B.B. works it out - Part 6The Taurus PT 1911

by B.B. Pelletier

Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4
Part 5



It's been four months since I reported on this project, but today I have an update. For those not familiar with why I'm writing about a firearm in an airgun blog, I'm using my experience with a gun that started out as a lemon to illustrate what you can sometimes do when you have to make lemonade. This lesson pertains to airguns, cars, houses and even life.

I bought this .45 ACP pistol because of the advertising. The claims were, and still are, that you could buy a gun with $2,100 worth of custom features and factory-tuned adjustments for about $500 (at the time). It seemed too good to be true, but having held one at a SHOT Show for a couple minutes and dry-firing it a little, I convinced myself it was true.

I bought the gun and found out the hard way that it was not true--at least not for the particular gun I bought. My gun jammed an inordinate amount of the time, causing me to lose confidence in what was supposed to be a defense handgun. Not a good thing! It jammed 8 times in the first 84 shots with factory hardball ammo, which has the reputation as the most reliable ammo available.


This jam is indicative of a faulty extractor. I suffered through this until the extractor was replaced. The gun is now reliable.

The first report was titled B.B. gets disappointed, and I wrote it partly as a catharsis and partly for all of you who have similar experiences with new airguns. At that point, I faced a fork in the road. I could send it back to the manufacturer who promised to fix it for free or I could do the work myself. There are advantages and disadvantages to doing it either way.

I chose to do the work myself, so I could report to you exactly how far off the advertised mark this gun happened to be. I also wanted to learn what it took to make this 1911, or any one for that matter, reliable. I am still involved in that process, though today's report is probably close to the end of the series. And I've learned a lot about this one particular handgun. At this point, I feel like Vince, who puts in the time on one airgun to get to know all its quirks and odd behavior.

Things did get better as I worked on the gun. At one point, I had it down to two feeding failures in about 100 rounds. Still too many for a defense gun, but much better than before.

I'm not ready to summarize this report just yet, but I'm getting close. I'll bring you all up to date with what's happened since the last time. Since then, I've run another 500 rounds through the gun, bringing the total to 1,700 rounds. My wife and I go to an indoor range about once a month to keep current with our chosen defense guns. I'd given her the Wilson Combat CQB Light Rail pistol that she had given to me so she would have an ultra-reliable defense sidearm while I worked with the Taurus. My military training and experience with firearms makes me better able to handle operational problems in a crisis, so if the Taurus jammed at a bad time I knew immediately what to do. However, fate intervened and I didn't have to go there.

Just after the last installment, I was fortunate enough to acquire a Colt National Match .45. It's a target pistol made by the Colt factory in the late 1950s and early 1960s. What they did was copy most of the modifications military armorers had been applying for decades to standard military .45s for use at the national matches at Camp Perry, Ohio. The airgun analog of this might be when Air Arms copied the Rekord trigger for their TX200 and added some aftermarket tricks custom airgunsmiths had been putting on the Rekord for field target shooters.


I acquired this old Colt National Match .45, which I set up for factory loads for my wife. She likes the grip and heavier trigger, so it's now her defense gun.

The handgun that resulted was called the Colt National Match. In later years, it became the National Match Gold Cup, but at the early date this particular pistol was made it was just the National Match. The operating spring it came with was weak to function best with reduced target loads, but I swapped it for a 18.5-lb. standard power operating spring. The gun was now ready for factory hardball ammunition.

When she tried it for the first time, Edith found that she liked the grip on this new pistol much better than the Wilson, which had been modified to sit lower in the hand. She also liked the 6-lb. Colt trigger better than the Wilson's trigger, which breaks at 3.5 lbs. I put a set of custom wood grips on the gun, and in after session it became Edith's new defense pistol. We've tested it with my now-reliable handloads, and it functions perfectly. The Wilson will come back to me, and Edith will now shoot the National Match. Dollar-wise it's a wash, but examination shows the Colt to be a crude ancestor of the Wilson. Still, it's reliable and accurate, which is all we want.

However, while all this was happening, I had also installed the new Wilson extractor in the Taurus and its behavior improved a thousand percent--meaning it's now reliable! As I suspected (after lengthy research and reading dozens of reports about extractor problems on the internet), the Metal Injection Molded (MIM) extractor in the Taurus was the cause of 90 percent of the gun's problems. I replaced it with a Wilson Combat extractor machined from a solid steel bar, and it functions without a problem, thus far (that being about 400 rounds).

During cleaning a few sessions back, I cleaned the Taurus firing pin and lost the tiny spring that powers the Series 80 firing-pin safety. Since this safety isn't needed to make the gun any safer in real-world operation (it was a marketing ploy by Colt and has been tried and dropped by other manufacturers), I left those parts out of the gun. The result is now a 100 percent creep-free second stage on the trigger. It's about one-half pound heavier than the Wilson and now just as crisp. Although I've purchased the spring that was lost, the performance is so much better that I'm leaving it as it is.

The final dubious parts in the pistol were the magazines. They have the weakest follower springs I've ever seen, and they made even the Wilson suffer feeding failures occasionally. However, they now seem to be able to function with the Taurus 100 percent. I've run 400 rounds without a failure of any kind. When that passes 500 rounds, I'll start trusting the Taurus for the first time since buying it one year ago.

The thing to carry away from this is that not everything works as advertised. I read dozens of reports from Taurus PT 1911 owners before I bought the gun, and they all praised it to the heavens. Then, after I knew better, I found out there's a smaller group that had the same problems as I had. But their voice has been muffled. Obviously, they're not going to find a friend in the gun press.

The other thing to know is that at its heart, the PT 1911 really is a good gun. In fact, it's just as good as they advertise. The problem seems to be one of spotty QC at the factory. I guess they reason that their warranty can fix any problems, but I didn't take that approach. I didn't, because I wanted to know more about the gun itself, and immersing myself in fixing the problem was a better teacher. That's a decision each person must make for himself.

Methuselah - Part 3: The end is in sight! Rebuilding a Markham BB gun

by B.B. Pelletier

Before we begin, I will be out of town today and tomorrow, so I'm asking you veterans to watch the comments for me. I'll start answering when I return this weekend.

Guest blogger
Vince rebuilt a Markham gun for Wayne, another blog reader, and here's the third part of that project. If you'd like to write a guest post for this blog, please email me.

Bloggers must be proficient in the simple html that Blogger software uses, know how to take clear photos and size them for the internet (if their post requires them) and they must use proper English. We will edit each submission, but we won't work on any submission that contains gross misspellings and/or grammatical errors.

by Vince

Part 1
Part 2

The Markham Wayne sent me (Dee-Dee) had one major cosmetic and functional flaw that would be a bit difficult to take care of--a busted rear sight. What's so hard about that? As I alluded to earlier, the Markham--despite it's genesis in the long ago (or perhaps because of it)--wasn't exactly a model of exotic construction or advanced engineering. It was made to be cheap, and part of the cheapness extended to the rear sight. By this time, it was out of sight--literally broken off, and I could only guess what it looked like. The only clue was a small square hole in the top of the receiver, where it looks like a tab was punched out. More than likely that tab had been bent upward and formed into a crude, non-adjustable sight.


The missing rear sight left this hole.

I needed to do SOMETHING to aim with, at least temporarily, so I could evaluate how the gun was shooting as I worked on the innards and on the barrel. I cut a 1/4" strip of .020 sheet steel, formed it into an "L" and stuck it in through the hole. When the rear spring retainer was slid into place, it held nice and tight.


I used a temporary rear sight while working on the powerplant.

I used a cutoff disk on a Dremel to make the notch, and--as I suspected--the fact that it was so close to the shooter's eye made the tiny notch look huge.

After I got the gun working well enough and adapted the Daisy 499 shot tube, I knew I needed to put something better on there. Since Wayne is old enough to be, uh, my older brother, I figured that his eyes weren't much better than mine for seeing things close up. That meant that I ought to put the sight a couple inches further forward than the original. And since the gun now has more accuracy than an ordinary BB gun, I wanted to make something adjustable. Lastly, of course, it could not involve any kind of significant modification to the gun itself.

I sort of formed in my mind a picture of what I wanted to make and just started working off my mental drawing. I was going to need some thin steel stock, preferably some sort of spring steel. It didn't have to be a high grade by any stretch, but something that could flex a bit without taking a set.

I found my answer in a cheap dollar-store Chinese-made putty knife. I forgot to snap a picture of what it looked like before it sacrificed itself, but this is the piece of metal I cut out of the blade.


Raw material is cut from putty knife.

I heated one end of the metal strip so I could bend it up to form the sight leaf, and I drilled a small hole about 1/2" back from it for the elevation adjuster.


Raw material has been shaped and drilled.

I was concerned about the bend. Apparently, the metal wasn't quite hot enough when I bent it, and it started to crack. Because of this, I flowed some brazing material into the corner to strengthen it.

In order to make a threaded hole for the adjusting screw, I placed a 10-32 nut over the hole I just drilled, held it in place with a machine screw and soldered it to the blade. I had to grind the plating off the sides of the nut before the solder would stick to it.


Bend was brazed for strength, and nut was soldered in place. Screw is just to hold nut during soldering.

Since the other end of the sight is going to anchor through the existing sight hole, it has to get narrowed to a bit under a 1/4", and I started to smooth out the rest of the rough-cut edges. The narrow tongue on the end was bent over after applying PLENTY of heat and eventually got hammered flat.


Sight base is sized to pass through square hole.


Bend was made with plenty of heat to avoid more cracking.


Bend is hammered flat.

Since the adjuster screw is going to bear against the top of the tube it has to be made out of nylon so it doesn't damage the metal or the finish. I cut a section from a 10-32 nylon machine screw and cut a slot at one end.


Nylon screw is made into adjustment screw.

There isn't a lot of room to play with--the front sight is very low. With the higher velocity from the Daisy shot tube, it's going to be easy to have the gun shoot too high. I have to make the rear sight pretty low, and that's why there's no head on the adjuster screw. It would have blocked the low notch. I put the tongue into the rear sight cutout and tapped it forward, which pretty much completes the basic installation. I cleaned it up, painted it and remounted it on the gun.


Rear sight base slipped into square hole and tapped forward to tighten.


Sight is removed and painted black.


New rear sight is mounted on the gun.

Note that I had put a bit of a curve into the metal--this was to make sure that the sight blade went all the way down when the adjuster was screwed out all the way.

I took it out for some 5-yard shootin' and found that the rear leaf is still too high. It needs about another 1/8" taken off the height, which requires the adjuster to be shortened as well. That means the sight has only about .25" of vertical travel, which translates into a POI shift of about 3" at 15 feet. According to my rough calculations, this should give Wayne enough elevation adjustment to keep him on target out to about 15 yards or so, which is well past normal BB-gunning distance.

Windage adjustment is a lot simpler. The sight can be bent slightly to the left or right. While crude, this shouldn't be an issue simply because windage isn't something that should need constant readjustment. There isn't as great a variety of BBs available as pellets, and I don't think there's going to be much difference in POI between Crosman, Daisy or Avanti BBs--especially in the horizontal plane. Once the sight is positioned properly, the only thing that needs changing is the elevation.

And how does it work? Well, the sight is still blurry to my eyes--but it's a blurry notch, not a blurry blur. It's a lot easier to see, but the same doesn't hold true for the very thin front blade. Frankly, the gun shoots about the same for me as it did before (which is still pretty good). From the standpoint of workmanship, I really wish it had come out better than it did, but Wayne will have to be the final judge of that.

This ends my association with Dee-Dee. By the time you read this, she's gone back to her owner, where she'll probably get used from time to time. Working on something that was old enough to have been bought by my great-grandfather for my grandfather got me thinking about a couple of things.

For one, the point comes to mind is that things--even simple things--that are the creative products of the human mind will in some small way bear the faint imprint of those who designed and built them. I guess that's what makes archeology so interesting. If the things happen to be machines that were intended to do something, then just sitting on display probably wasn't what they were intended to do. I'm an engineer by trade, and I've been a mechanic. If something I've designed and/or built is still being used--even sporadically--way longer than I ever intended, well that just sort of tickles me. While a number of collectors might shudder at the thought of a relic like Dee-Dee actually being used, I can't help but think that doing so serves as a better tribute to those responsible for its existence. Even if it gets shot only once in a while, well, there just seems something inherently right about that.

And that leads to the second point. The world we live in, with all its travails, is indeed a playground of sorts--with tons of stuff to discover and zillions of things to make. Fun and games are certainly part of the intended order of existence, and something like this lets us play, in a sense, with those who went before. Just as one boy might offer to let another try out his slingshot, I can almost imagine the first kid to own this thing reaching across the chasm of 100 years, holding the Markham out to us and saying "Here! You wanna try it?" And in another sense, a toy BB gun is more right than any number of more important and more serious contrivances, for it involves not only thought and effort and technology, but it also involves simple, unadulterated fun. Children understand the importance of this, but the wizened old adults sometimes forget.

I hope Wayne has fun with Dee-Dee. That's what she was meant for, and having good fun is truly a wonderful thing.

Scopes for field target - Part 3

by B. B. Pelletier

Part 1
Part 2

In this report, I'll tell you about shooting field target using the holdover method and the scopes that go with that. I held over for the first three seasons I shot field target. The first season consisted of a couple demonstration matches to shake out the bugs in our club. We had to do everything for the first time, and we were using 20 borrowed targets that were somewhat obsolete by the time we got them. There were all sorts of operational issues.

