, a Bushnell Trophy 3-12 x 40 is still alive and well after more than a decade of airgun testing. I use a Bushnell rangefinder, but I recommend that you learn to estimate range for yourself because you may need to do it quite rapidly in a hunting situation.

In addition, Blair, I reached out to Jim Chapman, who also blogs for Airguns of Arizona on hunting topics: http://www.airgunsofarizona.com/hunting/ . He is a knowledgeable and enthusiast hunter, and I deeply respect his opinion, so I asked for his take on your questions.

Here, verbatim, is his response:

Hi Jock;

This subject comes up quite a bit, my thought is that the airgun in this situation has a limited and specific role. If I could only have one gun in a true survival situation, it would not be an airgun, but rather a .22 rimfire that I could use for small game, head shoot a deer for food, and in a last ditch effort use for defense. Ammo is cheap and you could store vast quantities and high capacity magazines if you had to use it for defense.

The role I’d have for an airgun in a survival situation would be for stealth hunting to take small game without generating a lot of noise. Plus you could store thousands of pellets that cost relatively little and take almost no room to store. If the lights went out for good, this would be invaluable for harvesting plentiful small game.

The gun I’d choose for this would be a mid powered (circa 16 fpe) spring piston airgun in .22 caliber. I find that squirrels go down faster with a .22 than a .177 with a head or body shot, and if you need the food the last thing you’d want to see is your mortally wounded squirrel disappearing into its den to die.

My personal home survival kit is a supply of food and water to last my family for some time, appropriate centerfire rifles, pistols, and shotguns for hunting and defense, my bow for stealth hunting big game, and many airguns (I have a big collection after all) for small game. We live in a suburban are bordering lots of farmland and woods, and hunting for food might come into play, but mostly I’d want firepower to defend what we have.

Maybe not what folks would like to hear from an admitted airgun fanatic, but it’s the way I see things.

Regards,

Jim

PS; If I was stuck on an island with no dangerous game and no need for defense, the same airgun discussed above would be my first choice. In the right situations an airgun could keep you fed indefinitely.

Finally, Blair, whatever airgun you choose for food gathering, it’s important that you practice your skills before the need arises. You didn’t say anything about your hunting skills, so if you are inexperienced, you need to learn how to hunt and prepare game before you are forced to learn under duress.

Til next time, aim true and shoot straight.

–          Jock Elliott

 

 

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Posted in Airguns | 9 Comments »

A question from a reader – Part I

Monday, April 8, 2013

First things first: my heartfelt thanks to the folks who read this blog. If you didn’t read it, then the good folks at www.airgunsofarizona.com would have no reason to sponsor it. In addition, although you probably don’t realize it, the readers have frequently come to my rescue with interesting questions that would be fun and informative to write about in this blog. For example, recently, I received this email:

Dear Mr. Elliott:

I am new to airguns and think they would be a great asset to have for putting food on the table for my family in case the electricity ever went out for any period of time.

  1. In your experience, what would you recommend as the best gun (top 3 in order) and caliber to purchase in order to maintain a regular food supply? I live in Georgia in a suburban area with woods all around. (squirrels, turkey & smaller deer) I don’t plan on being a collector of numerous airguns however, price      is not a limiting factor.
  2. What are your preferred scopes and range finders?
  3. Since, in theory, the electricity may be out, I will need to hand pump the rifle. What is the best (most      efficient, easiest to use and reliable) pump available?

Thanks for your time.

Blair

Well, Blair, the questions that you pose are interesting and ones that I have thought about from time to time over the years. In addition, my answer to the question of an airgun for reliable game getting has changed recently.

We’ll get to that in a little while, but since you said you are new to airguns, first let’s take a brief survey of airgun powerplants to see which types are available.

Multi-stroke pneumatic (MSP) airguns –require multiple strokes (usually 2-10) of a lever to store compressed air in an on-board cylinder. These guns are virtually recoilless, are relatively easy to shoot well, are completely self-contained, and are suitable to taking small game. In addition, the velocity and power of the shot can be varied with the number of pumping strokes (from, say, 300 fps to 800 fps, depending upon the gun). Once it is fired, a multi-stroke pneumatic must be pumped up again.

Single-stroke pneumatic (SSP) airguns require just a single stroke to charge the gun. Single stroke pneumatics are self-contained, easy to cock, and highly consistent. They are often very accurate over distances up to 20 meters. The power of SSP rifles is usually low, shooting relatively light match-grade .177 pellets at 500-600 fps. SSP pistols are even less powerful.

