My Love/Hate with Springers !

JoeWayneRhea

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Apr 5, 2015
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OK so I have no reason to take my rifle apart as much as I do and clean it and change up little stuff like the spring and trigger settings .. OK let's blame A.D.D. or maybe I'm just plain old weird ..But here's where the love hate thing comes in .
I took my double spring set up out of my FWB to put it in a gun I just restored and put in one of JM single springs , worked like a charm and shot hard !! Sooo I order 5 tins of 10.34 pellets and I'm all set right ?? Well next rifle is for a guy who wants it hot as possible so I take mine back down and put in the powerful spring and wait on a new double spring for my rifle to arrive .
Wellll guess what ? Now with the new double spring set up my guns likes 7.33 and 8.4 best ...CRAAAAP !!! For whatever reason my Dumbass cannot remember that if you change just one thing on a springer it changes everything !! PCP rifles are easy .. Fill it up , load it , shoot the center out of the target ..
Springers are a big part black manic and Voodoo. Yes it takes a good gun and good ammo and optics ....But its that last hard to pin down part of what turns a good shooting rifle into one of the " Oh Wow " guns that keeps me shooting them .
 
Fully agree. Springers are complex systems where any change to a single part can affect the whole. 

If you have an urge to tinker and mess with your guns this can be a real problem.

After dealing with many self-created springer headaches, I have learned one key lesson. When you get a springer shooting well, LEAVE IT ALONE. This is my golden rule. No matter how strong the urge, do not peek inside. A well setup springer should be good for many thousands of shots. Very rarely is there a legit need to open up a gun. 

Nevertheless, I still break my own rules from time to time because curiosity gets the better of me.

R
 
R I gotta quit messing with my gun if I can :). I literally will have it shooting the lights out then I'll decide I'll polish the cocking handle , or this time try my hand at bluing , or try a new lube , or flip the springs and on and on and ....Well you get it .
I got two more guns coming Tuesday ....I'll take my curiosity out on them ..Gonna try and get them rebuilt and take to the Dallas Airgun show.
 
"JoeWayneRhea"R I gotta quit messing with my gun if I can :). I literally will have it shooting the lights out then I'll decide I'll polish the cocking handle , or this time try my hand at bluing , or try a new lube , or flip the springs and on and on and ....Well you get it .
I got two more guns coming Tuesday ....I'll take my curiosity out on them ..Gonna try and get them rebuilt and take to the Dallas Airgun show.
Buying new guns is the best release for the urge to fuss and tinker. But that has its shortcomings too.

In the big picture, these are good problems to have. 

Rob
 
Oh Man Joe!!! Are you sure. A 124? I've strung some of my very best sware words into incomprehensple sentences working on mine! I really love that POS. I have a wood jig that chucks up in my lathe I put the gun in (without stock) and use the screw adjust on the tail stock to take the spring in and out. You will get really good at crawling around looking for the safety/trigger spring. Damned thing has wings! If it's an old one like mine I so hope you can find an answer to the trigger. If you do, I'll send you mine to work on! Keep us informed
 
I can relate Joe....I have 1 springer and 2 gas rams. When everything is working great they are a joy......When they arent, it makes for a frustrating time. Once I get mine dialed in, I am even scared to just give the scope mounts a snug down but its necessary evidently so i will just have to do it. I have been using up all my extra pellets that I really dont like just to avoid the urge of trying different ones. I have about 300 Crosman 7.4 pointed pellets that my NPS TR77 likes ALMOST as much as the Premier Hollow Points that I have about 200 left of. From there I am sticking with Crosman 10.5 Gr Ultra Mags for 177 as both my springer and gas ram 177 loves these, and Crosman Premier Hollow Point 14.3 Gr in 22 that my Venom loves
 
"JoeWayneRhea"I probably have owned my last gasram .I had one and only one that would shoot well. But then again I most assuredly am NOT a good springer shooter . If it recoils hard my technique is just not good enough to shoot accurate ...A HW30 , Diana 34/, or my Mini no problem .
You attach the word magnum to any springer and I might as well chunk rocks .
I have alot of hobbies, and I like to keep em all as cheap as possible. Honestly I just kinda stumbled into this hobby due to the property I am at right now being over run with various critters. I was telling one of my buddies about the problematic critters and he told me about these new break barrels being really powerful and cheap. Now 95% of the critters are gone, and I am enjoying target sessions. I like the solid thud of the gas ram vs the twangy springer, but they both have pros and cons for sure.
 
I pretty much abandoned forums like this many years ago...but this thread title lured me in...simply because it captures the essence of spring gun ownership.
In the ancient Beeman/ARH days...velocity and accuracy hype was the norm...(even worse today) for spring guns....950fps... .07"ctc groups etc....
REALITY is: with the best conditions, if you hold yer tongue just right, after trying $100 worth of various pellets and 4 different scopes (they tend to self destruct) you finally shoot some decent groups 5 times that .07" claimed....BUT that's just for today...tomorrow your $700 darling has moved its 1.7MOA up and left/right (depends on moon phase)...self tune $100 parts...bought tune $200 plus shipping...now yer "darling" does all the above but "smooth as butter"....Repeat 10 times (different guns)...finally you have a 695fps R7 or HW30..that you kinda sorta can hit consistently with...(There are TX200/HW97 gun/shooter combos that impress..rare animals)
ACCURACY ISN'T EVERYTHING...ITS THE ONLY THING...
Enter the FWB 300s....honest .05" groups @ 10yds...20"@ 25yds..stays sighted in....self tune parts (hot spring,new bumper)$40 I have two that shoot over 700fps....6 to 8 oz crisp trigger...doesn't eat scopes...no recoil...no special hold or tongue position...hard to find a pellet that doesn't shoot well....A 300 is realistically a sub-MOA spring powered gun with a perfect trigger and no need for excuses or apologies to accuracy..
 
Yeah the ones I'm rebuilding don't leave the shop till they are right ...Some are easy , some are a natural pain in the AZZZZZ !!
I've found if I strip the guns down to bare metal and start there I'm getting the best results . Most guys with an issue with any spring rifle the answer is more grease ...Slobber it in every crevace . And for some unknown reason ...Never ever clean the barrel no matter what !! One I rebuilt recently the bore was so filthy I could BARELY force a brush partway down it . I soaked it overnight with Hoppes bore cleaner ...It looked like mud when I poured it out , but barrel shined up like a new penny and shot lights out
 
Now you've got me hesitating to go into my HW30s to put the Vortek in it. 

One thing you should take away is not to sacrifice your personal gun for others'. Don't be that plumber with the leaky sink.

So... which gun have you decided to try next, so as not to become too hung up on FWB300s? There are just too many nice airguns out there to ignore them all for one, however nice it may be.