It all started at the beginning
I had reluctantly agreed to be the match director because, of the four men who founded the Damascus Ikes Field Target Association (DIFTA) club, I was the only one who had competed in field target matches before. Truth be told, the matches I had competed in would be called Hunter Class today because nobody sat to shoot. One of that club's founders had a bad back, and they just ran the thing as a stand-up competition. I tried to sit to shoot just once, but gave up after all the criticism and catcalls. I missed the shot, too!

So, for the first match at DIFTA I was sitting in the American Airgun Field Target Association (AAFTA) approved position for the first time. I had a rulebook in my pocket and dreaded the moment that some lawyer would pop out of the crowd to challenge a ruling I might have to make, but it never happened. I didn't have to make any rulings for several matches, by which time I had sort of figured things out. Sort of.

And I was a holdeover piggie! That's really not a field target term--I just made it up in the last report. But it certainly illustrates the level of informality that accompanies those who hold over instead of adjusting the reticle for every shot. I've already addressed what it takes to adjust for every shot. Now let me tell you what you have to do to hold over.

What does holdover mean?
If you decide not to adjust the scope for every shot, the other alternative is to aim in different places to compensate for the trajectory of the pellet. A gun that hits the point of aim at 20 yards will not also hit there at 40 yards. You'll need to aim differently to compensate for where the pellet will strike the target. This is called "holdover," though sometimes you're holding under, instead. It all depends on how you sight-in your scope. I'll explain as I go, so don't hurt your head if this isn't clear yet.

My first FT gun was simple
Being match director, I wanted to shoot a gun that was lightweight and easy to use, because I was running all over the course keeping the match going. Targets were fouling and questions needed answering and I didn't want to also have some technical challenge to deal with when I sat down to shoot. So I put a Bushnell 6-18x Trophy scope on top of an FWB 124 and I was set. I sighted-in the gun for the first point of intersection at 20 yards, which meant that it was more or less on target out to 30 yards and shooting low at all other ranges. With the gun shooting 860 f.p.s., a 20-yard zero gives the largest flat spot that's possible in the trajectory.

I could have done something radical--like sighting-in for 15 yards. Had I done that, the gun would have shot low some of the time and high some of the time. That would have been a rifle that had to be held UNDER, as well as over. But I didn't do that, because it's too confusing.

From 10 yards to 19 yards, my rifle shot low, but got progressively higher as it approached 20 yards. Then, between 20 and 30 yards, it was hitting where the crosshairs were, more or less. The truth was actually a little different than that, but let me address that in a moment.

Beyond 30 yards, the pellet began to hit lower than the aimpoint, again. So for all shots closer than 20 yards or farther than 30 yards, I was hitting low. I had to hold the intersection of crosshairs above the place I wanted the pellet to go. I had to hold over. Holdover!

Yes, but HOW MUCH over?
I sighted-in my rifle on the sight-in range on a quiet day. The distances to targets on that range were already marked off from the firing line. I first marked the actual parallax (focus) ranges on white tape I put around the objective bell of the scope. And then I learned how much I had to hold the crosshairs over those targets at the distances mentioned above. At 10 yards, for instance, the pellet was hitting a full inch below the crosshair intersection, while at 19 yards it was only hitting about one pellet-diameter below the intersection. At 40 yards it was hitting an inch below the crosshairs again, but I discovered a funny thing.

One inch at 10 yards looks a lot different than one inch at 40 yards! Or, put another way, one inch at 40 yards is very small, while one inch at 10 yards is huge--through an 18x scope.

I guess so
Oh-my-gosh! As distance increases, the images in the telescope get smaller, so the aimpoints are not regularly spaced inside the scope! You have to, gulp, GUESS!

Call it estimation if you want to sound learned, or interpolation if you think you're a scientist, it's still a SWAG [Scientific Wildly Assumed Guess]. Before your first 60 shots are downrange, you've learned that holding over is an imprecise practice at the very best. Some shooters do better with it than others. I was eventually able to get up to the 2/3 level, where I remained with a lot of other holdover piggies. Two-thirds means that in a 60-shot match, I'll shoot a 40. On a great day--it'll be a 44; on a lousy day--a 35, but that's where I'll stay.

When I was holding over, you could have told me the exact range to each target in millimeters and stopped all wind for every shot--it wouldn't have made any difference. But I had lots of fun and met some nice people.

In my scope, there's a duplex reticle. Four fat lines become skinny in the center of the scope. By using the places where they go from fat to skinny as aimpoints, I picked up four more aimpoints. If I had a scope with a mil dot reticle I could have used those dots and even the spaces in between them as additional aim points. But you know what--it doesn't make much difference. Because one inch at 47 yards looks different than one inch at 13 yards. And your pellet will drop about an inch between 47 and 51 yards (max distance is now 55 yards, remember?).


The duplex reticle has 5 aimpoints--the center intersection and the 4 places where the reticle wire thins.

But that's not all. The freakin' pellet also doesn't stay on the vertical crosshair as it goes away from the gun! From 10 yards to 20, it's on the right side of vertical; from 30 yards to 55, it's on the left. I need to aim to one side or the other, depending on the range. Oh, it isn't that much, but you don't have to be off by much to hit the side of a 3/8" kill zone at 12 yards. And you remember what touching the side of the kill zone can do.

So, I did what every other holdover piggie does. Somewhere on the butt of their rifle will be a white card with lots of numbers. Or they will have the card in their pocket. Or it's on a chain around their neck. (That's how you spot them at a match.) It has notes like this:

40 yards - one inch over and half a reticle-width to the left.
45 yards - 1.5 inches over and one reticle-width to the left.
50 yards - 2.5 inches over and two reticle lines to the left.

The language may differ on the notes. They may talk in terms of dots instead of inches or lines, but it all means the same thing. This guy isn't going to win the match.

Want to know why? Where on those notes above do you see 47 yards? It isn't there. Why?

Because a 6-18x scope stops working for rangefinding at about 30 yards. So somebody using a scope like that as a rangefinder can't tell how far the target is anyway, so what use does he have for precise aiming references?

It's all a SWAG, and it doesn't take 30 shots before it sinks in.

"Why, B.B., it almost sounds like you're saying that holding over isn't a good way to shoot a field target match."

Oh, it does, does it? Well, let me make it clear.

HOLDING OVER ISN'T A GOOD WAY TO SHOOT A FIELD TARGET MATCH--unless you don't care about winning.

It was a GREAT way for me to shoot matches for over two years, because I didn't go to win. I went to shoot. To experience the fun of the course. And my job was to make sure the matches were fun and fair for everybody else.

In year three, I started shooting a PCP, and I mounted a 8-40x56 scope that was optically centered and ranged for every yard from beginning to end. My scores jumped up to 46-49, with 51 being a really good day. A lousy day would be a 44.

Did I have more fun? No. But I did have different experiences.

So, how do I move from 48 to 60 points? I drop 100 lbs., learn to gauge wind, sort all match pellets (though I was doing that at the end), buy a sitting harness and learn to use it and pay more than $300 for a scope. Oh, and PRACTICE!

What I DON'T have to do is buy a more expensive rifle, buy a carbon fiber air tank or spend $500 for a custom scope mount (yes, I really saw that). Money doesn't win field target matches, despite what the losers say. What wins is determination. You have to really want it.

Holding over is a good way to get into field target on a budget. And whenever someone asks me this question, I know that's what he's going to do: "B.B., what scope costing under $150 do you recommend for field target?" I will make a recommendation to that guy. And he will be able to shoot field target--by holding over.

Just as long as you all understand that this guy is just like me--out for a good time and no hopes of winning. Or maybe a hope--just not much of a chance. He might as well ask, "What American pickup truck can I buy for under $20,000 that I can also use as a dragster?"

Holding over will get you in the game, but adjusting for every shot is what it takes to win.

Testing the Crosman 2200 - Part 2

by B.B. Pelletier

Part 1


So many of you commented on how attractive my 2200 is that I thought I would show you this larger photo. Isn't she a beauty?

Today, we'll learn what Rick Willnecker has been able to do to my Crosman 2200 Magnum. You'll remember that he rebuilt the powerplant after I had a problem with a hardened pump seal.

I'll also draw upon the numbers reported by Joe G. from Jersey. He has a brand new 2200 Magnum that he bought in 2004, so his velocities are right for the gun when new.

First, I pumped my rebuilt rifle 8 times and fired several .22-caliber Crosman Premiers to see how it was shooting. The results of that exercise were very enlightening.

Shot Velocity
1       660
2       578
3       562
4       548
5       538
6       527
7       527
8       529
9       531
10     538
11      548
12      545
13      549
14      559
15      559
16      552

Yes, those are the velocities as I recorded them from the newly rebuilt rifle. All were from 8 pump strokes. Make what you want of the data, but never think for a moment that an airgun is straightforward!

Now for velocities on 10 pump strokes.

Crosman Premiers

Before rebuild:
440 f.p.s.

After rebuild:
591

I also tested the rifle with RWS Meisterkugeln before rebuilding. They're a little lighter than Premiers, so they go a trifle faster.


RWS Meisterkugeln

Before rebuild:
500 f.p.s.

After rebuild:
600 f.p.s.

By comparison, Joe's new 2200 gets 590 f.p.s. with .22 Premiers on 10 pumps. So, our two rifles preform remarkably alike. Or at least I thought they did at this point in my test.

I must also comment that the first few shots on 10 pumps were not that fast. Shot one with Premiers was only 581 f.p.s. Shot two went 584. After that, no shot was below 587 f.p.s. This multi-pump needs a little warm-up. The string I used for the average went from 587 to 597.

Pump efficiency
I did a test of the velocity with increasing pump strokes. I started at two strokes to avoid sticking a pellet in the barrel. This test was done with Crosman Premiers.
Pumps Velocity
2 354
3 421
4 478
5 524
6 558
7 577
8 608
9 630
10 613

Strange numbers, in light of the average velocity with 10 pumps posted above. I obtained the average of a second string with 10 pump strokes. I'm showing you all the numbers in the string so you can marvel with me.

606
597
638
603
606
601
608
605
605
602

The average of that string is 607.1 f.p.s. Something is happening to the gun. Either it's warming up with all the shooting (very possible) or it's breaking in (also possible). Here's what I'll do. After the accuracy test, I'll test another string of 10 on 10 pumps. The gun will be more broken-in by that time, so the average velocity shouldn't be as prone to vary as it is now. We'll see.

Complaint department
The two-stage, non-adjustable trigger on this rifle is very stiff--breaking at between 8.25 and 8.5 lbs. Loading is also difficult, as the loading port isn't directly accessible. The pellet has to roll down a ramp and invariably gets turned around backward unless you load it that way. Then it remains backwards. It requires a learned technique to get it right. Finally, the stock is plastic and hollow. If it were foam-filled, it wouldn't be so objectionable, but as is, it seems cheap and toy-like.


The pellet loading port is deep and inaccessible to the fingers. You must learn to squirt a pellet into the trough and half the time it ends up backwards.

The first version of the 2200 Magnum was supposed to be hotter than those that followed. That's what the seller told me when I bought the gun. Back then (2006), the gun wasn't working right so there was no way to tell if that was correct, but perhaps it is. We'll see!

Career Infinity by Shin Sung - Part 4

by B.B. Pelletier

Part 1
Part 2
Part 3

This is our last look at the Career Infinity. You may recall that the inlet valve seal had failed, and I replaced it in one of the reports. Then the replacement valve failed and I replaced it with a special Teflon inlet valve made by Boris at Pyramyd Air. I said in part three that I would let you know how well the new seal is holding.


Boris made the Teflon inlet valve seal on the left to replace the three-part inlet seal assembly that came with the Infinity. Less mass may keep the seal from deforming too much.

Well, it has held air for two months now, plus the gun has been refilled a number of times. I'm ready to pronounce the gun fixed. Boris' design works fine. On to the accuracy test.

I shot the rifle for accuracy last Friday in winds that varied from 5 to 20 mph. The wind speed increased as the shooting progressed, and even a Condor I also tested was hard-pressed to shoot under one inch at 30 yards. The Infinity did much better than that, as you'll see.

Air Arms domes
Air Arms domes that Pyramyd Air used to carry are made by JSB, so they should be pretty much the same thing, but they're not. They vary in small ways, which makes their performance vary, as well. Usually, I get better performance from a JSB, but with the Infinity, that wasn't true. The Air Arms dome that I used to get the rifle sighted-in proved to be the most accurate lightweight pellet tested.


Five shots from the Infinity at 35 yards with Air Arms domed pellets landed in this group that measures 0.651" c-t-c. Notice that the holes are slightly elongated, indicating a slight instability.

Other groups with the same pellet were similar, but not quite as tight. At this point, I noticed a 5" water hose laying just beyond where I was shooting, so I repositioned the target box so the pellets would be stopped by a tree. No sense in ruining an expensive item like that! The new location gave me only 30 yards distance.

JSB Exact domes
Next, I tried JSB Exact domes, but the results weren't worth showing. The groups were all an inch or larger, and with the Air Arms groups in the bag I didn't need them.

I hadn't brought Beeman Kodiaks along this time, but they would be worth a try. However, I believe I found the best pellet in the 28.4-grain Eun Jin.


This group of five Eun Jins at 30 yards demonstrates the superiority of this pellet. It measures 0.547" c-t-c. And this is only a representative group!