Pre-charged pneumatic (PCP) airguns use air from a SCUBA tank or a high-pressure hand pump that is stored a high-pressure reservoir on the gun. Many long-range varmint air rifles use this powerplant. These guns are powerful, virtually recoil-free, very consistent, highly accurate and, in some cases, offer on-the-fly adjustable power. They are not, however, self-contained. When the compressed air in the on-board reservoir runs out, you need a SCUBA tank or high-pressure hand pump to charge the gun again.

Spring-piston airguns use a lever (sometimes the barrel, sometimes a lever under the barrel or on the side of the receiver) to cock a spring. When the trigger is pulled, the spring is released, propelling a piston forward and pushing a powerful blast of air behind the pellet. This is the same operating principle behind the beloved Red Ryder. Spring-piston guns are self-contained, often powerful, and can be very accurate as well as relatively quiet. The cocking effort – sometimes as high as 60 lbs — can be challenging in more powerful guns. In addition, the movement of the action when released can make these guns difficult to shoot with consistent accuracy. There are also gas spring guns which use a gas strut instead of a spring to store energy. In my experience, the more powerful a spring-piston air rifle, the more difficult it will be to shoot it with high accuracy.

CO2 airguns use either 12-gram cartridges or transferred from a bulk tank into the gun’s on-board reservoir. They are recoilless, convenient, and (in high quality models) very accurate, and CO2 cartridges are easy to carry in a pocket. But these guns are not self-contained and velocities can sag at lower temperatures.

Okay, Blair, that’s the background information you need to make a sensible choice of an airgun to meet your needs. Next time, we’ll get to the specific answers to your questions.

Til next time, aim true and shoot straight.

–          Jock Elliott

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Posted in Airguns | 4 Comments »

A few words about gas rams, gas springs, and Nitro Piston

Monday, April 1, 2013

nitropistoncomparison 11-09 (Medium)

A while back, Freddy King responded to one of my blogs and posted a question: “Could you give some info on Nitro Piston mechanism? How does this system work?”

Okay, Freddy, here goes. If you have ever seen the gas strut that lifts the back window of an SUV or the rear door of a hatchback automobile, you have seen the basic working mechanism of a Nitro Piston – also known as a gas ram or gas spring – airgun powerplant. At the heart of the gas spring is a cylinder with compressed gas. At the far end of the cylinder is a piston. The mechanism works the same way a conventional spring-piston airgun powerplant: when you cock a breakbarrel rifle equipped with a gas ram or Nitro Piston, you drive the piston down the cylinder (further compressing the gas inside the cylinder, which is comparable to compressing the spring in a conventional spring powerplant) until it latches. The powerplant sits there, under tension until the shooter pulls the trigger. When that happens, the gas expands, driving the piston down the compression tube, compressing the air in front of it until the compressed air squirts through the transfer port into the breech, propelling the pellet down the barrel.

To find out more about this technology, I spoke interviewed Ben Taylor, who invented gas ram technology, by telephone in England. In 1976, he and his business partner Dave Theobald were unhappy with the state of the art in spring-piston powerplants. They had made and sold eight spring rifles, and they all suffered from not keeping the energy that Taylor wanted. So he had a thought: what if you used compressed gas in a cylinder with a piston instead of a spring?

So he built one, using a brake seal for cars from Lockheed, and it worked! At first, he pressurized the gas ram with 150 psi air from the shop and got only about eight or nine foot-pounds of energy. “Then we tried 300 psi nitrogen from a bottle and got 1,000 fps in .177. I shot that same gun for five years with the same charge in it,” Taylor says.

In 1981, Taylor and his partner applied for a patent and tried to interest various airgun manufacturers in licensing the technology. A couple of times they came close, but ultimately no deals were consummated. “So we decided to manufacture it ourselves. It took 10,000 pounds to get set up. We sold 490 the first year, 1,000 by the third year,” he says.

Gas rams offer a number of advantages, Taylor says. “They are totally tireless. You can leave them cocked for as long as you like. Nothing wears out. The seals don’t wear. Recently I serviced gun number 25 from 1982, and it was the first time it had been serviced since it had been manufactured. You have to remember to shoot, or cock-and-decock, a gas ram every few months, otherwise the seal can get bonded to the bore, and that will cause failure.”

He adds, “We found that if a gas ram is going to fail, it will do so within the first week. Otherwise, it will last for years. Right now, there are more of our guns out there that have never been serviced than those that have been serviced.”

There are a few disadvantages to gas rams. Unlike a spring powerplant, which often will keep operating at reduced velocity even if the spring gets broken or bent, if a gas ram fails, it won’t work at all.

The biggest problem, Taylor says, is that, because Theoben gas ram powerplants had a valve where people could increase or reduce the pressure of the gas inside the powerplant, people, in a quest for more power, tend to overfill them.

