Hw97 .20 experiences

Some things simply can’t be explained but after now decades of airgun shooting, and a vault full of some of the best and most accurate airguns available that now or have included Skout, RAW, FX, Air Arms, Weihrauch, BSA, Walter, Daystate, Uragan, Kalibrgun, Beeman, etc, in .177, .20, .22, and .25, for whatever reason, and with much more limited pellet choices to be had, the seemingly inherent accuracy of the .20 caliber, from my 10s of thousands of pellets tested, is without question.

There also is no question that the right .22 in terms of accuracy and lethality makes the .20 come into question, but I own and have helped others on this forum acquire and tune .20 caliber Springer’s that will shoot at 50 yards and under with 75% of the available off of the shelf pcps, in terms of accuracy. I don’t know why, this is just a fact.

Below is a target from my 18 yard indoor range, typical of my .20 Weihrauch HW97’s performance. Certainly, I have some select pcps in .177, .22, and .25 that will shoot groups averaging .10” or even better at the same distance, but there are many pcps that will not shoot as well as this Springer in .20, and other 20s that have come through my hands. At 50 yards, it will shoot inside 3/4” under light wind conditions.

Finally, I am certainly not bashing the other calibers. My experience only indicates that, for whatever reason, the .20s inherently seem to be consistently more accurate.

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Solid explanation! Bravo. It seems the breath of the 20 caliber pellet offering is not nearly the size of 177/22 and a lot of people are obsessed with trying different pellets, that's not me. Although I've acquired plenty of different pellets despite my efforts to standardize. And it appears 20s are a bit pricier. Only owning PCP's I'm starting to believe this is more of a springer thing. I've been seriously researching both pistols and rifles springers. I would be surprised if I didn't pick one up. Maybe even in a 20. 👍
 
Thanks again! The 97k blue lam came in last night and whew! you weren't kidding. Lottsa droop. I ordered another set of burris zees to compensate. I have 4 TX200hc and a TX200 rifle as well as a PS and never needed droop compensation. Thanks Weihrauch!

I am stuck inside right now and cannot get any further than 11m but it gives one hole at that range and no windage compensation is needed so I'm happy
(other than it sounds like you threw a banjo out a second story window...but its new).
I’m sorry, but I’m from the Robert Beeman era, and don’t understand how the 97K can have barrel droop, when the barrel and receiver are integral.
As far as I knew “Barrel Droop” is associated with crack barrel guns?
Also what caliber is your 97K?
 
I’m sorry, but I’m from the Robert Beeman era, and don’t understand how the 97K can have barrel droop, when the barrel and receiver are integral.
As far as I knew “Barrel Droop” is associated with crack barrel guns?
Also what caliber is your 97K?
My 177 Hw97 had some droop not alot, but it did. Another 22 97 I worked on was the same.
 
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Do you mean that your barrel was bent down or that Weihrauch put the barrel in wrong?
I would imagine that the Weihrauch contsruction is consistent?
Yeah you'd think so. I've worked on enough Weihrauchs and eleven years a BMW master mechanic to know in a perfect German engineering world there's hiccups. I could show you pictures or recent Weihrauchs that'd make you jump ship. Frankly it's appalling.

In any event, I believe I don't have enough experience with 97s to confidently label the ones I worked on as assembled wrong or the barrel droop is the norm. However the two 97s I worked on were two different calibers built five years apart. Maybe it was just a fluke. Given their construction, I believe they were assembled correctly and the droop was simply machined into them.

I "adjusted" both rifles as I do with every other Weihrauch that comes across my bench. This is important because barrel droop and spring recoil kills far more scopes than spring coil alone. I center every barrel up, down, left and right.

Even after "adjustments" my personal 177 97 shoots excellent. I haven't heard complaints on the other. Maybe he'll chime in and prove me right or wrong.
 