This was the best group of five Eun Jins at 30 yards. It measures 0.443" c-t-c. I took the time to zero the scope for this, because the Eun Jin is clearly the pellet to use in this rifle.

Remember--I was shooting in a strong wind. The rifle was set to the lowest power setting, because the Eun Jins responded so well. I shot groups at higher power, but they produced the same results at the same aimpoint at 30 yards. So, I didn't see any value in shooting at that setting. On the lowest setting the velocity was somewhere in the low- to mid-700s, giving me a power of about 32.5 foot-pounds. I can get about 30 shots at that power setting if I work the power wheel.

Adjusting the power wheel to keep velocity consistant
PAY ATTENTION, because I'm about to explain how adjusting the power wheel keeps you on the power curve. As I passed shot No. 10, I adjusted the power wheel up one notch to keep the velocity the same. After that, I adjusted up one notch with every new cylinder of six. I didn't bother chronographing each shot, but the rifle continued to shoot to the same point of aim at 30 yards, which is a good indication it's shooting the same. That is what the Koreans told Rocket Jane Hansen to do, and it's how to use the power wheel to get a large number of shots at a similar velocity.

Obviously, this cannot be done when shooting at the highest setting, because there is no place to go. You are already at the highest power. But If you back off the power, as I did, you can keep bumping it up and extend the number of shots AT THAT POWER LEVEL.

This is self-evident to anyone who shoots one of these Korean rifles. I did it with my Career 707, without being shown, back in the mid-'90s. You are simply allowing slightly more air to flow as you adjust up. After shooting the first 100 shots, it would be remarkable if this DIDN'T occur to you!

This is the end of this report. My take on the Infinity is that it's a powerful, accurate smallbore air rifle. It likes the Eun Jin pellet so well that it's a waste of time shooting anything else. Stock up on Eun Jin domes and don't waste your time with anything else.

The inlet valve is a potential weak spot, but it's fixable. Boris at Pyramyd Air knows what to do to fix the valve and his fix works. If you want a powerful hunting rifle, the Career Infinity is a good value at a reasonable price.

Crosman M1 Carbine - Part 2

by B.B. Pelletier

Part 1

There were almost 100 comments to the first part of this report within the first week. Not bad for a report done on a Tuesday. When there are that many comments, I know I've struck a chord.

Today, in the velocity report, I'll show you a few more things about this amazing BB gun. I've owned the model in this report for about seven years, but I had never chronographed it before. So, there was a big surprise waiting for me that I'll share with you in a moment.

First, let's talk about how this gun cocks. Because the cocking puts wear on the finish of the barrel, many guns you might be tempted to call excellent are really not higher than very good. To cock the gun, you pull or push the barrel straight back into the receiver. I mentioned in Part 1 that the cocking exposes the shooter to the muzzle, so care must be taken to ensure safety. And this is a very powerful BB gun, so it isn't easy even for an adult to cock. It's definitely not for kids.

I mention the cocking because of some talk we had regarding the condition of these guns. The M1 Carbine is a gun that degrades fast because of how it's cocked. Not only does it get the scratches, but the acid from your hands removes the bluing from the forward part of the barrel when grabbing it for cocking.


The barrel is forward.


The barrel is cocked. You pull it forward before taking the shot.


The most common wear on an M1 Carbine happens where the barrel scrapes against the stock during cocking. Most guns have these lines and they reduce the condition from excellent to very good. A Carbine that doesn't have them is rare.

Years ago, when I first saw this gun, I assumed it had to be a CO2 gun because it wasn't obvious how it worked. So, I passed up the first one at $15. It was another decade before I discovered the error of my assumption.

Loading and oiling
The M1 Carbine is a 22-shot repeater. The box that looks like a magazine is just a BB reservoir--the actual BBs you are about to shoot go in a hole on top of the upper handguard. A short pull of the operating handle opens the BB loading hole and the oil hole located to the rear of it. The BBs are fed by gravity one at a time into the shot seat for firing when the barrel is pulled back. You naturally elevate the barrel to cock the gun, so the BBs always feed smoothly.


Looking down at the top of the gun, the larger hole at the right is were the BBs are loaded. The smaller hole in the center is for oil. However, the cocking handle is forward and both holes are closed.


The cocking handle has been pulled back, opening both holes. This cocking handle has nothing to do with cocking this gun, but it mimics the operating handle on the M1 Carbine firearm.


The fake magazine is actually a BB reservoir. Once out of the gun, the plastic cover slides back and BBs can be dumped out.

The firing mechanism in this gun is quite different from a traditional BB gun mechanism. It uses a poppet valve that accumulates air pressure and then suddenly pops open to force air behind the BB. It works effectively enough that the Crosman V350 got its name from the expected velocity. And, until I fired this M1, that was the highest velocity I'd seen from these guns. But this one is hotter!

I oiled the mechanism with several drops of Crosman Pellgunoil, then shot the gun to work in the oil. Once the velocity settled down, I recorded the velocities of three different brands of BBs.

Daisy Premium Grade BBs
Daisy Premium Grade BBs were fastest, averaging 388 f.p.s. The spread was from 378 f.p.s. to 394 f.p.s. That's faster than any steel BB long gun I've ever tested. A couple CO2 pistols were faster, but for a regular spring-powered mechanism, that's haulin'.

Crosman Copperheads
Crosman Copperheads were slower and had a greater spread. Since they weigh the same, that means they don't fit the bore of this gun as well as the Daisys. They averaged 374 f.p.s., with a spread from 355 f.p.s. to 378 f.p.s. But they're still faster than any steel BB gun tested to date.

Avanti Precision Ground Shot
As they have in many other BB gun tests, Daisy's Avanti Precision Ground Shot turned in the most consistent velocity. It wasn't quite the fastest, at an average of 385 f.p.s., but the spread was only from 382 f.p.s. to 391 f.p.s. That bodes well for the accuracy test.

The barrel of this gun moves several degrees when it's twisted. Since the front sight is attached to the barrel, that's a potential cause for inaccuracy. I'll adopt a procedure of rotating the barrel in the same direction until it stops before every shot to cancel this effect.

This is getting interesting. I can't wait to see how this baby shoots!

Methuselah - Part 2 Rebuilding a Markham BB gun

by B.B. Pelletier

Guest blogger
Vince is rebuilding a Markham BB gun for Wacky Wayne, and here's the second part of that project. If you'd like to write a guest post for this blog, please email me.

Bloggers must be proficient in the simple html that Blogger software uses, know how to take clear photos and size them for the internet (if their post requires them) and they must use proper English. We will edit each submission, but we won't work on any submission that contains gross misspellings and/or grammatical errors.

Today we'll see Part 2 of Vince's project to rebuilt Wayne's Markham model D BB gun.

Methuselah - Part 2

by Vince

Part 1

First of all, before I even get started, let me make one point perfectly clear--yes, I'm probably the first one inside this BB gun in the past 100 years, but it is most certainly not a violation of Dee-Dee's honor by any means! I'm inside the same way a surgeon is inside. I've got a job to do. I can make it better, faster, more accurate. I can give Wayne something that almost certainly no one else in the world has.

And so I continue resolutely onward. In Part 1, I covered the basics--getting Dee Dee operational again. And I largely succeeded; the gun was now quite capable of holding its own against any number of cheap BB guns at standard BB gun ranges. I couldn't help but wonder about something when I took a good look at the removable shot tube.


Obviously this is not a horribly complicated part, especially since it's all soldered together (like the rest of the gun). A tube is a tube, right? And since THIS tube is a bit oversized for modern steel BBs, it should be beneficial to replace it with ANOTHER tube--one sized for the ammo we use today.

So $12 + shipping later, a shot tube for a Daisy 499 Avanti Champion graces my threshold. I lay them side-by-side and start trying to figure out how I'm gonna make this work (not IF, mind you, but HOW).


As you can see, the Daisy tube is a fair bit longer. Or is it? Taking them apart tells a different story.


So I'm gonna have to make it longer as well as adding all the do-dads to it. I'm starting to get a fair idea how I want to proceed, so I start at the easy (breech) end first.

As you can see in the previous picture, there's a disk soldered to the shot tube about 1/2" from the breech end. All this does is help center the tube so it's easier to install. Daisy thoughtfully threaded a portion of the 499 tube in the same general area. I spin a 5/16" NF nut on it and--voila!--I've got a centering guide.


Centering guide is uncomplicated technology--just a nut.

Notice that the end of the Daisy barrel is turned down to a smaller diameter. The overall OD of the new shot tube is 5/16"--but the breech is necked down to 1/4", the same as the Markham tube. Absolutely perfect for fitting into the compression tube plug. I'm beginning to wonder if Daisy was trying to make things easy for me.

Now that the rear of the shot tube was taken care of, I started working on the front. I rummaged around in some of my many junk bins and found an old 3/8" OD steel fuel/brake lining tube that was almost 4" long, plus a washer that fits over it.




Stuff I found in my junk bins will find their way into the Markham.




The whole thing is held together with a flaring tool to keep it reasonably square. Then, I brazed it back together--not pretty but I'm not done with it.

Yes, the brazed pieces are ugly, but that's why God invented bench grinders. For the rest of this write-up, we'll call this the outer tube. I brazed it, by the way, for a very simple reason: I knew I was going to have to do other hot stuff to this assembly. If I'd soldered it at this point, it probably would have come apart in one of the following steps.

If you look at one of the pictures of the original Markham tube you'll see a tab mounted about 3/4" back from the muzzle. This locking tab secures the shot tube in the gun. You insert the tube, rotate it clockwise and this tab engages a locking lug. I figure that the easiest way of mimicking this is with a roll pin pressed into the outer tube.


Roll pin makes a handy substitute for the locking tab found on the original gun.

I had inserted a 5/16" drill bit into the outer tube before pressing in the roll pin to make sure the pin didn't protrude inside. Obviously there's not much meat in the thin-walled outer tube to grab the pin, so I brazed it in place.


More brazing. This time it was the roll pin. Read on to see why there's a hole. Yeah, ugly. It'll get better.

More ugliness, but now it's real secure. Two notes here, by the way. First, see the extra hole? That was a boo-boo. I drilled it a little too close to the muzzle. Second, this is not the first roll pin! I originally tried brazing it with my oxy-acetylene torch, and the lil' pin sticking up soaked up the heat so fast it melted away. This time I used a propane swirl torch (not your $10 Bernz-O-Matic) that does light-duty brazing without getting hot enough to actually melt the steel.

Last thing--there's a collar that fits under the muzzle washer on the Markham shot tube and centers it on the barrel shroud. Serendipitously the ID of the shroud turns out to be 5/8" and the OD of standard 1/2" copper water pipe is (drum roll, please) 5/8"! Perfect fit, so I chopped off a 1/4" piece of copper pipe and soldered it to the underside of the washer


The collar has now been fitted underneath the washer.


The last major step was sliding the Daisy shot tube into the outer tube and soldering them together, just like a sweat fitting.


I smeared some Vibra-Tite VC3 on the breech threads.


This is how it looked after I ground it down a bit, added some grooves and painted the muzzle end.

Before putting the guide nut on, I ground down and painted the muzzle end of the new tube assembly. I also cut little grooves around the circumference of the muzzle cap so Wayne can still grip it after chowing down on those greasy fries. The rest of the new tube assembly requires a bit of filing and fitting here and there, but after about 15 years of work it's finally finished.

And no, I didn't pretty-up the part that goes inside the gun. That's not gonna help the gun shoot one iota better. That brings up the really big question: Does it shoot one iota better?

Well, yes, it does. Several iotas, in fact.

First iota is found at the chrony, where the better-fitting barrel means less air leakage around the BB and an additional 50 fps. So, Dee-Dee is now in the 220s. Funny thing about loading it, though--the BB takes a LOT longer to roll down the barrel and into the cone that's supposed to hold it, and sometimes it doesn't even jam itself in there hard enough to hold properly. The fix is simple: follow BB's 499 loading procedure. Load the gun before cocking, and the cocking stroke helps suck the BB down the barrel and lodges it into the holding cone. That seems to do it.

No complaints about the chrony results, but the BIG payoff is on the target paper. With standard Daisy BBs (and a temporary, makeshift rear sight) the gun pulled off a couple 5/8" groups at 15'. Not quite as good as BB did when he tested the 499, but not bad at all, in my opinion. Besides, the rear sight on it at this time is pretty pathetic--blurry, blurry and really blurry. I gotta do something about that.

A guess this is gonna turn into a three-parter after all.

Testing the Crosman 2200 - Part 1

by B.B. Pelletier

Back in November 2006, I tested a Crosman 2200 Magnum I had just picked up at the Roanoke airgun show. The gun appeared unfired, but after testing it for velocity I learned that the pump seals were hardened with age and disuse. I said at the time that that test was a good reason for owning a chronograph.

How did I know what the problem was?
How do I know the pump seals had hardened? How would you make that same call with a rifle you owned? Well, I researched the 2200 online and found that the expected velocity with .22-caliber Crosman Premiers was between 550 and 600 f.p.s. on 10 pumps. My rifle wasn't coming close to that. I oiled the pump cup to no avail. The pump was pumping, but not as efficiently as it should. From past experience, I knew that these synthetic seals harden with time and disuse, so I guessed that was what had happened this time.

A pump cup or piston head seal expands as it encounters air pressure. As it expands, it seals the compression tube even tighter. A hardened pump cup does not expand as readily, thereby losing some of the air pressure it would normally compress. That was the symptom I was seeing with my rifle.