“There is a sweet spot on the pressure vs. velocity curve,” Taylor says. “If you go beyond that, you increase the pressure, but you don’t get any benefit. The gun becomes hard to control and won’t shoot straight. In addition, there is the danger of burning the piston seal. We actually had to design our high powered guns so that over-pressurizing them wouldn’t create reliability problems.”

Taylor told of an interesting experience at the test range one day. “We had two 30 foot-pound guns of the same caliber shooting the same pellets. One was a gas ram and the other was a precharged pneumatic. We had chronographs set up at the muzzle, halfway down the range, and at the target. We found the gas ram was retaining energy much better at the target. When we recovered the pellets, they looked like they had come from two different manufactures. The pressure from the gas ram had flared the skirt of the pellet flat to the bore, so that it looked like a cylindrical pellet, and the gun was shooting flat like a laser!”

The Weihrauch HW90 incorporates the Theoben gas ram system.

The Weihrauch HW90 incorporates the Theoben gas ram system.

Although Theoben Airguns has gone out of business, you can still buy a breakbarrel rifle with a gas ram powerplant based on Ben Taylor’s design: the HW90.

I also interviewed Ed Schultz, Director of Engineering for Crosman Corporation, to get his views of Crosman’s Nitro Piston Technology.

“Nitro Piston offers an advantage in longevity in modern spring guns that operate at the velocities that people want,” Schultz said.

“When you are using a mechanical spring in an airgun, you are just doing bad things to the spring,” Schultz adds. “A rule of thumb in engineering is that you don’t want to stress a spring past 50% compression to maintain reliability, but that doesn’t work in a spring gun. Instead, you compress the spring almost 100%. You take up almost all the gap between the spring coils to get ultimate performance, and that tends to weaken the spring.  And if you leave it cocked, you’re taking some life out of the spring. So you use special materials and do special heat treatments to deal with that, but you’re basically fighting a losing battle.”

“But a gas ram, Nitro Piston, powerplant eliminates the weak link in the system. The gas doesn’t care if it is compressed, it’s not going to degrade the life of the powerplant,” he says. “A life of 5,000 shots is probably a good rule for estimating spring life in an average spring-piston powerplant. The life of a Nitro Piston powerplant is easily twice that, and at the end of that time, it will shoot close to the original numbers. It’s either working completely fine, or it’s not working at all.”

Schultz adds that a Nitro Piston powerplant has few moving parts, there is no spring torque, no vibration, no need for spring guides. “To make a spring powerplant really quiet and vibration free, you have to custom fit inner and outer spring guides because every spring is slightly different,” he says. “You don’t have to do that with a Nitro piston powerplant. There are billions of gas springs in use throughout the world. Automobile manufactures have adopted them because of their reliability, and we know how to make them with high precision. With a Nitro Piston gas spring powerplant in your airgun, you get a lot of the advantages of an expensive, custom-tuned powerplant at a more affordable price.”

Til next time, aim true and shoot straight.

–          Jock Elliott

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Posted in Airguns | 65 Comments »

Three questions you don’t need to ask again.

Monday, March 18, 2013

Just the other day, I got an email from one of my main contacts at www.airgunsofarizona.com – the good folks who graciously support this blog.

My contact was complaining, ever so gently, that they tend to get certain questions again and again. They are, in no particular order:

  • “I see you rate the airgun in ft/lbs (foot-pounds), but how many FEET PER SECOND does it shoot?”
  • “Why don’t you rate in feet per second?”
  • “Why is your feet per second rating lower than the manufacturer’s?”

I told my contact that I would attempt to answer these questions in a way that they might not come up so often in the future. So here goes.

“I see you rate the airgun in ft/lbs (foot-pounds), but how many FEET PER SECOND does it shoot?”

To really get a handle on this question, we have to go back in time a little. Over the past dozen plus years that I have been writing about airguns, I have noticed a creeping trend among airgun manufacturers, particularly those that sell their products in the big-box discount stores. That trend, quite simply, has been to advertise the speed of the airgun prominently on the box, and a kind of arms race has developed. If one manufacturer says “1,000 feet per second,” the next manufacturer will crow “1,200 feet per second,” and pretty soon a manufacturer will brag “1,500 feet per second!” The manufacturers do this, I presume, because the poor consumer, who knows relatively little about airguns, will naturally assume that a faster airgun is better than a comparable airgun that is slower.

But this kind of airgun advertising really does the consumer a disservice. To discover why, we have to start with a few key physical facts. Key fact number one: the sound barrier at sea level is right around 1,100 feet per second. This is important because, as the speed of a pellet approaches the sound barrier, it enters a region of turbulence that seriously interferes with shooting accurately. This is also true of a pellet that is initially shot at high speed and then drops very quickly below the speed of sound. It is far better to shoot slower and more accurately than to shoot a pellet at higher speed and miss. For this very reason, most of the country’s field target shooters set up their guns to shoot no faster than 950 feet per second, and many shoot much slower.