Yeah you'd think so. I've worked on enough Weihrauchs and eleven years a BMW master mechanic to know in a perfect German engineering world there's hiccups. I could show you pictures or recent Weihrauchs that'd make you jump ship. Frankly it's appalling.

In any event, I believe I don't have enough experience with 97s to confidently label the ones I worked on as assembled wrong or the barrel droop is the norm. However the two 97s I worked on were two different calibers built five years apart. Maybe it was just a fluke. Given their construction, I believe they were assembled correctly and the droop was simply machined into them.

I "adjusted" both rifles as I do with every other Weihrauch that comes across my bench. This is important because barrel droop and spring recoil kills far more scopes than spring coil alone. I center every barrel up, down, left and right.

Even after "adjustments" my personal 177 97 shoots excellent. I haven't heard complaints on the other. Maybe he'll chime in and prove me right or wrong.
Excellent response!
I have heard of barrels being cut with a favor in them. In FX’s the idea is to index the barrels so that if there’s a favor it is indexed to face up. I never thought about that issue in a 97!
Thanks,
It would be nice have you write an article about that if you had some kind of evidence to show it.
 
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Excellent response!
I have heard of barrels being cut with a favor in them. In FX’s the idea is to index the barrels so that if there’s a favor it is indexed to face up. I never thought about that issue in a 97!
Thanks,
It would be nice have you write an article about that if you had some kind of evidence to show it.

It's a pretty easy process. I optically center a known good scope, on quality rings, measure the scope height and test fire at 10 yards in my shop. Measure the distances from the POA to the POI. Subtracting the scope height plus a quarter inch for trajectory drop will give you a negative or positive number. A positive number will be the amount of droop.

You can measure lateral off axis as well.
Here's some test targets

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It's a pretty easy process. I optically center a known good scope, on quality rings, measure the scope height and test fire at 10 yards in my shop. Measure the distances from the POA to the POI. Subtracting the scope height plus a quarter inch for trajectory drop will give you a negative or positive number. A positive number will be the amount of droop.

You can measure lateral off axis as well.
Here's some test targets

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View attachment 445224

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View attachment 445226

View attachment 445227
Great picture showing excessive barrel droop. I bought a new HW50 for a friend last year and after mounting and optically centering the scope the gun shot 7 1/2 inches low at 10 yds. Minus 1 1/2 inches for scope height that equaled 60 MOA of droop! I bent his barrel and all was well. I asked the vendor how a gun like that could go out the door and I was told that most people shoot HW50's with open sights (?!) so it isn't an issue. Only if a buyer purchases a scope at the same time and requests the scope be mounted and sighted in would a gun with minimum droop be hand selected. FWIW, back in the day ARH and Beeman offered guns with "select barrel angle" for use with scopes so barrel droop issue isn't a new issue.
 
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I’m sorry, but I’m from the Robert Beeman era, and don’t understand how the 97K can have barrel droop, when the barrel and receiver are integral.
As far as I knew “Barrel Droop” is associated with crack barrel guns?
Also what caliber is your 97K?
Sorry I have been offline for a time. The HW97K blue lam in .20 has about 14moa droop. I have compensated and the rifle seems quite accurate and is smoothing out.

I truly cannot imagine why a fixed barrel rifle would have droop or why all but one of my Weihrauch rifles have droop. This has been going on for near two decades.
 
Sorry I have been offline for a time. The HW97K blue lam in .20 has about 14moa droop. I have compensated and the rifle seems quite accurate and is smoothing out.

I truly cannot imagine why a fixed barrel rifle would have droop or why all but one of my Weihrauch rifles have droop. This has been going on for near two decades.
I guess my problem is calling it droop.
Droop to me, is a function of the barrel and recievers alignment. That's why I associate that issue as crack barrels problem.

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If a barrel and receiver are aligned on their exteriors, and the gun shoots low it could be a bent (Drooping) barrel or a misaligned bore cut, otherwise its a miss fit barrel to reciever, and that should be visable on the exterior view of the gun.
 
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