I had promised to look at the accuracy of that test rifle, but the test results discouraged me and I never got around to it. Then, in March 2008, Joe G. from Jersey reported on his 2200. His rifle was performing nicely and was able to give readers a better showing than mine had. I was glad for that.

B.B. takes his own advice
You probably know that I send readers to various repair stations to have their guns modified and repaired, and I thought that maybe it was time I reported on the success of this first-hand. To get on my list, these places have to rank high with me, but this time I thought I'd go the extra mile and give you a report on a gun someone fixed for me.

Rick Willnecker
I used Rick Willnecker practically the entire time I published The Airgun Letter. A lot of what I tell you guys about CO2 I learned from him. At that time, Rick was located in Maryland about 25 miles from my house. He moved over the Pennsylvania border and was then about 80 miles away. I still used him, though, because I had faith in his work.

Rick was a leader in remanufacturing certain vintage seals and critical repair parts for vintage airguns. After Crosman purged their inventory of all their vintage parts, Rick bought out most of what they had and started finding small manufacturers to make the parts new. Today, he's a vital source for vintage Crosman, Benjamin and Sheridan parts. About the only American line he doesn't support is Daisy.

This is Rick's contact info:

Rick Willnecker in PA. Visit his website, call him at 717-382-1481 or
email him.

When I contacted him for the 2200 repair job, I learned that he has continued to expand the line of vintage parts over the years, so that today he is a leading supplier of hard-to-find repair parts for pneumatics and CO2 guns. But I was more interested in his repair job than parts--I thought. As it turned out, when the rifle arrived at Rick's, the plastic butt stock was broken, so a new one had to be purchased. At only $8, I couldn't complain. So you see, sometimes we may not think we need repair parts, but when our luck changes suddenly we do.

The entire repair job cost me about $39 with return shipping, and was turned around in one month. That includes the cost of the new buttstock. In the next report, we'll see what a fresh 2200 rifle is supposed to do, but for now let's examine the gun itself.

2200 has the same powerplant as the 2100
Of course, the .22-caliber Crosman 2200 is no longer made, but the .177-caliber 2100B is still in production. The powerplants of both rifles are identical, but the 2100B shoots either BBs or lead pellets. It has a magnetic bolt tip to hold the smaller BB in place until the blast of air hits it. The 2100 has an onboard BB reservoir and a small BB magazine that's replenished from the larger reservoir.


Crosman 2100 is a .177/BB-caliber version of the same multi-pump pneumatic as the 2200.

BBs are smaller and lighter than lead pellets, so they produce higher velocities. But BBs are not stabilized by the rifling, which has no affect on them. They fly randomly after leaving the muzzle, where lead pellets are engraved by the rifling and spin in flight. They're quite a bit more accurate than BBs, and they perform much better on very small game. If you want to eliminate small pests or shoot targets with your 2100, lead pellets are the only ammunition to use. BBs are just for general plinking--when a pop can at 20 feet is all the accuracy you need.

2200 is the .22 version
The 2200 is .22 caliber and shoots lead pellets only. The rifle I have is a variant called the 2200 Magnum. There were three versions of the 2200 Magnum, and I have the first one--made from 1978 to 1982. It's distinctive because the receiver is chrome-plated, and yes, I do mean chrome, which is very unusual on a gun of any kind. Nickel is the usual bright plating metal, but sometimes chrome is used, and the 2200 Magnum is one of those.


Crosman's 2200 Magnum was a great .22 caliber multi-pump of the 1980s.


Chrome receiver looks sharp. You can see the scope rail at the top.


Rear sight adjusts for both windage and elevation. Rear screw is loosened and sight pivots in the direction you want the pellet to go.

Both the 2100 and 2200 allow up to 10 pumps per shot, so that's how I'll test the gun for velocity. I will also show the velocity with a lesser number of pumps so you can see the performance curve. I'll also pump the rifle and wait 30 minutes before firing to see if there's a velocity drop. We're fortunate to have Joe G. from Jersey's report on his 2200, so there's another gun to compare to. This should be an interesting report on a fine vintage multi-pump.

UTG Navy Seal MK 23 spring airsoft pistol - Part 2

by B.B. Pelletier

Part 1

Today I'll test the velocity of this inexpensive, yet surprisingly well-acclaimed UTG Navy Seal pistol. Before I do, I have to remark on the comments I received. This pistol strikes a chord with many of you who are looking for a high-quality, low-priced airsoft gun.

One reader advised me to consider the SIG Sauer SP2022 HPA from Cybergun. I looked at it online and, to my surprise, it has a perfect 5-star rating. There are only 4 reviews, though, while the gun I'm looking at now has 25. The Mk 23 has more perfect reviews than the SIG has reviews in total, so I don't want to start discrediting this gun just yet.

I was asked to check both velocity and accuracy with and without the fake silencer attached. That's what I'm doing.

Hard cocking!
One comment I must make is that the Mk 23 is especially hard to cock. I don't know the reason, but it seems to take more effort than other spring-piston airsoft guns in the same power range. Once you get used to it, it isn't a problem, but I thought I should mention it, because a new shooter might think his gun is broken when it's just difficult to cock.

0.20-gram Air Venturi CQBBs
0.20-gram Air Venturi CQBBs were the first to be tested. They averaged 221 f.p.s. with the fake silencer off. The spread went from 218 f.p.s. to 224 f.p.s.

With the fake silencer on the average speed was 218 f.p.s., which is pretty close, but the overall spread went from 213 f.p.s. to 226 f.p.s. Having that can mounted is disturbing the BB in flight. It's not an extension of the barrel. It's just a hollow tube about a half-inch in diameter.

0.20-gram Tokyo Marui black BBs
The next round I tested was the Tokyo Marui black BB that Pyramyd Air discontinued some time ago. With the can off, they averaged 214 f.p.s. with a spread from 210 to 218 f.p.s. When the silencer was on, they averaged 211 f.p.s. with a spread from 209 to 213. They were more uniform across the board and less disturbed by the silencer than the Air Venturi CQBBs, but also somewhat slower.

0.12-gram generic BBs
Since the gun is also listed with 0.12-gram BBs, even though there are many warnings not to use them because they curve, I tested them for velocity. I have several thousand generic blue BBs laying around, so that's what I used. They averaged 297 f.p.s. and ranged from 274 f.p.s. to 305 f.p.s. without the silencer. With the silencer, they averaged 293 f.p.s. and ranged from 277 f.p.s. to 299 f.p.s.

Where does that leave us?
The advertised velocity with 0.20-gram BBs is 220 to 240 f.p.s. The gun I'm testing averages 221 f.p.s. with the fastest 0.20-gram BB I shot. That's right on the money! The advertised velocity with 0.12-gram BBs is 310 to 320 f.p.s. The only 0.12-gram BB I shot in this gun averaged 297 f.p.s. So, it's close enough to say that it meets spec. If I had shot other 0.12-gram BBs, who knows if they would have been any faster.

I can also say that there's no velocity benefit to adding the fake silencer. If anything, there's a slight detriment, but it's too close to call. It will be very interesting to test the gun for accuracy with the silencer on. I'm guessing it'll be noticeably less accurate because the turbulent muzzle blast is allowed to associate with the BB in flight for roughly four inches before it exits the silencer. That's a long time to be buffeted by turbulent air.

The silencer
This gun doesn't need a silencer to be quiet. I own a real firearm silencer and this airsoft pistol is much quieter than any of my silenced firearms. I've also heard the finest airgun silencers, and this pistol sounds roughly equivalent to all of them. That's with the silencer off or on--it makes no difference. The silencer is just for looks.

Diana 27 - Part 5

by B.B. Pelletier

Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4

This rifle is the .177 Diana model 27 I found at last October's Roanoke airgun show. In the last report, I showed you how to make a leather breech seal, which I did because the one that was in the gun had deteriorated. I cut that seal flush with the breech face, and Vince took me to task for that. So I agreed to install an o-ring breech seal with a thin shim behind it and test it for you to see how it stacked up. Today is that test.

Installing the new seal
Before the new one could go in, the old one had to come out. This time the leather was fresh, so I got the seal out in one piece. I can reinstall it after this test, if I want to.

Vince sent me several o-rings and several thin steel shims to use as the new breech seal. He guessed that one shim was best, but told me what the critical dimensions were in case I wanted to check. I didn't check because the arrangement he suggested looked so good after it was installed, which took all of 15 seconds. Easiest airgun job I ever did. Four times faster than taking out the leather seal.


The new seal stands proud of the breech face just a little.

Eley Wasp pellets
Before
With the new leather seal, I got two distinct velocity ranges with Wasps. The faster range was from 588 f.p.s. to 620 f.p.s. The slower range was from 242 f.p.s. to 269 f.p.s.

After
With Vince's seal, there was only one velocity range. The average was 598 f.p.s., and the range was from 588 f.p.s., to 612 f.p.s. Although the velocity remained about the same as it was with the new leather seal, the absence of the lower range means the breech was sealing perfectly all the time.

RWS Basic pellets
Before
With the new leather seal, RWS Basics gave an average of 658 f.p.s., with a spread from 650 f.p.s. to 666 f.p.s.

After
With Vince's seal the average was 643 f.p.s. f.p.s. with Basics, and the range was from 638 f.p.s. to 651 f.p.s. So, the average slipped just a little and the spread tightened up.

Crosman Premier 7.9-grain pellets
Before
With the new leather seal, Crosman Premier 7.9-gain pellets averaged 588 f.p.s. The spread was from 577 f.p.s. to 595 f.p.s.

After
With Vince's seal, the average was 605 f.p.s., and the range was from 602 f.p.s. to 614 f.p.s. So, the average velocity improved a little and the spread also tightened.

RWS Superdome pellets
Before
The new leather seal averaged 588 f.p.s. with RWS Superdomes. The spread was from 582 f.p.s. to 601 f.p.s.

After
With Vince's seal, the average was 586 f.p.s. and the range was from 577 f.p.s., to 596 f.p.s. So, the average was nearly the same and the spread tightened up.

What have I learned?
Vince's synthetic seal works measurably better than my new leather seal on this Diana 27. There's no huge jump in velocity, but the stability improves with every pellet I tried. And the performance with Eley Wasps was most dramatic.

You may remember that I'd promised to tune this gun for you so you can see the insides of a different springer. With Vince's breech seal, I feel more confident that the results of that tuneup will be under better control than they would have been with the new leather breech seal.

I must also admit that Vince's seal leaks less air than my leather one. That's evident from the stability improvement. So, I'll reverse my decision to put the leather seal back in the gun when this report is finished. In fact, I'm thinking that I should also replace the leather seal in my .22 caliber model 27.

Reclaiming lead from used pellets

by B.B. Pelleiter

Many of you have indicated an interest in this topic, so today we'll do it. This is what you do after the shooting is over.

I shoot anywhere from 10K to 25K airgun shots each year--mostly in the course of my profession, but sometimes for pure recreation, as well. I shoot into several portable bullet traps as well as outdoor dirt berms, and a couple of those traps catch the pellets for recycling. So, every year or so I have several pounds of lead waste to recycle. When this report began I would estimate the total weight of material was 20 lbs.

For this report, I also had about 40 lbs. of wheelweights to turn into ingots, but that's another story. The pellets went very well--the wheelweights did not.

Melting lead is low-tech
If you watched the movie The Patriot, you got to see lead-melting first-hand. That's about as technical as it gets. You need about 600 degrees which a campfire can provide and the lead gets all puddly pretty quick. All we have to do to reduce the pile of pellet waste is to do the same thing, magnified a few hundred times.

Like many of you, I save my pellet waste from the Outers bullet trap. I also have another bullet trap that gets cleaned out every other year or so. I used to own a plumber's furnace that made short work of the lead, but I stupidly let it go and have never been able to replace it. Heck, you can't even find one on eBay anymore. People have been dumbed-down to the point that you have to look for a "lead melter" to find one. I'm not kidding! That's what they call plumbers furnaces.

So, I just let my lead waste accumulate for several years, because I couldn't find the furnace I wanted. Then it hit me. I watched The Patriot, too. All I needed was a source of heat that could be safely sustained for an hour or so. In my neck of the woods, we call that a barbecue grill!


I'm starting the charcoal to reduce that pot of lead waste to useful ingots.

About the same time I had my epiphany, Edith gave me a large cast-iron pot she didn't want. If she hadn't, I could have bought one like it on eBay for $10-20. That and the grill was almost everything I needed to process the pellet waste I'd been saving. I did buy a cast-iron lead ladle ($13 with shipping) and a long-handled spoon ($2) to round out my lead-melting tools.

Yeah, but will it work?
Is a barbecue hot enough to melt lead? Well, mine certainly is! In fact, it only took 30 minutes to melt that 20 lbs. of lead waste and to cast shiny ingots from the lead. Before I get to that, though, a few safety tips.

Safety
Work outdoors, so the lead fumes are not an issue. Remember that lead is hot, so wear a long-sleeve shirt and eye protection. Do not allow a drop of water to enter the lead pot. If it does, there will be a small explosion and lead drops will fly everywhere. And finally, don't cook food on this grill after using it for this purpose. It's just not a wise thing to do, because the lead gets on every surface through the fumes. Better safe than sorry!

The melt
It took 10 minutes for the fire to become sufficiently hot for the lead to start melting. Once it did, the pile in the pot started to shrink. As the lead chunks melted, the air spaces between them disappeared and the pile naturally got smaller.


When I started, the pile in the pot was high.