(And – as an aside – it is possible to do very accurate shooting with relatively low-speed airguns. Just ask the air pistol silhouette shooters who use the Daisy Avanti 747. Olympic 10-meter competitors shoot rifles that send the pellets down range at around 600 fps.)

Key fact number two: there are no – repeat NO – airgun powerplants that launch pellets fast enough to keep them above the speed of sound for any appreciable distance. In the field of powder-burning varmint rifles, you will find cartridges that will launch bullets at 3,000, even 4,000 feet per second. The varminter is relying on the bullet staying at supersonic velocity all the way to the target to maintain accuracy. But this simply isn’t possible with an airgun powerplant.

Now, I can almost guess what you are thinking: “But what about those airguns that advertise 1,500 feet per second?” Okay, I’ll tell you. First, they achieve those velocities by shooting very light pellets that do not retain their velocity well over distance. Second, they do not obtain excellent accuracy using those very light pellets. A few years ago, I tested a spring-piston air rifle that was promoted as generating 1,500 fps. With very light non-lead alloy pellets, it would, indeed, achieve velocities in the mid-1400s, but at 50 yards, it delivered five-shot groups that were about six inches in diameter. When I fed that same rifle heavy pellets and slowed the velocity down to around 930 fps, the group size shrank to less than 1.5 inches at 50 yards. Slower was much more accurate.

So when you ask “How fast does it shoot?” You are basically asking the wrong question.  Let’s do a little thought experiment for a moment. Let’s pretend that you are napping on the couch on a Sunday afternoon. Now, here comes Uncle Jock, sneaking up on you, with a sphere in each hand. My plan is to drop one of these spheres on your head from a distance of six inches. Since gravity is a constant, either sphere will drop on your sleeping cranium at exactly the same speed. Now, here’s the question: one of the sphere’s is a table tennis ball which weighs only a fraction of an ounce, and the other sphere is a bowling ball, which weighs several pounds – which one would you prefer that I let slip from my fingers? Unless you are incredibly weird in some way, I’m pretty sure that you would prefer the table tennis ball because, even though it would be falling at the same speed as the bowling ball, it is lighter and will hit with less force. The bottom line is that the weight of the projectile matters as much as the velocity. In the world of airguns, the force of a pellet is measured in foot-pounds of energy.

So, if you ask “How many foot-pounds of energy does it generate at the muzzle, you are getting a much better idea of what the relative power of the airgun is. That also explains why www.airgunsofarizona.com does not generally rate airguns in feet per second.

If you want to calculate foot-pounds of energy for yourself, here’s how you do it: take the velocity of the pellet in feet per second and square it (multiply it by itself). Take the resulting number and multiply that by the weight of the pellet in grains. Finally, divide that number by 450240. So, if your airgun is shooting 7.9 grain pellets at 800 fps, here’s the calculation: 800 x 800 = 640,000. 640,000 x 7.9 = 5,056,000. 5,056,000 divided by 450240 = 11.2295 foot-pounds of energy.

Why is your feet per second rating lower than the manufacturer’s?”

This is a lot easier to answer: most manufacturers use really light pellets to achieve their velocity ratings. Super light pellets, however, are not generally what most people shoot with. The criteria that airgunners should use in selecting the right pellet for their air rifle or air pistol is not which pellet shoots the fastest, but which pellet delivers the best accuracy.

Til next time, aim true and shoot straight.

–          Jock Elliott

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Posted in Airguns | 2 Comments »

Coming out of the closet, optically speaking

Monday, March 4, 2013
Cross dominance at work. Your Humble Correspondent is shooting this pistol right-handed, but I have turned my head slightly so that my left eye lines up behind the red dot sight.

Cross dominance at work. Your Humble Correspondent is shooting this pistol right-handed, but I have turned my head slightly so that my left eye lines up behind the red dot sight.

I am cross-dominant. No, that doesn’t mean that I am engaged in some sort of weird fetish. It means, instead, my dominant hand is on one side of my body but my dominant eye is on the other side. In my case, I am right handed but left eyed.

According to the US Concealed Carry Association website, www.usconcealedcarry.com, a study of 5,000 people in the 1960s found that 28.6 percent were right handed but left eyed, while only 3.9 percent were left handed but right eyed. Less than 1 percent are thought to have no dominance by either eye while the rest presumably have hand and eye dominance on the same side of the body.

I didn’t even know that I was cross dominant until an archery-related shoulder injury forced me to try shooting archery left handed. Part of that experiment involved determining which was my dominant eye, and that’s when I found out that I am cross dominant. To this day, I shoot a bow left-handed.

