Tuning Avenger barrel crowning

[Fly]

I,m no expert on guns but I read all I can. All my life I have read rifles shoot better with a crowned barrel. As we know Avenger barrels come uncrowned. Mine shoots

as good or better than any air rifle I own. But I have to tell myself do not fix something that's not broken. But the question is will it shoot even better if 

I crowned the barrel? Are there any of you that have crowned yours & if so did it help, hurt or indifferance?  



Fly

 

[nervoustrig]

It made no difference with mine (.22 cal) that I could detect.

The facing cut at the muzzle looked like it was followed up with a random orbital sander. There was no apparent bevel to deburr the ends of the rifling, but pushing a couple of pellets through revealed no sign of a burr so it looks to me like the sanding operation is how the factory approaches it.

I went ahead and applied a bevel with the brass screw approach to be on the safe side but as I said, it made no meaningful difference with its accuracy.

I will add the bore was one of the roughest I’ve ever encountered so I smoothed it a bit with J-B and it doesn’t require cleaning nearly as much now.

 

[thumper]

Square is square and that's all that matters. 

If the face is cut square to the bore, and it's clean with no burrs, that's as good as it will get.

And I'd rather have that any day than something done with a screw and some grit in a drill......

 

[Raden1942]

Also most the time giving a new crown using a brass screw either increases accuracy or keeps it the same but occasionally it hurts accuracy. Usually it's because you didn't do it right. I messed up on my first barrel. I didn't rotate the screw position enough and it turned out miss shaped. If your gun is shooting well I wouldn't mess with it. My suggestion is to get a crosman barrel and practice first if you really want to do it but it's probably not necessary. 

 

[SeeOhTwo]

The secret to crowning the barrel with a brass screw is to spin the barrel and not the screw. Your crown job will remain dead center. Use paste and VERY light pressure.

Glenn in Texas

 

[nervoustrig]

Spinning the barrel is good if you can. However you can achieve a uniform bevel by simply orbiting the drill. Attempting to hold it in one place with downward pressure will inevitably have some bias that removes more material on one side. By orbiting the drill, the bias is randomized and a uniform bevel will result. 

 

[qball]

A crown is just the intersection of bore to the face of end of a barrel, it doesn’t really matter what shape it is as long as it’s uniform. The good old saying is don’t fix what isn’t broken. 


I would also recommend to polish the barrel just to reduce the need for frequent cleaning. These guns with a good tune shoot shocking well for the 299-449 price. 

 

[KatoKevin454]

I did Crown jobs on most of my cheap guns that had horrible grouping, It did wonders on those guns, mostly the Hatsans and the Mrods, now they are as Accurate as my HW100's, if the gun shoots accurately then don't mess with it, but if it shoots badly, doing a crown job won't hurt and in many cases will fix the issue,

But make sure it is the gun and not the shooter before doing any modifications....

and try several different pellets brands and pellets to make sure it is not the pellet.

 

[DesertSilver]

Here's what Steve of AVS did with his liberty barrel which I'm 99 percent sure is the same barrel as the avenger .



https://youtu.be/387OEhtYzkA

 

[Olshaky]

the key to using a brass screw or lathe in that matter is to do the job in small steps using optical help and cleaning the area frequently and using oil so that you make a slurry

 

[MongooseV8]

A crown is just the intersection of bore to the face of end of a barrel, it doesn’t really matter what shape it is as long as it’s uniform. The good old saying is don’t fix what isn’t broken.


I would also recommend to polish the barrel just to reduce the need for frequent cleaning. These guns with a good tune shoot shocking well for the 299-449 price.

qball nailed it. Dont confuse a 90* muzzle for no crown, as crown is just the name of a transition. If you get a barrel that isnt shooting well, a re-crown to a more traditional 11* might clean up the muzzle and improve your groups. But that seems to be a rarity with the Avengers. Shoot it first and prepare to be amazed.

My Avenger in 22 Cal, bought from PA late 2022 has a 90* muzzle with a relief bevel cut into the bore and the outside of the barrel diameter. So imo the newer Avengers wont benefit from the brass screw polish unless it wasnt machined correctly to begin with. And in reality you have a good chance of ruining a crown with the brass screw if not done straight. I have a Manson crowning tool that I use to cut barrels and re-crown that works amazing but its kinda pricey.

 

[crazyhorse]

I have crowned a few problem barrels with success. But the Avenger was very accurate right out of the box.

 

[nervoustrig]

For the first timer, I don’t recommend recrowning a known good barrel. There’s a lot less hand-wringing if you can instead take a barrel with an obviously bad crown like this one:

And turn it into something more like this one:

That will help build the confidence to take on barrels which fall into a gray area.

 

[Emu]

I do the recrown of my barrels with a tip and the drill:

quick and easy.