The heat had been on about 10 minutes, and the lead on the bottom had liquified. In another 20 minutes, it will all be melted.

The area initially smelled like a barbecue, naturally enough. But after 10 minutes, I smelled the familiar odor of melting lead, which smells like melted candle wax. My grill allows me to raise and lower the charcoal fire, so I can control the heat. If you have a grill without that capability I recommend setting the pot directly on the charcoal. Just be prepared to move the pot with pliers if you do, because when the lead is gone you'll want to take it off the fire.


These are the tools I used. The ingot mold holds two one-pound ingots and two half-pound ingots. The spoon is for skimming the lead pot, the cast-iron ladle is for pouring lead into the mold and the large pliers are for handling the lead pot.

By 30 minutes, the lead was all melted and the considerable paper was all charred to ash. It formed a layer about a half-inch thick on top of the molten lead because it's lighter. The bullet jackets and steel BBs are also lighter, so they were mixed in this layer, too.


The junk on top of the lead is called dross. Here it forms a thick layer. A long-handled spoon is used to skim it off.

I skimmed the dirt, called dross, off the top of the lead. I had a cardboard box handy to contain it. While it is hot when it comes out of the pot, the heat goes away quickly after it's out, so the box doesn't catch on fire.


This is dross. It consists of charred paper, dirt, some molten lead and a bullet jacket.


Much of the dross has been removed and the molten lead can be seen. If there is a non-shiny gray scum on top, it is molten tin. You want to retain as much tin as you can, because it helps the lead fill a mold and is more expensive than lead.

When I got down to the melted lead I saw a gray scum on top. That's molten tin and it's very desirable to retain. Don't skim it off.

Once the lead was skimmed of dross, I started dipping out molten lead to fill the ingot mold. It produces two one-pound ingots and two half-pound ingots in a single pour.


The level of lead in the pot gets low, so I use the pliers to tip it up so the ladle can scoop the lead.


Fill the ingot mold, then dump out ingots like these. It takes about 20 seconds for the lead to completely harden in the mold.

The beauty of ingots that weigh either a pound or a half-pound is they can be added to a bullet alloy in exact amounts. So, these ingots are desirable, but they aren't absolutely necessary. I've used muffin pans and small pie tins in the past to mold my lead ingots. But these ingots are much easier to use later on. I got a total of about 18 lbs. of ingots from my waste lead.

Wheelweights
Next I dumped about 40 lbs. of wheelweights into the pot and tried to melt them into more ingots. However, I met with an unexpected problem.


I filled the pot with about 40 lbs. of wheelweights.

Each wheelweight is attached to a steel clip that holds it to the wheel rim. Those clips conduct heat better than the lead and have great mass with a minimum of weight. If there were enough lead, they would float on top, but in this case they formed a honeycomb mass that rose as high as the molten lead. It was impossible to deal with them. I tried picking them out of the pot with pliers, but there were too many. It's also necessary to remember that antimony in the lead raises the melting point, and wheelweights have a lot of it. So, the fire has to be hotter. I tried to melt the wheelweights for two hours and all I succeeded in doing was burning up the last of my charcoal.

I solved the problem the next day by building a hotter fire with more charcoal and by adding another 20 lbs. of lead to the pot to get the level of the molten lead higher in the pot. Then the steel clips floated as they should and were easier to skim from the pot. The wheelweights yielded about 35 lbs. more lead, bringing the total for this exercise to over 50 lbs.

Now I have a pile of new ingots to add to my supply. The next step would be to use them to cast bullets. For that, I use an electric lead pot with much better temperature control.

Methuselah - Part 1 Rebuilding a Markham BB gun

by B.B. Pelletier

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Guest blogger
Vince rebuilt a Markham gun for Wacky Wayne, and here's the first part of that project. If you'd like to write a guest post for this blog, please email me.

Bloggers must be proficient in the simple html that Blogger software uses, know how to take clear photos and size them for the internet (if their post requires them) and they must use proper English. We will edit each submission, but we won't work on any submission that contains gross misspellings and/or grammatical errors.

Methuselah--Rebuilding a Markham BB gun

by Vince

Wayne is a trusting soul, no doubt about that. Doesn't know me from Adam, yet he starts sending me all sorts of stuff to work on, including a very old and somewhat rare Markham Model D BB gun dating from somewhere around the turn of the century.

Before I get into the gun itself, a little history on the Markham Model D is in order. But I don't know any, so I'll have to confine my remarks to pointing out that this gun seems to follow the standard turn-of-the-century methods of BB gun construction and operation.

I guess that by the 1890s termites had finally gotten the better of the all-wood BB guns, such as the Markham Chicago, and that mass-produced sheet-metal construction had become standard practice. The 1902 Sears catalogue boasts that sheet-metal guns have "no castings to break," so the cheap way of doing things was being passed off as the better way of doing things. Then, again, maybe castings were a real problem back then.

So, Wayne buys this thing on gunbroker.com and has it shipped directly to my house. Now, I've not seen or handled a genuine vintage BB gun before, so I really didn't know what to expect. In my mind is the whole mythical idea that back in yonder years they made REAL BB guns, not the plastic-y toys you get today. And because they'd not been soiled by the cheap, imported competition and the liability-minded bean counters of modern times, these old BB guns must have been something else.

It was with considerable anticipation that I awaited the arrival of the Markham. When it does show up, the first thing I noticed was that the small box felt empty. At first, I thought the seller had forgotten to put the gun IN the box, but no, it was in there all right--all 1-1/2 lbs. and 31 inches of it. Immediately I'm clued in that this is not at all what I expected. All my presuppositions about the Markham got tossed out the window.

Cosmetically, it's so-so. The metal parts are all nickle-plated, and it's deteriorated to the point where it's maybe 60-70%. The wood is actually pretty good. Almost immediately, I tried to evaluate its operational condition, which means oiling and shooting. It's supposed to shoot real lead BBs. The original lead BB was shotgun shot--0.180" in diameter. So, the modern steel shot (0.173") is a bit too small. The Markham is a muzzleloader, and I was worried about the possibility of a steel BB falling right through whatever was supposed to catch and hold the lead BB and that it might end up rattling around inside the action. I muzzleloaded a .177 pellet, and the gun pops it out at about 135 fps.

Not all that bad, really, and I know that Wayne wanted to make a conversation piece/shooter. I figured that was quite enough, knowing that it would go even faster with modern steel shot because, even though they're quite a bit smaller, they weigh only 5.1 grains compared to over 9 grains for old-style lead BBs. I also got the bright idea of installing a modern shot tube into it. That way he could use steel shot without a problem because a modern shot tube would be properly sized. If we're gonna put a new shot tube in it, why not a 499 competition shot tube? They're only $12, and a match-grade 100 year-old Markham would be a hoot. I ordered a couple to see what I could do.

After a couple of days, I tried the Markham again and found that the velocity had dropped drastically. There's some black gunk spitting into the barrel. Fearing the worst (almost), I decided that the powerplant had to come apart.

Even though I suspect I'm the first one in there in 100 years, getting it apart wasn't that bad once I figured it out. Turns out all you have to do is pull out the trigger screw and slide a sleeve to the rear, which relieves the spring pressure. That sleeve didn't want to move at first, but I coaxed it out without damaging the gun. After that, the rest of the Markham came apart easily.


The Markham Model D disassembled.

A couple of side notes. There's only one casting in this rifle--the trigger, and it's pretty ugly! Maybe sheet metal construction for the rest of the gun wasn't such a bad idea. I'm guessing that mass-production spot welding had yet to be perfected since the Markham is actually soldered together! Not sure what solder formulation they used, but it had to be a time-consuming process.

Once I got to the innards, I immediately looked at the piston seal. The piston is made from a piece of square tubing with a steel disk attached to the front of it. The seal (a simple leather disk) is pinned to that metal disk with a copper rivet. The leather seal was disintegrating just as I thought, but it turned out there was a bigger problem to deal with.

The piston assembly was supposed to be held together by two ears that came through the back of the disk and were bent over, but one of the ears was broken.



Top: The end of the piston showed only one side was intact...the other had broken off. Bottom: The metal disk that fits over the end of the piston isn't securely held in place due to the aforementioned break.

This is a structurally critical part, as the mainspring bears against the disk, not against the piston. But the trigger and cocking link act on the piston, so when the gun is cocked those ears have to hold the pressure of the compressed spring. If both those ears broke, the disk would slam forward while the piston stayed behind.

After much soul-searching (after all, I had a real reluctance to do ANYTHING to the original parts), Wayne, BB and I concluded that it would be OK to bronze-braze repair the piston/disk assembly. I thought about trying to reuse the rivet (or getting a new one), but it occurred to me that in another 100 years or so Wayne's great-grandson might be asking my great-grandson to put a new seal in this thing. I wanted to make it easier for him, so I decided to use a No. 6 machine screw, a filed-down nut (so that it would fit inside the piston) and a countersunk washer. Of course, the screw would be trimmed down in length and secured with a threadlocker once it was time for final assembly.


This picture shows the repaired part along with a new leather seal, the old copper factory rivet that held the seal in place and the parts I was going to use to secure a new seal (more on that later).

First, I had to make a new seal. The one in the above picture turned out to be a smidgen too small, so a cheap leather belt from Walmart volunteered, and I made my first-ever-from-scratch leather piston seal.

I cut the seal a bit oversized and trimmed it down until I got a nice, snug fit in the tube. I put it all back together.


The leather seal assembly topped off the repaired piston.

Now I had another problem. There's a leather plug that forms the end of the compression tube. While it hadn't deteriorated as badly as the piston seal, it was obviously on its way out. The plug is made from three leather disks with a tapered brass transfer port sandwiched in there, so I'm back to making more leather disks. Turns out that an almost perfectly sized punch could be made from a piece of 3/4" copper water pipe, but copper is hardly the best punch material around. If Wayne starts sending me Markhams in bulk, I'm gonna make one out of steel.


I made 3 new leather plugs for the end of the compression tube.

It turns out that the brass piece between the second and third disks is what catches the BB. The hole on the small end is about 1/8-inch, so steel BB shot won't fall through. The breech end of the shot tube fits snuggly into the hole. When a BB is dropped into the barrel, it falls into this plug and wedges itself into that transfer port. It does a fair job of holding it, and a loaded BB will not fall out even if the gun is pointed straight down.

I assembled the new plug and bound it together with a couple pieces of thin bailing wire


Bailing wire holds the 3 leather pieces snugly, along with the brass piece sandwiched between them.

When I installed the plug into the gun (it goes in from the rear), I first dropped in a steel washer so the front of the plug had plenty of surface to bear on and was not pressed up against the end of the barrel shroud.


The v-shaped transfer port holds the BB so it doesn't fall into the compression tube or roll out...even if the barrel is pointed downward.

Like the rest of the parts in this gun, the piston was not exactly "precision machined." However, the rear portion of the cutout was reinforced with some extra steel. The years haven't been kind to the cocking slot. It took quite a beating over the past 100 years and looks a bit longer than the factory intended.


No precision machining on this piston, but it did have some reinforcement.


The cocking slot was chewed away over the past 100 years, making it a bit longer than when new.

The cocking slot lengthened as the cocking link pulled the piston back against the mainspring. Since that spring is undoubtedly softer than it was when the gun was new, I expect that the slot isn't gonna wear much more. The link was getting jammed in that slot extension, so I opened it up a bit with a small rotary file.

The spring that came out of this gun is old, so I figured it might be wise to replace it. And since the gun was going to be used, I wanted to install a softer spring that might put a little less stress on the rest of the parts. I tried a common hardware store spring.


The longer spring is the new one. I had to cut about 3" from it to get it to fit...yet it wouldn't be used.

The old spring didn't appear to be broken. I think the spring ends "as cut" from coil stock and not flattened look exactly as they did when the factory put this thing together, although I imagine the spring was longer and straighter! Unfortunately, the new spring produced such low velocity--about 125 fps with steel BBs--that I didn't end up using it. The original went back in, but in its weakened condition I believe it'll still be relatively gentle on the rest of the action.

As I mentioned earlier, the only piece of cast iron I've noted in the whole gun is the trigger, and it doesn't speak well for Markham's iron casting techniques. The trigger spring is also pretty beat and will be replaced, but the trigger pin looks fine.


Trigger disassembled.

The sear at the front of the trigger didn't look bad at all, so I suspect the metalurgy of the casting is better than the aesthetics. I didn't work the sear angle in the hopes of getting a sub-1-lb. competition trigger out of it!

About the only other thing I did was replace the rear cocking pin/screw, which was bent, with a new one. It's shinier than the rest of the gun. If Wayne doesn't like it, he can put the original back in!

With the Markham back together, it's doing about 170 fps with steel BBs. I actually tried a 5-shot group at about 16' and got a group just about 1.25" (rested). I thought that was pretty doggone good with no rear sight (it had broken off) and with the lead BB barrel still in place. By comparison, that's less than half the group size BB got from a new Mendoza BB gun he tested a couple years ago.

Anyway, the remaining tasks are to install some sort of rear sight (the original had broken off) and adapt the Daisy barrel. Since the barrel hadn't arrived yet, I decided to start playing with the sight first to get some idea how much rear elevation it would need and how difficult it would be to fashion something. You'll have to wait for part 2 to find out how that and the rest of the project turned out.

Scopes for field target - Part 2

by B. B. Pelletier

Part 1

Today, I'll discuss big parallax wheels, including those that are custom-made for field target, reticles and the effects of temperature on a field target scope. Let's start with parallax wheels.