It easy to determine which is your dominant eye. Point your finger a light switch 20 feet away. Now, close your left eye. If your fingertip stays over the light switch, you are right eye dominant. If the fingertip jumps to the left, you are left eye dominant. If your dominant eye and dominant hand are on the same side of your body, you are not cross dominant.

But what if you are cross dominant, what does that mean for shooting airguns? For shooting air pistols, it is pretty easy to accommodate cross dominance. Simply hold the pistol in your dominant hand and then rotate your head on a vertical axis or tilt your head so that your dominant eye lines up with the sights. That’s how I shoot pistol, and it appears to work pretty well.

But what about shooting air rifle? There is no easy way to get your left eye behind the sights if you are shooting a rifle right-handed. Experts generally agree that it is best to shoot from the same side of your body as your dominant eye, but it doesn’t always have to be that way. I won the New York State Hunter Class Field Target Championship in 2004 shooting a Beeman R1 equipped with peep sights, and I was shooting right-handed and right-eyed. This was before I knew that I was cross dominant. I still shoot rifle right-handed and right-eyed.

Some experts say that if a shooter is young – less than 20 years of age – it is best to force them to shoot from the side that their dominant eye is on. Others report trying to force older shooters to switch the side they shoot from with mixed results. I tried it when I was having problems with a cataract in my right eye and found shooting from my left side to be incredibly awkward, so awkward in fact that I just gave up. Now that I have had a cataract operation on my right eye, I don’t even bother trying.

I have spoken with one shooter who successfully switched from shooting right-handed to shooting left-handed. Hans Apelles, now 78 years old and part of Team Crosman, made the switch in his 60s because of problems with glaucoma in his right eye which is also his dominant eye.

“Over one winter, I decided I needed to shoot left handed,” he says. “You have to teach your brain what you are going to do. For instance, when I was going to take a kneeling shot, I had to think three times what knee to put down for left-handed shooting.”

He adds, “The first year was very awkward, and I have a couple of holes in the basement ceiling from stupid things happening. But as soon as I started competing in the spring, my scores went up because I could see better.”

He says, “You have to put your mind to it when you switch because it doesn’t come automatically in the beginning. It takes many years of shooting to get your brain trained that way. Even now, if I have a lay-off for a while, I will sometimes put my kneepad on the wrong leg.”

So, are you cross dominant? There is about a one in three chance that you might be. Take the simple test above and find out. If you are, you might consider adjusting your shooting style to make best use of your dominant eye.

Til next time, aim true and shoot straight.

–          Jock Elliott

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Posted in Airguns | 5 Comments »

Some friendly advice for outright newbies

Monday, February 25, 2013

The business of getting into a new hobby is a curious one. I should know; I’ve started enough of them to have some experience.

At the beginning of a new field of endeavor, it looks appealing, and you’re curious: what’s airgunning all about? What’s fun about it? What are the interesting activities that you might get involved in? And you begin to think about perhaps purchasing your first airgun.

It is precisely at this point that the trouble arises. If you have had any experience at all with starting new hobbies, you know that there are two potential traps you could fall into. The first is buying a really cheap piece of gear because “you’re just trying to get a feel for the hobby without spending too much.” The trap here is that often inexpensive gear often has some deficiency that seriously interferes with enjoyment. With airguns, specifically, that might mean a nasty trigger or a harsh firing cycle.

The other trap is going full-out and buying a really expensive piece of gear that is not the right fit for what you ultimately want to do. In airguns, this might manifest itself in buying a rifle designed for 10 meter Olympic competition or field target competition when ultimately what you want to do is plink in the back yard. On the online forums, occasionally someone will pop up requesting advice on buying an airgun. Often a forum participant will respond, “What do you want to do with it?” It’s not unusual to have the reply come back: “I’m not sure.” It’s a problem: how do you know what you want to get when you don’t know what you want to do with it?

So, having said all that, this blog is an attempt to help those outright newbies who might not know what they want to do with an airgun and don’t want to make a dumb (donkey) mistake in buying their first one.

The Daisy Avanti Triumph 747

If you like the idea of pistols and think you might like to plink in the back yard or maybe even get involved in some competition down the line, but you don’t have a need to kill pests in the garden or defend the bird feeder, I have one solid recommendation for you: the Daisy Avanti Triump 747 . This is a single-stroke pneumatic air pistol that is wickedly accurate out to about 20 yards, doesn’t generate a lot of power (It is completely unsuitable for pest control), and easy to shoot and maintain. All you need is one of these, some pellets, a pellet trap and targets, and some eye protection, and you’re set for years of fun indoors and out.

