{"id":1301,"date":"2011-05-02T01:36:16","date_gmt":"2011-05-02T08:36:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.airgunsofarizona.com\/blog\/?p=1301"},"modified":"2011-05-02T02:25:22","modified_gmt":"2011-05-02T09:25:22","slug":"a-walk-on-the-weird-side-%e2%80%93-a-fifty-caliber-benjamin","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.airgunsofarizona.com\/blog\/2011\/05\/a-walk-on-the-weird-side-%e2%80%93-a-fifty-caliber-benjamin.html","title":{"rendered":"A walk on the weird side \u2013 a fifty caliber Benjamin??!"},"content":{"rendered":"
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It sure looks like a Benjamin, and it really is .50 caliber.<\/p><\/div>\n

Okay, I\u2019ll admit it: in addition to my love of airguns, I have a serious infatuation with exotic weapons. Over the years, I\u2019ve messed around with stick bows, wheel bows, atlatls (spear throwing sticks), slingshots, and blowguns. (If you want to read one of my writings about blowguns, check out: http:\/\/www.africanarcher.com\/blowgun.html<\/a> ) Basically, I like projectile launchers.<\/p>\n

Every once in a while, my interests cross pollinate. This particular story starts some years ago when I was being given a tour of the Crosman Corporation. At one I noticed a very strange looking air rifle. \u201cWhat in the world is that?\u201d I asked my guide. Came the answer: \u201cIt\u2019s a rifle that launches tranquilizer darts. We make it for another company.\u201d<\/p>\n

Just last year, I got my hands one of these beasts. It\u2019s a Pneu-Dart Inc. Model 178B dart \u201cprojector\u201d (as Pneu-Dart calls its dart launchers), but any airgun enthusiast will recognize it immediately as a close cousin of the Benjamin 392\/397. Aside from some extra hardware around the breech area, what really sets this air rifle apart is that it is a fifty<\/span> caliber (no, that is not a typo) smoothbore. The reason for large bore is that it is designed to send drug-filled syringe darts flying through the air for the purpose of tranquilizing wild life. You can see some practice darts in the picture above.<\/p>\n

Let\u2019s take a quick look at the Pneu-Dart Model 178B. At the aft end, you\u2019ll find a hardwood stock like you might find on any modern-day Benjamin or Sheridan rifle. Moving forward, you\u2019ll find the familiar metal trigger guard, metal trigger, and push-button safety. The forestock is split into two pieces. The section nearest the muzzle also serves as a pumping arm for charging the air reservoir on this rifle. The shooter can pump it up to 8 times, depending upon how much dart speed is desired.<\/p>\n

At the end of the barrel is a blade-type front sight. Further back along the barrel is a notch rear sight. There are two handles on the rear of the receiver. In the photo below, the top handle is used to open the breech.<\/p>\n

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Below, the breech is opened and the bolt pulled all the way back.<\/p>\n

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Below, the breech fully opened and rotated to the side. Why? Because if you couldn\u2019t swing the bolt completely out of the way, it would be impossible to insert a dart into the aft end of the barrel.<\/p>\n

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To get the 178B ready for shooting, pump it up 3 to 8 times. Open the breech and rotate the bolt completely out of the way. Slide a dart into the breech and return the bolt and breech to their original position.\u00a0 Next, grab the handle below<\/span> the breech and pull it straight back toward the butt stock. The 178B is now cocked.<\/p>\n

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The shooter's view of the breech all the way open and ready to receive a dart.<\/p><\/div>\n

Next, take aim, flick off the safety, and squeeze the trigger. Between 4 and 5 pounds of pressure, the shot goes down range.<\/p>\n

In the very first picture at the top of this blog, you\u2019ll see two short practice darts and one long practice dart below the rifle. The 178B launches the dart slowly, verrrrry slooooowly — at 3 pumps, just 131 fps; 5 pumps, 179 fps; 7 pumps, 210 fps, and 8 pumps 216 fps.<\/p>\n

When I tried to shoot the dart rifle for accuracy, that\u2019s when things got seriously weird. Obviously, I couldn\u2019t use a pellet trap for a target, so I used an archery target instead. When I shot at the \u201cfield point\u201d side of the target at 10 yards, the darts bounced off and back in my direction. (My neighbors thought, perhaps, I was doing some little known folk dance in the yard as I skipping around avoiding darts.) So I turned the archery target to the \u201cbroadhead\u201d side. I shot again from 10 yards, and this time, the darts buried themselves completely in the target. I\u2019m not exaggerating here, the darts disappeared totally inside the target (as in \u201cWhere the heck did the dart go?\u201d), and it took me a while and a bit of digging to figure out their final resting place.<\/p>\n

I also experimented with shooting half-inch marbles and .50 cal blowgun darts out of the 178B, but none of them fit the .50 cal smoothbore barrel as snugly as the practice darts from Pneu-Dart, and they tended to dribble out the barrel. I even tried shooting BBs, shotgun style, out of the 178B, but at just a few feet the shot pattern was too wide to be practical.<\/p>\n

Still, it was fun to experiment with a dart rifle.\u00a0 Pneu-Dart says this projector is suitable for use at 5-40 yards. Since dart rifles are generally used on large animals \u2013 deer, bear, and the like \u2013 I suspect the accuracy is sufficient. Looking on www.pneudart.com<\/a>, I see that you can even get a red dot sight for the 178B.<\/p>\n

Til next time, aim true and shoot straight.<\/p>\n

–\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Jock Elliott<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Okay, I\u2019ll admit it: in addition to my love of airguns, I have a serious infatuation with exotic weapons. Over the years, I\u2019ve messed around with stick bows, wheel bows, atlatls (spear throwing sticks), slingshots, and blowguns. (If you want to read one of my writings about blowguns, check out: http:\/\/www.africanarcher.com\/blowgun.html ) Basically, I like…»<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[20],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.airgunsofarizona.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1301"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.airgunsofarizona.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.airgunsofarizona.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.airgunsofarizona.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.airgunsofarizona.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1301"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.airgunsofarizona.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1301\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1318,"href":"https:\/\/www.airgunsofarizona.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1301\/revisions\/1318"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.airgunsofarizona.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1301"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.airgunsofarizona.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1301"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.airgunsofarizona.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1301"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}