You know that parallax adjustments are used for rangefinding. The shooter focuses on something close to the target or perhaps on the target itself. Then he reads the yardage to the target from the parallax wheel on his scope. So, my first piece of advice is this: Get a side-focus parallax scope! Back before they had sidewheel scopes, we all had to reach way out in front where the objective bell was to focus the scope. In the first place, that's a long way to reach while holding an 8- to 14-lb. field target rifle with one hand. Second, many of those bells were hard to turn. On cold days they all were. All of us embraced the sidewheel scopes when they first came out in the mid-1990s. You only have to shoot half a match to understand why you want a sidewheel parallax-adjusting scope.

It was airgunners who gave the world sidewheels to begin with! Oh, side FOCUS parallax adjustment was first offered by Hakko, but it was a field target competitor who enlarged the small focus knob and turned it into a huge wheel. Why did he do that?

The evolution of the big wheel
It didn't happen overnight. It took about three years for the huge sidewheels to come into vogue. But once they did, small knobs became things of the past. It was like the day after the Colt Peacemaker hit the market--nobody wanted a cap-and-ball revolver anymore.

Field target competitors do not use the numbers the factory engraves on the parallax adjustment wheel or objective bell. They learn real quick that those numbers are ballpark numbers only, not precise estimates of distance. For deer hunters, it doesn't matter. A deer can't tell when it's hit an inch high or low, as long as the bullet is in the breadbasket. And a varmint hunter can miss his mark by a half-inch and never be the wiser. But a field target competitor has to hit within hundredths of an inch of where he aims at all times. So it matters to him whether the target is 44 yards or 47 yards away.

That huge sidewheel lets a competitor mark the smallest range differences on a piece of tape wound around the rim of the wheel. The larger the wheel, the easier it is to see differences in range after focusing the scope.


2007 National Field Target chamption and 2007 World Field Target champion Paul Cray has a huge sidewheel for parallax adjustment so he can read fine differences in the distance to the targets.

Before the side-adjust scopes came out, we put white tape around the objective bells of our scopes and calibrated them manually yard-by-yard on a range where the distances to the targets were measured. Duffers like me who were just out for fun, not blood, sometimes squeaked by with five-yard increments--at least in the middle ranges of 20-35 yards, where the trajectory was relatively flat. But to be perfectly honest, I was using a Bushnell Trophy 6-18x scope in those days, so I couldn't really determine ranges past about 35 yards anyway. I marked out five-yard increments on the objective bell all the way out to the end of the course and had all my fun just looking at the pretty targets and talking to everyone.

However, those who adjusted the elevation for every shot--the clickers--had special elevation knobs made of Delrin. They were bigger, so they could fit a scale of yardages around the periphery of the knob, thereby being able to tell exactly how many clicks they needed for every shot and any range. Remember, field target takes place between 10 and 55 yards, and it was 50 yards in the old days when I first competed. So, there were a lot of lines on those big knobs, and they had to be made larger than standard so we could see the small lines and yard markings we had to put there.


This A-Team elevation knob is for Bausch & Lombe scopes. I had one similar to it. Put white tape around the knob and mark off the places where every range to the target is located. Use several different colors to indicate different temperature ranges! It's taller than a conventional knob, too, and accommodates even more marks.

You learned a lot about ballistics while doing this. For example, you learned that for every close range marking on your scale there was also a long-distance yard marking at exactly the same point--the 23-yard mark may also have worked for 39 yards, and so on.

Reticles
Back when I shot field target, the mil-dot reticle wasn't common. The most favored reticle was the duplex. The holdeover crowd got five aimpoints out of it, and the click adjusters found it was easier to locate the thin central crosshairs in a dappled light situation. If you don't know what a duplex reticle is, read this and this.

A plain reticle isn't suitable for field target use. It will either be too thin to see in poor light or too thick for aiming precision on small kill-zones. Mil-dot reticles are fine for field target. They make the thin lines easy to see and give the holdover crowd plenty of auxiliary aimpoints.

There is no "best" reticle to use in this game. It all boils down to personal preference and your ability to see the reticle under various light conditions. It can take years to find a scope you like; and when you do, the specifications will probably mean less to you than intangibles like the reticle type, the exit pupil criticality and clarity in low light. For me, either the duplex or the mil-dot reticle seems to be the ticket.

The effects of temperature on a scope
You get all sighted-in, your scope is optically centered and you think you're ready for the big dance. Then the temperature drops 20 degrees during the match and throws off all the careful work you did to calibrate the range scale. Yes, temperature has a dramatic effect on a scope, and field target will bring that out like no other sport I know.

The top shooters don't have one range scale on their parallax adjustment, they have three--set up for gross temperature ranges! And they may have two or three different range scales set up on the vertical adjustment knob, as well. The course I used to run in Maryland hosted many of the top shooters in the nation, and I got a chance to see the incredible lengths to which they went to know the last foot to every target.

With all this anal work involved, it's no wonder that I competed as a holdover shooter for the first two years I shot field target. However, one day I thought about how nice it would be to actually win something, so I bit the bullet and bought both a better PCP and a bigger scope and decided to adjust for each shot. Today's report has actually been a brain dump about adjusting the scope for every shot. Next time, I'll tell you what all us holdeover piggies were doing in the background while the prima donnas were winning our matches.

Crosman M1 Carbine - Part 1

by B.B. Pelletier

Announcement: We now have podcast download links in each month's podcast. Thanks to TheRibber, who showed us how he did it, my wife followed his examples and updated all the podcasts. Going forward, every podcast will have a download link when posted.

Settle in, my children, for daddy has a long winter story to tell about the Crosman M1 Carbine. The opportunity to write this report is a gift to me, as much as to any of you, because I am fascinated with the M1 Carbine firearm as much as the BB gun it inspired.

A brief history of the M1 Carbine
Jimmy Stewart aside, David Marshall "Carbine" Williams did not invent the M1 Carbine. [Note to those who don't get that reference: Jimmy Stewart starred in the 1952 movie Carbine Williams.] What he did invent was the short-stroke gas piston that made it possible for the carbine to work as it did. He worked for Winchester during the time they created the design that became the M1 Carbine, and he even worked on it sporadically, but he played only a minor part in the actual development of the gun that became the carbine (other than his essential short-stroke gas piston).

In fact, he designed an altogether different carbine that the government felt was even better than the actual M1 Carbine, but it came after the carbine was already in production and there was too much inertia in the program and time lost to make changes. Remember, there was a world war happening while the carbine was designed, tested, accepted and produced.


This is a very early Winchester production carbine in near-mint condition. Although Winchester designed the carbine, the Inland Division of General Motors was first to start building them. Winchester was second, and their early examples, like this one, had design features that were soon changed, making this a very rare rifle. It appears to be in unfired condition, with the exception of factory proof testing.

The M1 Carbine was requested by the U.S. Army in June 1940 as a possible replacement for the .45 pistol and later for the submachine gun, as well. As the requirement developed, it became a gun that had to be lethal on men to 300 yards (far beyond the effective range of the pistol in most soldiers' hands), had to weigh 5 lbs. or less, and had to look and operate like the Garand that the army had fallen in love with.

The initial plan was for the carbine to be issued to drivers, cooks and officers who were not armed as heavily as most soldiers. Those who carried a carbine would not carry a sidearm like the M1911A1 pistol. In fact, the carbine quickly became very popular with more troops than they'd planned, and the demand rose beyond initial estimates. And many who got carbines kept their .45 pistols, as well.

In battle it was soon discovered that the carbine lacked the killing power the Army had hoped for. But the production program was underway and going so well they decided to ride it out--not unlike they did with the M16 in Viet Nam, when similar results were realized. After the war was over the government didn't want to spend money on a replacement for the carbine, and new soldiers forgot the lessons of war, so the M1 Carbine soldiered on until well past Viet Nam. The same thing happened with the M16, which is still in use today, though the Army is looking for a larger-caliber replacement.

The development program of the carbine is a classic, not only of firearms but of any mass-produced technology at any time. From the first delivery in June 1942 to the last one in 1944, over 6 million carbines were produced, making it the all-time biggest production run of any U.S. small arm. This was the first weapons program in which investment cast parts were attempted for important operational parts (they didn't work). This was a program in which a field expedient conversion to full-auto (for the M2 carbine) was so well-received by Springfield Arsenal that they adopted it as a standard. This was the first time a U.S. standard arm met with abject failure in one of its performance requirements and still soldiered on as a successful weapon for 30 more years (the carbine was never successful at launching rifle grenades).

And, finally, the M1 Carbine gave rise in the early 1950s to a .22 caliber centerfire round that evolved into the current 5.56mm round used by the current battle rifle. So, the carbine is the grandfather of the M16. If these short anecdotes are of interest, there's a spendid two-volume reference set called War Baby and War Baby II by Larry Ruth that is the seminal reference on M1 Carbine history.

Last note on the carbine. In the 1950s, the NRA made M1 Carbines available to members for $20. The hundreds of thousands of guns that came into general circulation through that channel raised the interest in the gun to a high level.

A brief history of the Crosman M1 Carbine
In 1966, American interest in the M1 Carbine was 10 years into a national high that has never subsided. Crosman was already building successful lookalike BB and pellet guns, and they decided their V350 BB gun could be restocked to look like dad's M1 Carbine. So, with a replacement wooden stock and some cosmetic metal parts, the engineers transformed the V350 into the Crosman M1 Carbine. They got the length just about perfect, the weight was within 2 oz. of a carbine with an unloaded magazine inserted (a loaded carbine mag weighs a lot, depending on the size of the mag) and the volume of the stock was only slightly less than the firearm. It was one of the most realistic airgun lookalikes ever conceived. It was so close, in fact, that some advanced collectors have installed Crosman M1 Carbines in genuine carbine stocks and even savvy firearms buffs cannot spot them without close examination.


The first year Crosman M1 Carbine had a slabwood stock. This is a later model with a more rounded Croswood plastic stock. Though it is more rugged and better-looking, the wood-stock model is rarer and commands a higher price.

In the first year of production, the Crosman carbine went into a wooden stock. It was slabsided and less real-looking than the plastic Croswood stock that came out the next year. The Croswood stock is dense, heavy and rounded like the firearm stock, but the overall appearance seems fake and plastic-y. The plastic wears to a shiny finish that isn't true to a genuine firearm. But you almost have to hold the gun to see the difference.

This is a BB repeater that holds 22 shots in the gravity-feed magazine and hundreds in what looks like the magazine but is really a BB reservoir. About half the guns are missing their magazines, and replacements are not available. No collector in his right mind will part with a genuine Crosman M1 Carbine magazine--though they only raise the price of the gun by about $35-45 when they accompany it. There have been fake solid plastic placeholder magazines made in the past to complete the look of the gun. These do not hold any BBs and even they now command a fair price when you find them. It sounds to me like a great project for a guy with an idle CNC machine!

The magazine isn't needed for the gun to function. The real magazine is built into the upper handguard and is functional even when the fake magazine is missing. But everybody wants that genuine M1 Carbine look, and the mag completes the gun.

The gun cocks by pulling straight back on the barrel until the sear catches. It isn't easy for an adult to do, and nearly impossible for a youngster. So, kids often looped their fingers over the muzzle and front sight when they cocked the gun. Others pushed the muzzle in toward the stock with the palm of their other hand. If you think about the ramifications for accidents that causes, you'll understand why the M1 Carbine ceased manufacture in 1976. It certainly isn't a model they would ever bring out today.

The gun is 35-1/4" long and weighs 5 lbs., 3 oz. It's heavy for a BB gun, but that's the price of realism. It's also one of the more powerful BB gun mechanisms, with an expected muzzle velocity in the 350 f.p.s. region--hence the model name V350. There were two different types of peep sights on the M1 Carbine, and Crosman chose to copy the better adjustable type that was graduated for five elevation settings from 50 to 300 yards (for the firearm, of course), plus a knob-wound windage adjustment.

And there are numerous other innovations that, when summed up, make a collector really appreciate all the work that went into the Crosman gun. I'll cover each of them as we come to them. I plan on giving this gun a complete velocity and accuracy test. When this report is finished, the gun will have a good reference point in our growing library.

Gamo Big Cat - Part 3

by B.B. Pelletier

Part 1
Part 2


Gamo Big Cat is an impressive breakbarrel at an impressive price!

There's a new article about precharged pneumatics on the Pyramyd Air site. It's one I wrote for Airgun Illustrated magazine years ago, but I've updated it.

Today, I'll look at the accuracy of the Gamo Big Cat. You may remember that this inexpensive Gamo breakbarrel rifle has been getting high marks up to this point. It's light, easy to cock and the trigger is remarkably smooth. It also turned in a good showing in the velocity test in part 2. So, accuracy was all we had left to look at.

The Big Cat has no sights, so you have to mount some kind of scope or dot sight. It comes with a 4x scope for that purpose, and that's exactly what I used for this test.

I encountered some difficulty mounting the scope, and I want to tell you about it. I don't know if you remember, but in the past, and especially in the scope-mounting video I recently did, I mentioned that sometimes a scope will twist in the rings as it's tightened down. Well, the scope that came with this Big Cat did that to the extent that I had to fiddle with it for a long time to get it aligned correctly. By aligned, I mean sitting where the vertical scope reticle bisects the receiver. Every time I tightened the 2-screw scope caps, they twisted the scope just a little past plumb.

