I see you post frequently about the 98 and the 54. Which do you find more accurate?
I'm curious because it seems contradictory that you say that spring guns are perfect from the factory and tuning is not needed, yet you clearly enjoy your heavily tuned 54.
Also if the 54 is your most accurate springer to 100, why don't you like other fixed barrel designs like the 97 and TX200.
Genuinely puzzled and looking for insight.
Happy 4th!
I like HW in break barrels for accuracy and ease of shooting repeatedly without fatigue shot per shot.
The D54 was introduced to me years ago at a Big Five store near the high school I would have graduated from in Kentfield, CA.
I first held the thing and felt it was not delicate and fine and balanced like a regular HW Break Barrel with an obtrusive right hand side-lever on the right side of the stock misaligning my own "sense" of how a sidelever rifle can be balanced properly to shoot offhand and also to control the recoil. The rifle is heavy and they would not let me "test shoot" it.
I avoided the D54/D48 (I knew and held both models) until a forum topic was entered on the side lever and I explained my problem with them and then a professional sent me his own air rifle .20 D54 he had tuned up himself.
First of all, every sidelever in D54 can be tuned to racehorse performance and that is what was done on this rifle I borrowed from Hector Medina in Diana.
It had a cracked grip where it looked like the sidelever scraped off the wood in the top pistol grip and the stock was the ugliest stock I had seen and when I shot it I found shooting it with concentration on the first shot made that one first shot accurate every time without any pushing back of the rifle (D48 on rails) or scope mounts holding his scope: a Traditions 3-10X Black Powder Scope centered and aligned in bore to be a match rifle.
I asked him to make me one!
So he did!
The HW98s with scopes are pleasant easy and enjoyable to shoot repeatedly to the point of running out of pellets in a tin.
The D54 .20 with Traditions Black Powder Scope 3-10X 40mm and Zero Recoil rings and mounts make the rifle shoot as many shots as you are physically capable of in a standing position; but I now just "check it out" from time to time to make sure the zero is still there.
Elevation at 100 or so yards with the stepped crosswires of the Black Powder Scope make it possible to use them alone; or simply go ahead and adjust for W and E at that range and continue firing.
It is a good rifle and it was personalized in request.
The .20 is capable to do more than .177 or .22.
I wonder what the .25 D54 could do........