Tag Archives: carbine

El Gamo 68/68-XP — A futuristic airgun from the past: Part 6

Posted on by B.B. Pelletier ↓ 48 Comments

by Tom Gaylord, a.k.a. B.B. Pelletier

Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4
Part 5

El Gamo 68 XP breakbarrel air rifle
El Gamo 68 is a futuristic breakbarrel from the past.

I last reported on this rifle on August 8 of last year. And that was Part 5! I had just tuned the rifle with a new mainspring and proper lubricants and was wondering what the changes would be. I was ready to report on it several months ago when I discovered that it wouldn’t cock. After fiddling with the trigger adjustments awhile with no success, I set it aside and moved on — thinking that the gun would need to be disassembled.

I disassembled it last week and discovered there was nothing wrong! The sear was working properly, or at least it seemed to be when I played with it as the gun was disassembled. I relubricated everything and put it all back together and was going to write Monday’s report on it. But the trigger still didn’t work! ARRGH! read more

El Gamo 68/68-XP – A futuristic airgun from the past: Part 5

Posted on by B.B. Pelletier ↓ 37 Comments

by B.B. Pelletier

Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4


El Gamo 68 is a futuristic breakbarrel from the past.

I’m sure many of you imagine that I’m immersed in airguns all the time, which is true. That my office is filled with all sorts of models (it is) and that my workshop bench is strewn with parts of projects in process. There’s just one problem with that view. I don’t have a workshop. When I really need a lot of room, such as for today’s report, I usually move to the kitchen, where I do my work on that time-honored bench — the kitchen table!

The other thing most readers don’t appreciate is how whipsawed I am with time. I can’t afford to spend a week or even two days on a project anymore. Back in the days of The Airgun Letter, I had one month to crank out the stories that are now written in about four days! If I spend more than three hours on a project before starting to write about it, I’m working on a 12-hour day because the writing and photography take so much more time than the actual testing. And so it was with some trepidation that I approached today’s report, which is a disassembly, evaluation, cleaning and lubrication of my Gamo 68 breakbarrel air rifle. read more

El Gamo 68/68-XP – A futuristic airgun from the past: Part 4

Posted on by B.B. Pelletier ↓ 42 Comments

by B.B. Pelletier

Part 1
Part 2
Part 3


El Gamo 68 is a futuristic breakbarrel from the past.

Today, I’ll take the El Gamo 68 to the next level of accuracy testing. I mounted a scope and went back to 25 yards to see what this gun can do.

Blog reader Mike sent me a trigger shoe he wasn’t using, and I installed it on the rifle’s thin blade. It made all the difference in the world. I don’t think I could have endured the 80+ shots that went into today’s test without it! Thanks, Mike!


The trigger shoe made the heavy pull pleasant.

Scope
I mentioned mounting a scope on the rifle before I checked it out. The 11mm scope dovetails are cut into the top of the spring tube and are very short by today’s standards. I was able to mount only a Leapers Bug Buster scope using 2-piece BKL mounts. The Bug Buster is a very compact scope, whose size compliments the 68 — and the eye relief worked out fine, so this was a happy coincidence. read more

El Gamo 68/68-XP – A futuristic airgun from the past: Part 3

Posted on by B.B. Pelletier ↓ 50 Comments

by B.B. Pelletier

Part 1
Part 2


El Gamo 68 is a futuristic breakbarrel from the past.

As I said in Part 2, Mac and I simply couldn’t resist shooting the El Gamo 68 that I got from reader David Enoch at the Arkansas airgun show this year. And from the numerous reader responses, I see that we’re not alone in our admiration of this futuristic-looking breakbarrel from the past. Many owners have .22-caliber guns, which really surprises me, because I thought most European manufacturers, and especially El Gamo, produced mainly .177 airguns in the 1960s and ’70s, when this was new.

Unfortunately, I’ve been unable to locate a trigger shoe for the rifle. I probably got rid of one when I sold or traded a Webley Tempest years ago, though now I wish I still had it. If anyone sees an old Beeman trigger shoe for sale anywhere, please let me know, because this rifle really needs one. read more

El Gamo 68/68-XP – A futuristic airgun from the past: Part 2

Posted on by B.B. Pelletier ↓ 15 Comments

by B.B. Pelletier

Part 1


El Gamo 68 is a futuristic breakbarrel from the past.

Mac and I couldn’t stay away from the El Gamo 68 once we started looking at it. The first thing we did was adjust the trigger so it would catch positively every time the rifle (carbine?) is cocked. When I got the gun, it failed to catch the sear several times every time the barrel was broken, but all that turned out to be was a trigger adjusted with too little sear contact area.

Trigger adjustments come in two different types. One adjusts the spring tension of the trigger return spring, and adjusting it will give a somewhat lighter trigger-pull. The other adjusts the actual sear contact area and makes the trigger release crisper without affecting the pull weight. That’s the type of adjustment the 68 has. It also has an adjustment for the length of the first-stage pull; and on this gun, I found stage one had been adjusted completely out. So, you started the pull on stage two — effectively giving the rifle a single-stage trigger. read more

El Gamo 68/68-XP – A futuristic airgun from the past: Part 1

Posted on by B.B. Pelletier ↓ 116 Comments

by B.B. Pelletier


El Gamo 68 is a futuristic breakbarrel from the past.

I told you that the Arkansas airgun show was unique in yesterday’s report. Today, I want to start a report on an airgun I bought at the show. It was on the table next to me throughout the show, and I thought for sure someone would snap it up before I got the money to buy it; but as fate would have it, the gun waited for me until the end of the show. Literally, an hour before it was due to be packed up, I made an offer to reader David Enoch, the gun’s owner, and he accepted. I now own an air rifle that I’ve been wondering about for the past 32 years.

I first noticed the 68-XP (it’s a little hard not to notice!) in the pages of a 1979/1980 Air Rifle Headquarters catalog. I was still in the Army, living at Fort Knox with my young family at the time, so the discretionary funds were too tight to buy many of the things that caught my fancy, but this gun was so odd that I both hated it and wanted to get to know it at the same time. read more

Benjamin 397C: Part 3

Posted on by B.B. Pelletier ↓ 59 Comments

by B.B. Pelletier

Photos and tests by Earl “Mac” McDonald

Part 1
Part 2


The Benjamin 397C (right) is noticeably shorter and smaller than the 397 long gun. It’s three inches shorter and more than a full pound lighter than the rifle we know today.

Before we begin today’s report, I’d like to give you an update on two projects. First, I’ve replaced the trigger in the RWS Diana 34 P rifle, so I’m ready to do the T06 trigger evaluation. It was the easiest trigger replacement/piston removal I’ve ever encountered! I used to think Weihrauchs were easy to work on, but now that Diana has gotten rid of the T01 trigger that had a couple small things you needed to know how to do, replacing a trigger in one of their rifles is about like putting batteries into an airsoft AEG. I did the whole job in 20 minutes, start to finish, which included set-up and clean-up time. A lot of the credit for that goes to the Air Venturi spring kit that was in the gun, because the mainspring is not under a lot of pre-compression. I’m sorry to see that product go, because it made a world of difference in the performance of the gun. read more