That tells me the rings are not in line with each other. And when they're tightened, they're torquing the scope tube (putting torsional stress on the tube in its tightened state). That can't be good for precision.

I also noticed that the scope was not clearly focused at the 21 yards I was shooting. Since it's only a 4x scope, it has to be pretty bad not to focus that far away, because you can barely see anything small enough to determine focus to begin with.

So, for those two reasons--the misaligned scope rings and the bad scope, I'll rerun the accuracy test with a better scope and different rings. However, the rifle did pretty good in spite of everything, plus the wind was gusting to 25 mph. So here is accuracy report number one.

Air Arms Diabolo Field
The Air Arms Diabolo Field pellet is an 8.4-grain pure lead dome that's made by JSB, so we know it's a precision pellet. In the Big Cat, they loaded easily and seemed to shoot well, but they also required extreme holding technique. If I slacked off the hold just a bit, the pellet would jump out of the group by a half-inch at 21 yards.

My best hold with the Big Cat was on the flat of my open palm. I tried the back of my fingers, but it threw the pellets around. Too much vibration, I think. However, the Air Arms domes were too twitchy to tell for sure.

Beeman Kodiaks
Beeman Kodiaks were not as precise in the Big Cat. They spread out to 3/4" groups and didn't seem to want to do any better, so I didn't pursue them.

Crosman Premier 7.9-grain pellets
Crosman Premier 7.9-grain pellets turned out to be the best pellet I tried all day. They landed in tight groups and needed little in the way of special technique--beyond the standard artillery hold. In fact, they were forgiving of some sloppiness in technique, a situation that rarely happens with a breakbarrel. I have to say I was impressed.


That's a nice group for 21 yards on a windy day! Five Premier 7.9 pellets.


Another nice group, but the center has moved up and to the right. Nothing was done to the scope or the hold between this group and the last one.


This third group is also tight, but you can see that it's still moving to the right.

However, if you look at the three groups I show, you'll notice the impact point shifts to the right with each of the two groups after the first. As tight as these pellets are grouping, I have to chalk that up to either scope shift or parallax error; and, as tight as I'm grouping, parallax error doesn't seem to be the problem. This scope actually seems to be shifting--something that's very rare, in my experience. I don't know if it's due to the scope or the mounts at this point, and I'm not inclined to find out. I'll replace both for the next accuracy test.

The bottom line at this point is that the Gamo Big Cat seems to be a real value in a breakbarrel pellet rifle. On the plus side, it has an easy cocking action and a smooth trigger that's somewhat creepy but still quite nice. And that can be fixed with the addition of the GRT-III aftermarket trigger blade (read this report). The Big Cat is also lightweight and has a relatively smooth action. The power is right where it's supposed to be and the accuracy is fine. On the negative side is the amount of plastic used on the gun and the fact that it comes without sights.

The next report will be with a better scope and rings.

Crosman V350M - a rare and special BB gun

by B.B. Pelletier

Some of you understood my tongue-in-cheek humor last week, when I told you about passing on two $100 BB guns at a flea market that turned out to be worth $600-800 apiece. But others did not, and someone was kind enough to advise me that perhaps I should have rethought that decision.

For the latter group: GET READY, BECAUSE TOM IS BEING IRONIC AGAIN.

The bluebird of happiness...
Perhaps, 10 years ago, I was attending the now-defunct St. Louis airgun show and happened to see a strange Crosman airgun on one of the tables. The paper with it was a copy of an owner's manual for the Crosman V350M BB gun. I knew about the V350. It was a spring-piston BB gun that cocks by pulling the barrel straight back--much the same as an old Quackenbush model 1 pellet gun.

The V350 mechanism was later dressed up by Crosman to look like an M1 Carbine and became one of the most iconic BB guns of modern times. But this V350M was unknown to me. It looked different, too. At the end of the barrel, there was a steel sleeve that was deeply knurled along the entire length. And along one side of the barrel ran a spring-loaded magazine tube for the BBs.


The Crosman M1 Carbine is a realistic copy of the World War II carbine. It's a V350 dressed up.


The V350M looks like a standard gun except for the sleeve at the muzzle.


This steel sleeve at the muzzle helps with cocking, as any V350 owner will readily understand.


This external BB magazine didn't come on the V350. I don't know why it was added to the M model.

The standard V350 has its magazine internal to the receiver. BBs are poured down a hole and line up to be fed to the breech one at a time when the barrel is pulled back to cock the gun. So, it wasn't necessary to put an external magazine tube along the outside of the barrel, but this gun had one.

It taunts me
For the first day of the show, I looked at this curiosity every time I passed the table. I didn't know what it was, so I was very reluctant to show any real interest, even when collector Ted Osborn pointed it out to me and, at one point, forced me to listen to all its virtues. He wanted me to buy it.

Sometimes in life, we're exposed to an opportunity for the briefest of moments. Only by luck or good instincts do we make the right moves and capture the moment.

It ridicules me...
At other times opportunity settles in right outside our door and allows its dog to dig in our flower garden and its children to play their music too loud. This kind of opportunity is like the relative nobody wants to see at a family gathering. It can ripen on your front walk until it rots and its blacked skin bursts open to allow the mushy flesh inside to sink into the concrete so deep you have to use a pressure washer to get it off.

That was the kind of opportunity this strange V350M represented. It was the main curiosity of this particular airgun show. You could ask any of the dealers what it was and they all said the same thing, "I don't know." And there were some very astute dealers at that show. Guys like Wes Powers, Bob Spielvogel and John Groenewold had their own tables where they had things like two boxed American Lugers with $1,000 marked on each of them, and even they didn't know what this oddity was.

It slaps me in the face...
And I watched the whole episode play out in slow motion before my eyes. It wasn't a fleeting chance at a brass ring. No, it was more of a, "Hey, we've got a truckload of ice cream and no place to put it. Anybody want some?"

And all I could think to do was to turn my head and walk away before somebody asked me whether I wanted to buy it for $100. Curious, yes--but don't take me for a fool! A complete idiot, perhaps, but never a fool.

Finally--relief!
Finally, Ted Osborn got tired of pimping the gun to everyone else and came up with the cash himself. What a relief! I wouldn't have to listen to that harranging any longer. I could look people in the eye once more. The airgun that was unheard-of-by-every-Crosman-collector-in-the-world was no longer for sale, thank goodness. What did I miss?

A super-rare gun, as it turned out. It seems that back in the days when Daisy was selling thousands of regular BB guns without sights to the U.S. Army for the Vietnam-driven Quick Kill instinct shooting program, for some reason Crosman decided they wanted a piece of the pie. The Army obliged with a public solicitation for instinct shooters.

The boys in the back room at Crosman took a stock V350 and added a knurled handle around the end of the barrel for easier cocking, plus an external BB magazine for heaven-knows-what-reason, and they tacked the letter M for military after the model number. Thus was born the V350M.

Are they rare?
Nobody knows exactly how many guns were made, but we do know that the military never bought it. It was never a civilian model, either. It's likely the number of guns Crosman made ranged from six to twenty-five. Some big number like that.

What was I thinking? A man goes to an airgun show to see and buy airguns. I had just been steamrolled by the strangest modification of a modern Crosman airgun anyone had ever seen--only until that very show, nobody had ever heard of it. But for over a day, it pulled up its kilt and bared its rear end at me while shouting insults from across the aisle. All the while, I tried to pretend it wasn't there because, I thought, maybe it's a fake!

Do you think it was real?
Was it real, do you think? Well, if it wasn't, some clever sharpie went to all the trouble of writing and printing a Crosman factory manual for the military, then copied it just to extort $100 from some unsuspecting rube like me! What will they think of next? Fake Rolex watches they can charge $20 for? Watches that actually run and tell time? Think about that for a moment, if you aren't already laughing your head off.

Oh, yeah, it was real! I still have the mud stains on my bluejeans from where the dog shoveled dirt all over me. The V350M is still real today, and hundreds of advanced collectors know all about it--thanks to the diligent efforts of Ted Osborn. And I kept my hundred dollars safe under a rock, so when my master returned I still had it to give back.

The gun shown here is not the same one I saw at St. Louis. This is another one that was shown at Roanoke last October, and several have emerged from the woodwork in the years that have passed. We now know much more of the story than we did back then.

Thankfully, I still have my money!

You ain't heard nothin' yet. I got a million of them!

UTG Navy Seal MK 23 spring airsoft pistol - Part 1

by B.B. Pelletier


UTG Navy SEAL Mk23 pistol may be one of the best buys in a low-cost spring-piston gun.

For this review, I decided to do some research before I actually tested the gun. By reading the reviews on the Pyramyd Air website, I learned a lot. The first thing I learned concerns the recommended ammo. Pyramyd gives the expected velocity of the gun with both 0.12-gram BBs and 0.20-gram BBs. The 0.12-gram BBs are leaving the muzzle at 310-320 f.p.s. Well, I'm not an airsoft expert, but the little experience I do have tells me right away that's too fast. Lightweight BBs don't fly true when they go that fast. They're much better down around 250 f.p.s. and slower.

The 0.20-gram BBs are supposed to go 220-240 f.p.s. from this gun. That's a much better speed range, plus the 0.20-gram BB can take higher velocities better than lighter BBs. So, I would think this gun is too powerful for 0.12-gram BBs. And that's what many of the reviews say--that the 0.12-gram BBs are curving too much in flight.

When you see something like that--STOP USING THOSE LIGHTWEIGHT BBS! Don't wait to be told what to do. It's obvious they don't work well, and the reviews confirm it.

Next, the reviews pointed out that the silencer that comes with the gun doesn't really silence it. Pardon me, but...DUH! Do people also think that erecting a chromed vertical exhaust pipe behind the cab on a half-ton pickup truck turns it into a long-haul tractor?

Here is the deal. YOU CAN'T SILENCE A SPRING GUN MECHANISM WITH A SILENCER ON THE MUZZLE. That's like believing in the Hush-a-Bomb from Rocky and Bullwinkle. It didn't REALLY exist!

Sorry, guys, but those comments enrage the Captain Obvious in me. There may not be any stupid questions, but there certainly are more than a few casual remarks that are not well thought out. However, in reading the reviews further, I do get a sense that the UTG Navy Seal MK 23 pistol is quite accurate, and more powerful than the price tag would indicate. That interests me, because I need a good accurate airsoft pistol on hand to test various BBs that come my way. It would be nice to have something like that on the shelf, just as I have certain pellet rifles and pistols that I can turn to when I need performance I can count on.

With that behind us, let's dive in. The UTG Navy Seal MK 23 airsoft pistol copies the H&K Mk 23 Mod. O .45 ACP SOCOM offensive handgun that was adopted in 1996. It's supposed to deliver match-grade accuracy, while standing up to rugged SEAL use.

This airsoft pistol is a repeating spring-piston pistol--and right there I must explain what I mean, because many of those who are interested in this gun are young shooters who lack a firearms background. A repeater is a gun that contains more than a single round, so it can be fired more than one time without reloading. BUT--and this is very important--it does not mean that the gun must fire every time you pull the trigger! There are other things that must be done first, or the gun will not fire. In the case of a spring-piston airgun, the piston has to be cocked manually every time you want to fire the gun. That is accomplished by pulling the operating slide ALL the way to the rear until a click is heard and the hammer is cocked, and then returning the slide to the forward position. The gun can then be fired one time.

To shoot again, the slide must be pulled back again. You cannot just cock the hammer and then shoot the gun. While the hammer will cock, the piston will not, and the gun will not fire. You can even cycle the hammer double-action by just squeezing the trigger like a revolver. The hammer will come back and then fall as if to fire the gun, but nothing else will happen.

This is called a repeater because once the magazine is loaded with as many as 26 BBs, it can be cocked and fired repeatedly without needing to load more BBs. Only one BB comes out every time you fire the gun.

Some of the reviews say this gun is larger than a Desert Eagle pistol, but it isn't. A REAL Desert Eagle firearm is larger than a REAL H&K Mk 23 firearm, and therefore accurate airsoft copies will hold the same dimensions. This is a large handgun, though. It's significantly larger than a Colt M1911A1 pistol, for instance. The grip is both long and wide, so the pistol will feel better to shooters with larger hands.

For an inexpensive airsoft spring-piston gun, this model is also on the heavy side. Only the trigger and slide release lever are metal, but the engineering plastic the gun is made from is dense, and the gun feels pretty hefty.

It comes with two magazines and a FAKE silencer. It's a fake because it doesn't silence the gun in any way, but it looks real. Also, this gun makes so little noise when it fires that it's already quieter than a real silenced firearm, so what does everybody expect? When the silencer is threaded on the orange tip of the muzzle, it covers the orange color almost completely, but the silencer has an orange muzzle of its own.

The tactical sights are a white-outlined rear notch and a white ball on the front post. You'll center the ball in the rear notch, and put the ball on your target.

There's a wide accessory rail under the forward part of the frame, but it has no cross slots. Some airsoft accessories may fit, but those with real Weaver mounts will not, because there is no cross slot to hold the Weaver key.

The controls that work are the magazine release and the safety, which masquerades as the slide stop. All other controls are non-functional and merely cast into the plastic frame.

I have to comment that I chose to test this particular airsoft pistol because of the many great reviews customers have given it. Finding a nice airsoft gun in this price range isn't easy, and from what I see, this might be one of the best.