The Benjamin 392

The Benjamin 392

The Webley Rebel

The Webley Rebel

But suppose you’d like to dip your toe in the waters of airgunning and need to remove pests from the garden or defend the bird feeder, and you don’t want to spend a lot of money? In that case, I would recommend a multi-stroke pneumatic air rifle. These rifles are easy to shoot well and require multiple strokes of the pumping lever before each shot. The power can be adjusted by the number of strokes. If you want to shoot with iron sights, I would recommend the Benjamin 392  with optional Williams peep sight. If you would rather have an air rifle with a scope, I would suggest the Webley Rebel  with an optional scope.

The HW30S

The HW30S

But let’s suppose that you really have no clue what you want to do with an airgun but you want something that is fun to shoot and of decent quality to get started with. In that case, I would recommend the Weihrauch HW30S in .177.  It’s easy to cock, easy to shoot well (for a spring-piston powerplant) and generates enough power for pest control at short range (say, within 50 feet as a rough guideline). You can fit an HW30 with a peep sight or a scope, and with the right pellet, the HW30 is accurate enough that people (me included) have shot them in field target competition with some success. (You won’t be able to compete head to head with the high powered guns, but you’ll still have fun.)

So that’s my friendly advice for outright newbies. Remember, all of these airguns will need a selection of pellets, a pellet trap, targets, and some eye protection. And remember the Number One rule of gun safety: never, ever, point your airgun at anything that you don’t want to see a hole in.

Til next time, aim true and shoot straight.

–          Jock Elliott

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Posted in Airguns | 8 Comments »

The astonishing Walther LGV – Part II

Monday, February 11, 2013

Walther LGV 005

Walther makes several “claims to fame” with the new LGV.

The first is zero play in the barrel hinge, thanks to the wedge lock, and cocking rod. The cocking rod is mounted in synthetic material and backed by compression springs so that scraping, abrasion, and scoring of metal parts are eliminated.

A rotary piston eliminates friction losses and also eliminates contact with the cocking rod when the piston moves forward. Piston rings made of low-friction synthetic material ensure that the piston does not touch the compression cylinder wall and ensures smooth, quiet movement. Further, the piston has holes drilled in it to gently brake the piston at the end of the compression stroke and to reduce recoil.

The LGV uses a specially tempered valve spring with ground spring ends to safeguard straight movement. Walther further claims that the LGV will not suffer from spring fatigue if left cocked for a long time. Those are the highlights of the claims made at the LGV website, http://walther-lgv.com/

Now, I’ve come to realize that the readers of this blog are a pretty sharp bunch, and you know as well as I do that all the verbiage in the world and a clever website do not mean squat unless the claims that are made actually come to fruition in the product.

Walther LGV 007

So what’s it like to shoot the new LGV? To cock it, you first have to release the barrel lock lever, which is done easily enough by pushing up with your thumb. Then pull the barrel down and back until it latches. (I estimate this requires slightly less than 30 lbs. of effort). You’ll notice there is absolutely no spring noise, no creaks, no groans, no noise of any sort, until the cocking mechanism clicks into its latch.

Walther LGV 008

Load a pellet into the breech and return the barrel to its original position. Take aim, slide the safety off, and take the first stage out of the trigger (this requires only about 14.2 oz. of pressure). Squeeeeze the trigger. In the sample that I tested, at 3 lbs. 3.9 oz. of pressure, the shot goes down range. The shot cycle is incredibly smooth, making a kind of muted “tunng” sound as the action cycles. The recoil is remarkably subdued, compared to other spring-piston air rifles that I know and like. At the time of this writing, there is no other spring-piston or gas-ram production air rifle that rivals the new LGV for quiet and smoothness.

The LGV launches 14.3-grain .22 caliber Crosman Premier pellets at an average of 622 fps, which works out to 12.29 foot-pounds of energy that the muzzle.  At 13 yards, from a rest, I found that it would allow me to shoot the center out of the target with shot after shot. At 32 yards shooting in January under fitful winds, the LGV delivered a 5-shot group that measured 7/8 inch from edge to edge. That works out to .655 inch from center to center.

The fit and finish of the LGV are excellent. My overall impression of it is that it is incredibly fun, easy, and smooth to shoot. When I was testing it, I didn’t want to stop enjoying the supple pleasure of shooting it.

I have not been this impressed with a new air rifle in a long, long time. I have only one thing to say to the team at Walther that developed this rifle: well done!

Til next time, aim true and shoot straight.

–          Jock Elliott

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The astonishing Walther LGV – Part I

Monday, February 4, 2013
The new Walther LGV with optional scope.

The new Walther LGV with optional scope.

Greg from www.airgunsofarizona.com was on the phone with me, discussing what airguns he was going to send my way for testing. “Walther has come out with a new LGV,” he said.

I got excited. “Really?!! Send me one right away!”

“Whoa,” Greg said. “It’s not the same as the old LGV. It’s more of a sporting rifle, but they’ve put a lot of new technology into it.”

