N/A Inertia Assisted, Lightweight Top Hat

[Steveoo]

It's actually you boys on your side of the pond, enjoying 12 ft lbs plus (and not worrying so much about down tuning) that are getting it right.
This constant of down tuning, and soft cycling with plastic parts that is seeing target flight time increasing, bringing more curved traj, greater wind effects and the thermo sensitivity of plastics into the equations.
They are only testing the effects of fitting the plastics and the wonderful damped cycle, but forgot about the effects of slower vel, temp effects and reduced weight in the piece.

Example...
You have all fired that perfectly damped favourite gun (with tight Delrin guides) and enjoyed a one holer, only to wake the next morning, stroll down to the range all confident with your new internal fittings, only to see the pellets inexplicably shoot to a different point of impact....Left wondering WTF has gone on...
It's the too tight a Tol plastics and the chilled morning air impacting the temp sensitive fittings..
Sure my steel tuned gun might sound a bit less damped, even a bit clunky, but it shoots to the same point of aim on that following morning, even if that initial group might be a few mm bigger....
This is what we have been getting wrong...

The improvement in pellet quality and diverse type bought much of the accuracy you all been seeing...not so much those kits....but the two going hand in hand makes one believel it must be the plastic ....It ain't!

 

[dormitionskete]

Last October, when our HW97K started to break itself apart again for the third time, I got fed up with fixing it, and we bought a ProSport to replace it. My only regret about it now is that we didn't buy one from someplace in England, made the way they use them there, rather than one made for America. I just didn't think of it at the time.

And I agree with you about plastic and Delrin, etc. I can't stand plastic in or on guns of any kind. Wood and steel is the way to go, IMO!

 

[beerthief]

Last October, when our HW97K started to break itself apart again for the third time, I got fed up with fixing it, and we bought a ProSport to replace it. My only regret about it now is that we didn't buy one from someplace in England, made the way they use them there, rather than one made for America. I just didn't think of it at the time.

And I agree with you about plastic and Delrin, etc. I can't stand plastic in or on guns of any kind. Wood and steel is the way to go, IMO!

I bought mine from AOA and had it sent to be tuned @ 11.2 FPE , and "smooth cycle as possible" wonderful shooter for the last 3 years ,and i shoot a lot .

 

[dormitionskete]

When was that? I haven't seen them on their website for years!

I like AOA. I would have bought it from them if they had them in stock.

But you know how it is now. It's hard to find any airguns in stock anywhere. And if you find one, you'd better grab it, or it'll be gone, and who knows when you'll be able to get another one.

--

AOA does not appear to be an Air Arms dealer anymore.

 

[KWK]

Seems to be a fair amount of, let's say "rumors"going around regarding the prewar BSA's last few days. May I suggest forum members seek factual information on the Vintage Airguns Gallery instead of such rumors.

 

[Steveoo]

There really were no rumours, except for maybe the negative ones.
The quality of the steel, fitting of loading taps and tightness of breech lock ups on these old guns were carried out to an over engineered level. The quality of the steel and bluing will never be seen again. Solid billets of steel for cocking mechanics. No pressings, or plastics.
They were let down only by the quality and availability of the pellets, at least until the 80s.
With modern pellets which push the 4.6mm and 5.6mm territory, they perform almost identically to the higher quality springers of today and a fair bit better than the average. It's only the lack of willingness to scope sight them that they cannot match the modern gun at the 40 plus yards, but even then I've seen them matched when wearing aperture sights...

Sure, there has been a big passage of time where you would expect big advancement, but it's not the case.
Production costs got in the way of the that. If anything springers went in the opppostie direction for 10 years in the 70s. Where no Airsporter matched the the build quality or accuracy of those LIncoln Jeffries/ Improved model Ds from 30 years earlier. You had to wait for the 80s to get the HW77 to do that, a gun never really bettered since.

 

[beerthief]

Guess i better start a seperate air gun fund ? I would really like a nice shooter with ok looks . Really would not pass on a beater looks as long as it was re built and ready to shoot .

 

[Steveoo]

Apols for taking it off thread.
I'll share this crazy idea I once tried to boost a Tempest in the 90s.
I machined down the guide rod (well, cylindrylic ground it for super high finish) then machined up a guide to go over this, creating a piston.
Unlike the OP of this thread, I did not drill a relief hole to let the air out, but instead purposefully created piston pressure inside the outer guide being compressed on the inner, with the dumb idea of increasing preload (small volume of air compressed inside the guide) ....a tiny little piston...
I could simply have added preload slip washers, but in this way not buckling the spring over against the piston due to overly piston packing in the short cylinder.
It worked too..
However, in the end, I realised the Tempest was only going to be any good with less pre load than it already had OEM as I could barely hit anything past 7 yards due to it's comedy recoil...but I was power hungry in those days and needed to try things.