Bought this a while back from one of the good guys on AGW, was adversited as a 25mm tube gun but upon rebuild it had in fact 26mm internals. No problem, it's a .20 cal gun and I wanted decent FPE (14-15) out of it so the small difference in swept volume and extra grams of piston weight would come in handy, I thought. The rifle came to me with a Vortek high power kit and the piston was loaded up with weights. IIRC it was doing around 13.5 fpe.
A couple days ago I decided to strip down the gun and rebuild it but this time with an HW97 FAC spring, the snuggest fitting factory rear guide I had out of the bunch, OEM steel washer on guide, and an OEM piston seal. I added a JM tophat to the spring, and one single polished V-Mach metal washer was slipped into the piston. The safety button spring was replaced by a new JM spring. In moly I trust, so the compression tube got burnished with V-Mach moly, light touch on piston seal, thin film of Extreme Weapons grease inside action and on OD of compression cylinder. A little JM tar on the guide and very light coat on the spring.
Action reassembled, and upon firing it felt pretty good: quick recoil, significantly less surge than before but there was still some vibration due to the less than perfect spring-guide fit.
After about 50 shots I chronied the rifle: 725-730 fps with JSB 13.73 for 16 FPE. No wonder it was smacking the daylights out of my Gamo resettable at 25 yards, poor thing is used to getting hit by 12 fpe guns or less. And here's where it gets really interesting...With 11.42 gn H&N FTT's it's doing 845-850 fps for 18.32 FPE. Yes, 18.32 FPE.
Scope is a Bushnell Legend 5-15×40 MD on a one piece mount. Groups on "Test Print" page were shot wearing a thick jacket, nestled into the padded crook of my folded left arm, gentle contact with pistol grip, thumb up. 5 shots each from a seated FT position in mild 1-3 mph shifting breezes. Trigger pull is a couple pounds heavy for my liking
but it's a Rekord and breaks cleanly, so no problem there.
The "Shoot-N-See" target group was shot using a different method: Also seated FT position at 25 yards but this time the stock foreend was supported by my hand, using padded Anschutz shooting glove with fingers firmly cradling stock and applying moderate pressure to both sides. Supporting hand on left knee, moderately firm hold on pistol grip, thumb up.
All the JSB groups can be completely covered with a dime, from edge to edge. On the "Test Print" group up top, I held on the "(2)", and upon closer look there are 4 pellets through an oblong hole, the height of a JSB 15.9 .22 cal pellet.
It's a powerhouse for a 97. It may settle down a bit more since it was recently rebuilt, but I do believe the slightly longer barrel helps make more power, and of course the powerplant is sealing exceptionally well. Glad I decided to go the "old school" route for this particular 97.
I still have a new 97k .20 that I plan on customizing, so this long barreled 97 will be available for sale. Too many springers, not enough time!
Thanks for reading,
J
A couple days ago I decided to strip down the gun and rebuild it but this time with an HW97 FAC spring, the snuggest fitting factory rear guide I had out of the bunch, OEM steel washer on guide, and an OEM piston seal. I added a JM tophat to the spring, and one single polished V-Mach metal washer was slipped into the piston. The safety button spring was replaced by a new JM spring. In moly I trust, so the compression tube got burnished with V-Mach moly, light touch on piston seal, thin film of Extreme Weapons grease inside action and on OD of compression cylinder. A little JM tar on the guide and very light coat on the spring.
Action reassembled, and upon firing it felt pretty good: quick recoil, significantly less surge than before but there was still some vibration due to the less than perfect spring-guide fit.
After about 50 shots I chronied the rifle: 725-730 fps with JSB 13.73 for 16 FPE. No wonder it was smacking the daylights out of my Gamo resettable at 25 yards, poor thing is used to getting hit by 12 fpe guns or less. And here's where it gets really interesting...With 11.42 gn H&N FTT's it's doing 845-850 fps for 18.32 FPE. Yes, 18.32 FPE.
Scope is a Bushnell Legend 5-15×40 MD on a one piece mount. Groups on "Test Print" page were shot wearing a thick jacket, nestled into the padded crook of my folded left arm, gentle contact with pistol grip, thumb up. 5 shots each from a seated FT position in mild 1-3 mph shifting breezes. Trigger pull is a couple pounds heavy for my liking
but it's a Rekord and breaks cleanly, so no problem there. The "Shoot-N-See" target group was shot using a different method: Also seated FT position at 25 yards but this time the stock foreend was supported by my hand, using padded Anschutz shooting glove with fingers firmly cradling stock and applying moderate pressure to both sides. Supporting hand on left knee, moderately firm hold on pistol grip, thumb up.
All the JSB groups can be completely covered with a dime, from edge to edge. On the "Test Print" group up top, I held on the "(2)", and upon closer look there are 4 pellets through an oblong hole, the height of a JSB 15.9 .22 cal pellet.
It's a powerhouse for a 97. It may settle down a bit more since it was recently rebuilt, but I do believe the slightly longer barrel helps make more power, and of course the powerplant is sealing exceptionally well. Glad I decided to go the "old school" route for this particular 97.
I still have a new 97k .20 that I plan on customizing, so this long barreled 97 will be available for sale. Too many springers, not enough time!
Thanks for reading,
J