“Oh,” I said, wondering if the latest incarnation of the LGV would be a disappointment.

The airgun industry has been around for quite a while, and airgun manufacturers will, from time to time, bring out a new rifle bearing an old name. The last time this happened (with a manufacturer who shall be nameless), the result was a rifle that was really very disappointing on many levels.

The original Walther LGV, image courtesy of Walther.

The original Walther LGV, image courtesy of Walther.

And to set up this story properly, you need to understand that the Walther LGV was a high-precision ten-meter target rifle introduced in 1964. It was a breakbarrel rifle with a positive barrel lock that insured that the barrel hinge always returned to the same position. Original LGVs are still prized as collector’s items today, and they are still fun to shoot.

Similar to the original LGV, the new LGV also incorporates a positive barrel lock to insure that the break barrel returns to the same position every single time. More about that later. Let’s take a guide tour of the new LGV. There are several different variations of the new LGV, which you can see here http://www.airgunsofarizona.com/WaltherLGV.html I tested the LGV Master Ultra in .22 caliber. It stretches 43.25 inches from end to end and weighs 8.85 lbs before mounting a scope.

Walther LGV 009

At the rear of the LGV is a thick ventilated rubber butt pad. It is attached to a fully ambidextrous hardwood stock. There is a slight bulge and rise on either side of the buttstock for a cheek piece. The pistol is sloped at a roughly 45 degree angle and is checkered on either side and engraved with the Walther name. Ahead of the pistol grip is a black metal trigger guard that surrounds a black trigger. I believe the trigger is plastic, although it might be an alloy (a metal “tuning” trigger is available as an option, according the manual), and it is adjustable for first stage travel and for trigger weight.

Ahead of that, the forestock is unadorned and tapers slightly to the end. The underside is fairly flat-bottomed, and toward the end you’ll find a slot for the cocking mechanism. At the far end of the forestock is a lever for releasing the barrel lock. Above that is the barrel (the LGV is available in both .177 and .22) and attached to that is a large metal fitting that serves as a cocking aid, the mount for the globe front sight (which has interchangeable inserts), and a knurled barrel nut which can be unscrewed to allow the mounting of Walther’s proprietary three-chamber silencer (where legal).

Moving back along the barrel, a micro-adjustable notch-type rear sight is mounted on the breech block. Moving further aft, the rear of the receiver has dovetails for mounting a scope and three holes into which anti-recoil pins may be fitted. At the very end of the receiver, you’ll find a push-pull safety which is resettable.

That’s all there is to the Walther LGV . . . or is there? When I took the new LGV out of its box, I notice a couple of symbols on the edge of the manual. One of them said “Vibration reduction system,” and the other said “Super silent technology.”

Curious, I looked up “Walther LGV” on the Internet and found that Walther had created an entire new website devoted to this new series of rifles. Obviously, the good folks at Walther were serious about the technology they had put into this new rifle.

We’ll get into that next time, in addition to shooting the new LGV.

Til next time, aim true and shoot straight.

–          Jock Elliott

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Some good news about pellets

Monday, January 28, 2013

This should come as no surprise to anyone, but the folks who manufacture match air rifles and match air pistols, like Feinwerkbau are maniacs. That’s right – you heard me correctly – they are maniacs, totally obsessed with accuracy. The folks who engineer and build the air rifles and air pistols that are used in international and Olympic ten-meter competition can, and will, do just about anything to improve the accuracy, consistency, and reliability of their products.

Every year, when new products are announced, there are new tweaks and improvements to their products. And they don’t make these changes to their products just to “update the product line.” No, indeed; the reason they are constantly improving their match rifles and match pistols is because they are in constant communication with world-class shooters, and the engineers and designers listen very closely and take to heart what these shooters have to say.

The result: air rifles and air pistols that are as accurate at 10 meters as human engineering knows how to make them. Everything about these match airguns is incredibly consistent from shot to shot.

So what’s the limiting factor when it comes to shooting these airguns? (Besides the shooter?!!)

Give up? It’s the ammunition . . . that’s right, after you have paid, say, two-and-a-half kilobucks for the most accurate 10-meter air rifle you can buy, what you want is match ammunition that is super consistent in terms of size and weight.

And that’s where part of the good news about pellets comes in. If you have been paying attention, you already know that JSB makes match ammunition in three different weights. Further, by all reports, it is really good.

Good news about pellets 003-001 (Medium)

But now JSB has introduced a line of Premium Match Ammo that is subjected to another higher level of inspection – electronic inspection – for both size and weight. According to the folks at JSB, the new ammo is 99.99% perfect in terms of head size and weight and is available in three different weights.