S&W 586 & 686 pellet guns - Part 2

by B.B. Pelletier

Part 1

Before we begin, I have an announcement. Very soon, Pyramyd Air will be launching a new social website for airgunning. When they do, I'll be responsible for the pages that deal with technology, training and technical information.

I'm telling you this because in the past few months, we've had some very useful and powerful reader comments that really should be saved and archived for posterity. An example came in the day before yesterday, when Chuck gave us a good rundown of optional peep sights and scopes that fit (and don't fit) and work/don't work on the IZH 61. That's the sort of stuff we need to keep handy, because there are thousands of those rifles out there and people are asking about them all the time. If someone were to do a nice guest blog on tearing one down and tuning it, we would put that right next to Chuck's post. And then there was the comment some time back about how to diagnose magazine problems and how to remove the barrel for cleaning.The list just keeps on growing. All on just the IZH 61!

So you see the value of this. I could locate and post the dozens of scope-mounting and sighting-in blogs I've done so a person could make some sense of all of them. Imagine being able to locate ALL the spring-gun tuning blogs in one place!

On to today's report on the Smith & Wesson 586. The 586 is the blued version of the gun and the 686 is the silver gun. I think Wayne, for whom this report was written, has been very outspoken about his approval for this pellet pistol. He absolutely loves it and thinks it's a wonderful addition to anyone's airgun collection. Wayne, if I'm putting words into your mouth, please correct me.

I happen to agree with Wayne on this. The 586/686 has to be shot to be fully appreciated. Photos and words won't convey the feeling you get when you hold the gun in your hands. I've said the same things about the TX 200, and you see what new owners have to say about them!

Last time we looked at the gun and how it works. Today, we'll do velocity and accuracy. The gun I tested had the 6-inch barrel. An 8-inch barrel will get higher velocity and potentially a trifle more accuracy, though that's just a reflection of the increased sight radius. The velocity gain, however, is fact.

RWS Hobbys--shot double-action
At the time of the test (1999), RWS Hobby pellets weighed 6.9 grains. They averaged 410 f.p.s. in the 586 fired double-action through the 6-inch barrel. I allowed 10 seconds between shots for the temperature to stabilize, and the ambient temp was 68 degrees F. The spread was 391 to 434, and at the average velocity they produced 2.58 foot-pounds at the muzzle.

RWS Hobbys--shot single-action
Hobbys averaged 406 f.p.s. with a spread from 391 to 422 when fired in the single-action mode. Ten seconds between shots. Muzzle energy works out to 2.53 foot-pounds.

That's pretty close performance between single- and double-action. Usually, a gun like this would have done noticeably better single-action.

Chinese blue-label wadcutters--shot double-action
This is a target pellet that I used in 10-meter competition, so I used it in a lot of my tests back in 1999. It weighs 7.6 grains. The average velocity in double-action was 370 f.p.s., with a spread from 356 to 389. Muzzle energy works out to 2.31 foot-pounds.

Chinese blue-label wadcutters--shot single-action
In single-action, these pellets averaged 367 f.p.s., just 3 f.p.s. slower than double-action. The spread was 352 to 387, and the muzzle energy was 2.27 foot-pounds.

The 586 I tested was a very stable air pistol, but better still was the accuracy, which I had to see to believe.


Chinese blue-label wadcutters delivered this tight 10-meter group from a rested gun. H&N target pellets did about the same. This is 30 percent tighter than the next-best Umarex pistol can shoot, and it's the reason I like this model so much.

A word about the metal in the guns
After I published that short bit about not over-tightening CO2 screws when loading cartridges, I was amazed at the number of people who said they were doing just that! So I have to say something about the metal these guns are made of. They're not ordnance steel, like the firearms they copy. They're made of a zinc alloy that casts very well, which is why they can make them for so little money. Because of that, you can't bang the guns around and that especially applies to the circular clips-- those things we call the cylinders.

I'm mentioning this because at a public demonstration someone dropped one of the clips from my gun and dented a corner next to a flute. Zinc alloy always does that, so you have to be careful when handling the clips of any of these air pistols.

And handle them correctly!
At the same public demonstration, I watched a guy not close the cylinder properly and then try to shoot the gun double-action. He jammed the mechanism, and if I hadn't been there he was ready to complain to the world that the gun was faulty. I know because I caught him in his windup. Another fault a new shooter might have is inserting the cylinder into the gun backwards. It works only one way because the ratchet teeth for the hand are only on one side of the clip. It's important that you review the mechanism before you start shooting a lot.


I mentioned this in the first report, but didn't show it. Barrel swaps make the S&W a versatile system.

How much longer?
Back in 1999, Umarex had some plans to bring out another big revolver after the 586. There was talk about the Colt Anaconda, but sales of the 586 were not encouraging enough to warrant the expense of another revolver. The action pistols seem to sell better, and the complexity of a revolver means it has to cost a little more. In this game, a little is a lot, so Umarex never went there and they probably never will. In fact, I've been asked by the owner of the company if I thought there would be continued sales of this model, because after the initial surge, the 586 has lagged behind the rest of the pistols. So far, it's hung on, but I don't know how much longer that will be true.

Then, without fail, we will have to listen to some airgunner who is not buying one right now but who will be lamenting the passing of a classic on that day. It's happened too many times already. You now know what I think about them.

More importantly you know what Wayne thinks!

Scopes for field target - Part 1

by B. B. Pelletier

Wayne asked for this report, but I was happy to write it because the season for field target is approaching. In some parts of the country, they shoot all year, but the season really starts to heat up in March and April. And, yes, this has to be a multi-part report, because I need the room to discuss the various points I will address.

I competed in FT for four seasons, and although I was just an average competitor I got to see all the optics and, better still, to appreciate what's needed and why. This is not a report on how cheap you can buy a scope for field target and get by--it's about what a scope must have to be competitive in the sport. It's up to you to find what works for you.

High magnification
High magnification is important for a couple reasons. First, it helps you determine the range to the target. FT shooters need to know the exact range to a target so their pellets don't touch the top or bottom of the kill zone as they pass through. The trajectory of a pellet that starts out at 900 f.p.s. is enough of a curve for this to be a problem at all ranges.

Rangefinding
FT shooters determine range by using the parallax adjustment to focus the scope on the target. When the target comes into sharp focus, they read the range on the scale of the parallax wheel. They will have set up the scale on their scope by sighting at a range of targets at known distances and will want to differentiate distances in one-yard increments from 10 yards all the way out to 55 yards.

To see the targets well enough to see when they come into sharp focus at the farther distances requires a lot of magnification...and 30x will get you out to about 40 yards if your eyes are very sharp. To get out to 55 yards takes over 40x. I try to focus on the hardware that attaches the reset string when I range to the target. Beyond 40 yards, I have to use the target face, because I can't see the attaching hardware that clearly. Sometimes there are individual blades of grass or weeds next to the target that can be used for rangefinding, but a shooter can't always count on that.

Seeing the kill-zone
High magnifying power is also needed because the shooter wants to see and be able to clearly define the kill-zone before taking the shot. A freshly painted target usually presents no problem, but after 40 shots have turned the paddle and the area around the kill-zone to a large gray spot with no definition, you'll be wondering exactly where to shoot. I've had this problem at some point in every match in which I competed. A scope with greater magnification helps you pick out the boundary of the actual kill-zone a little better.

At this point a new shooter usually says, "Okay...I have to buy the most powerful scope I can find."

That would be dead wrong and a costly mistake to make, because powerful scopes are not always clear at their highest power. They may work well at full power on a sunlit target range, but in the gloom of a field target course they may turn dark and cloudy. My $600 Tasco Custom Shop 8-40x scope is like that. Up to 30x, it's pretty clear; beyond that, it quickly becomes so dark that you can't see definition--and in some cases can't even find the target. In fact, whenever I test a possible FT scope, I try to range on a blade of grass out around 50 yards. If I can do that with accuracy, the scope is a good one. I don't worry if the scale on the adjustment wheel reads exactly the correct range to the grass blade, because I'll take care of that with a scale of my own.

So, FT competitors look for powerful scopes that remain clear even at the higher powers. And those scopes cost big bucks. This is where names like Bushnell, Nightforce and Leupold come to the forefront. Maybe Hawke scopes belong in this category, too, but I haven't seen their higher magnifications and can't comment with certainty.

What about Leapers scopes? Well, the biggest scope Leapers makes is an 8-32x, so they don't go as high as FT competitors would like them to. You can certainly use them all the way up to 32 power, but as I pointed out, that isn't enough magnification to resolve a small target at 50 yards. Yes, I personally do use Leapers scopes in FT competition, but I am not even a nationally ranked competitor, and that's the difference. If you want to go all the way, you need the finest equipment available.

Very sensitive to head placement
Let me tell you something else about a top-quality scope that's run at high magnification. The exit pupil becomes extremely narrow! That means if your shooting eye isn't in the exact right position, the scope will be black! And when your eye moves to the right position, the scope is suddenly bright--like a TV program suddenly appearing on screen. This is a good thing, because it helps eliminate parallax from sloppy eye placement. But if you aren't used to it, a scope like this can be difficult to use--especially if your rifle doesn't fit as well as it should. So, the fit of the rifle is somewhat dictated by the quality of the scope!

Sunshades at both ends of the scope
Sunlight falling on the objective lens of a scope renders the image muddy and impossible to see. I kept two sunshades permanently attached to the objective bell of my scope.


The Tasco Custom Shop scope on my Daystate Harrier sports two sunshades all the time.

When I competed, the range where I shot most often was filled with patches of deep shade and bright sunlight that changed as the sun moved across the sky. Sometimes, in the morning, I'd stand to the right of the shooter on line, just to shade him from the strong sunlight falling on him. But that was just a friendly gesture that I would never repeat in a serious match. Competitors don't help each other when the match is on. You have to run with the equipment you brought to the match, and that should include a long sunshade for the objective lens and a shade for the eyepiece. The eyepiece shade has to also work with the exit pupil of your scope, which takes some adjusting.


Large ocular sunshade was cut to fit the shooter and left on the ocular (eye) bell all the time. It helped locate the shooter's head and kept stray sunlight out of the image.

Guys, I've addressed this stuff possibly many times in the past, but it's probably harder for you to find it than it is for me to address Wayne's question directly. Also, when someone asks in the future, we will have this series to refer to.

I'll talk about big parallax wheels, reticles and the effects of temperature in the next report.

Crosman 1088 - Part 3

by B.B. Pelletier

Part 1
Part 2

Do you even remember that I was looking at the the Crosman 1088 pistol? It seems so long ago (Dec. 17) that I completed part 2.

In part 2, I mentioned that the single-action function doesn't work on this particular pistol. I could have replaced the gun right then, but I didn't. Now I have completed the accuracy part of the test and the results have been quite eye-opening. All shooting was double-action.

Also, here's an update on the CO2 piercing screw. We now know the 1088 loads gas silently. So I set out to see how few screw turns were necessary to pierce the CO2 cartridge, because any more than that would just stress the end seal, which is why the gun leaks after awhile. It just takes a single turn of the screw on the pistol I'm testing. Once I do that, I fire the gun in a safe direction to be sure the gas is flowing.

Test range
The test for pellet accuracy was shot at 10 yards. I know I said I would shoot at 20 for the guy who wanted the Kodiak pellets tested, but the winter weather just hasn't cooperated. If this test was going to be completed now, it had to be shot indoors.

Beeman Kodiaks
The Beeman Kodiak pellet was recommended for long-range accuracy with a 1088, but at 10 yards it isn't the best in this pistol. The groups ranged around two inches for eight shots. The Kodiaks were also the slowest pellet I tried. I could hear how slow they traveled to the pellet trap compared to all other pellets.

Crosman Silver Eagles
Crosman Silver Eagle hollowpoint pellets were only a little less accurate than Kodiaks. They added another half-inch at 10 yards. And unlike the Kodiaks, they were noticeably faster.

RWS Basics
RWS Basic pellets were a big improvement over the Kodiaks, grouping about 1-5/8 inches for eight shots. That sounds big, but it looks impressive compared to the others that went before.


RWS Basic pellets showed promise in the 1088.

RWS Supermags
But RWS Supermags blew the cover off the jar. The first group I shot measures less than one inch! The next group opened up to 1.5 inches, but that's not too shabby! Remember, I'm shooting double-action supported at 30 feet.


The first group shot with RWS Supermags was phenomenal. Some of the holes are square because I had to bend the paper back so they would show.


Second group of Supermags wasn't as good as the first, but it's still very nice.

And then I shot BBs
The 1088 is also a BB gun, so I had to shoot them, as well. I didn't have high hopes, because my experience tells me guns made for both BBs and pellets are a compromise. The 1088 had other plans. Eight Crosman Copperhead BBs shot offhand at 15 feet with a center hold sailed through the center of the bullseye, leaving a one-inch group behind. I know the distance is just half, but these are round BBs, and they cannot be expected to shoot accurately at long range. The center hold was just to keep the BBs inside the trap, but when I saw the target I realized this group was as good as the group shot with the SIG Sauer SP 2022 BB pistol I tested for you. If I recall, I said that one was the most accurate BB pistol I'd ever tested. So, guess what? The 1088 joins that club. I'm very impressed with the accuracy of this gun with BBs.


Here are 8 BBs shot from 15 feet using a center hold. They're one inch or just slightly more. This is remarkable accuracy for a BB pistol!

Bottom line? The 1088 is a keeper. Buy it and shoot it. Just remember to not screw that tightening screw very tight, and the gun should last a long time.