HW/Weihrauch My new gun has droop.

After running out of elevation adjustment on my peep sight on my very new to me Hw50 I eyeballed the barrel angle. Sure enough it's got droop. You can see it here.
20250924_173049.jpg

This is not uncommon in late model Hw50s so I figure I'd run through it here on the forum for the benefit of others. The cause on this one is the fixed wedge that sets the lock up isn't set properly. It's rotated so the breech sits on its high corner. You can see the witness mark under the left side of the breech step between the chisel and breech seal.
20250924_173257.jpg

You can see the matching witness mark on the high point at the top of the fixed chisel.
20250924_173318.jpg

There's a few ways to deal with this.
If scoping this rifle without messing with the rifle itself I'd recommended using a one piece Sportsmatch brand drooper mount. Some larger scopes don't fit one piece drooper mounts so the next choice would adjustable rings. There's a few out there but few are worth their salt. The ones that are, are expensive. Sportsmatch and Burris Signature come to mind.

I'm putting peeps on this rifle and I'm out of elevation adjustment. My simplest choice for peeps is a shorter front sight.

Now if I want to address the droop in the gun itself, there's a few ways I might go. First is to machine down the high corner of the fixed chisel. That would allow the breech to rotate to a lower position bringing the barrel up. Machining that down between the compression tube ears with hand tools is dicey.

Another way is I could remove metal from under the breech at the witness mark but that might turn into an eyesore that I'll have to look at every time I load the gun.

Both of those last two ways could go horribly wrong if I removed the slightest amount too much metal. Then the flexible breech seal would set your lock up point. At least until it smooshed flat and the breech hit metal somewhere.

The last way I know to address this is to bend the barrel up a tick. This gives some people the Willys but I do it all the time.

Stay tuned how.
 
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After running out of elevation adjustment on my peep sight on my very new to me Hw50 I eyeballed the barrel angle. Sure enough it's got droop. You can see it here.
View attachment 596385
This is not uncommon in late model Hw50s so I figure I'd run through it here on the forum for the benefit of others. The cause on this one is the fixed wedge that sets the lock up isn't set properly. It's rotated so the breech sits on its high corner. You can see the witness mark under the left side of the breech step between the chisel and breech seal.
View attachment 596388
You can see the matching witness mark on the high point at the top of the fixed chisel.
View attachment 596387
There's a few ways to deal with this.
If scoping this rifle without messing with the rifle itself I'd recommended using a one piece Sportsmatch brand drooper mount. Some larger scopes don't fit one piece drooper mounts so the next choice would adjustable rings. There's a few out there but few are worth their salt. The ones that are, are expensive. Sportsmatch and Burris Signature come to mind.

I'm putting peeps on this rifle and I'm out of elevation adjustment. My simplest choice for peeps is a shorter front sight.

Now if I want to address the droop in the gun itself, there's a few ways I might go. First is to machine down the high corner of the fixed chisel. That would allow the breech to rotate to a lower position bringing the barrel up. Machining that down between the compression tube ears with hand tools is dicey.

Another way is I could remove metal from under the breech at the witness mark but that might turn into an eyesore that I'll have to look at every time I load the gun.

Both of those last two ways could go horribly wrong if I removed the slightest amount too much metal. Then the flexible breech seal would set your lock up point. At least until it smooshed flat and the breech hit metal somewhere.

The last way I know to address this is to bend the barrel up a tick. This gives some people the Willys but I do it all the time.

Stay tuned how.
Unless you are off a lot, you may be able to lower-modify the post in the front sight.
 
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I just expect to bend all of them now, but sometimes get lucky and don’t have to.
I pretty much do too. It's no big deal I check the barrel angles on every gun I do. I have very few problems with scopes because I set the barrels close to the optical center of the scope. Scopes last longer on springers if they're not run at the extremes of their adjustments.
 
Unless you are off a lot, you may be able to lower-modify the post in the front sight.
Its still 2" low at 25 yards. The fixed economy Weihrauch sight is probably low enough to fix this. I actually like the fixed economy sight better than the interchangeable one for a number of reasons. Since changing the front sight wont make the rifle scope ready I'll fix the barrel angle another way.
 
I've read about guys bending barrels to cure droop.. do you not consider this an option?
Seems to me your approach is less scary.
I do consider bending the barrel. I bend barrels all the time. On almost every gun. Up and down and side to side. I've done it dozens of times. However some guns bending the barrel isn't the fix. You need to properly diagnose the cause of the droop first.
 
Reading (looking) at your other post with the Tac sight all the way up, barrel droop was my first thought but as it was your brand new rifle, I bit my tongue.
I would get the DREMEL and get to work on that wedge..
Good luck..
I might just do that. It's got to be done very carefully. Probably removing a couple thousandths will fix it. A couple over will trash it. Removing metal is always easier than putting it back. There's no room for error here.
 
I might just do that. It's got to be done very carefully. Probably removing a couple thousandths will fix it. A couple over will trash it. Removing metal is always easier than putting it back. There's no room for error here.
A Dremel is better suited to polishing fingernails. I have one and never found a use for it yet.
Crack the whip on the construction crew and get a lathe and a milling machine in your shop 👍
Take measurements from your other’50 and do it right. 😉
 
A Dremel is better suited to polishing fingernails. I have one and never found a use for it yet.
Crack the whip on the construction crew and get a lathe and a milling machine in your shop 👍
Take measurements from your other’50 and do it right. 😉
I have two dremels and a small HF motor tool. They're handy to have for my plastic model airplanes and odd house hold repairs. I haven't used them on airguns because they lend themselves to wavy irregular results. I will have a lathe and a milling machine in the shop but that's a ways off.

Doing it "right" would probably be melting the chisel braze and rotating it flat to the breech. Unfortunately that would likely compromise the fork braze and I'm guessing damage the bluing.

For now I'll probably see where the shorter front sight gets me and if necessary bend the barrel just enough to use it. That chisel block corner may eventually wear into the breech block, bringing the barrel up. Although that might not happen in my life time. I've seen worse rotated fixed detents on older guns that only had minimal wear.

When the shop is nearer completion I'll pick your brain about machines if you don't mind. Thanks

Stay well
Ron
 
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