Each pellet is individually scanned and weighed, and, if it meets the quality criteria, is packed individually in a block of foam to protect it from damage.  Competitive shooters can practice all week with the appropriate weight of ammo from the more reasonably priced tins, and then can shoot the Premium Match ammo in competition.

For those of you who are not competitive 10-meter or silhouette shooters, there is more good news about pellets. Loyal readers of this blog know that I am a strong advocate of shooting groups with different pellets to see which pellet delivers the highest accuracy in a particular air rifle or air pistol.

JSB now offers two domed pellets samplers

JSB now offers two domed pellets samplers

Unfortunately, this can be a bit of a pain because it involves buying several different tins of pellets to find the pellet that your airgun favors. The good folks at JSB have come to the rescue with Domed Exact Test Pellet Samplers. Available in .177 and .22, each sampler contains seven different samples of pellet weights and head sizes.

The back of each tin is keyed to the pellet numbers on the top of the container.

The back of each tin is keyed to the pellet numbers on the top of the container.

The .177 sampler contains:

Exact 8.44 gr. 4.50mm

Exact 8.44 gr. 4.51mm

Exact 8.44 gr. 4.52mm

Exact RS 7.33 gr. 4.52mm

Exact Monster 13.43 gr. 4.52mm

Exact Express 7.87 gr. 4.52mm

Exact Heavy 10.34 gr. 4.52mm

7 x 50 per tin

The .22 sampler contains:

Exact 15.89 gr. 5.51mm

Exact 15.89 gr. 5.52mm

Exact 15.89 gr. 5.53mm

Exact Monster 25.39 gr. 5.52mm

Exact Express 14.35 gr. 5.52mm

Exact Heavy 18.13 gr. 5.52mm

Exact RS 13.43 gr. 5.52mm

7 x 30 per tin

 

With these samplers, you can see which JSB domed pellet works best in your rifle and pistol at a very reasonable price. If you want to test RWS pellets, a sampler pack of them is also available.

Til next time, aim true and shoot straight.

–          Jock Elliott

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A Holiday encounter of the airgunning kind

Monday, January 21, 2013

At a holiday gathering toward the end of 2012, I ran into one of my nephews who I hadn’t seen in a while. In the course of the usual catching-up small talk, I mentioned that I write a weekly blog about airguns.

“Really?” he said. “I just bought an airgun.”

He explained that it was his second air rifle, and he likes to hunt squirrels with them. They are both .177 caliber and both break barrel springers. The first one shoots slowly but is very accurate. He bought the second one – which advertises 1,200 feet per second – because he wanted “more knock-down power.”

The problem was, he said, that the more powerful one didn’t seem to be very accurate. Was there anything he could do to improve the accuracy?

He and I chatted for quite some time, and I suggested a number of things that might help.

The first thing was to make sure that the scope mounts and rings were tight. I explained about the weird whiplash recoil that springers generate and that if the scope was loose in the rings or the scope mounts were not securely fastened to the receiver, the recoil was going to make the scope move with every shot, and he wasn’t going to get accuracy that way.

Then he mentioned that he knew the gun was shooting fast, because he could hear the supersonic crack when it fired. Immediately I suggested that he get some heavier pellets to slow the gun down. When varminters use firearms to shoot prairie dogs at 600 yards, I said, they shoot so fast – sometimes in excess of 4,000 fps – that the shot stays supersonic the entire distance to the target. But, I explained, there aren’t any airgun powerplants that will do that. So when you launch a pellet at supersonic speed, it quickly loses velocity and drops through a transonic region where the pellet gets buffeted by turbulence, and the result is poor accuracy. “If you slow the gun down to around 900 fps at the muzzle,” I suggested, “you’ll probably get much better accuracy.”

I also suggested that needed to try a variety of pellets, shooting them for groups off a rest, to see which one delivers that best accuracy. He told me that he usually buys wadcutter pellets because they worked the best in his slower air rifle and they make a bigger wound channel.

“The Olympic shooters use wadcutters,” I said, “but they are shooting their match rifles at around 600 fps. I’m pretty sure those wadcutters will go nuts at the speed that your more powerful air rifle shoots. Your best bet is to stick with round-nose pellets for the greatest accuracy.”

Further I suggested that when he shoots groups, he should steady his rifle on a soft rest like an old cushion or perhaps a folded up jacket. Springers, because of the way they recoil, usually don’t produce best accuracy when rested on a hard surface, I told him.

Finally, I advised him to squeeeeeze the trigger when shooting groups. “If you jerk the trigger, you may well yank the shot to one side or the other. But if you squeeze slowly while maintaining the alignment of the crosshairs on the target, you’ll get better results.”

He thanked me for the suggestions and said he would give them a try. I can’t wait to see how it turns out!

Til next time, aim true and shoot straight.

–          Jock Elliott

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Posted in Airguns | 4 Comments »

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