Air Pistol Review

 Occasionally the club renders expertise to different airguns.

Gavin took up the challenge on this Industry Brand boxed break barrel unit.

From the engineering department: The first stage was to strip it back to its individual components. I was reasonably impressed with what I found, although all of the lubricants had dried out and there was a reasonable amount of rust in the cylinder and on the piston.

The cocking lever pushes the piston back via an external lug on the cast iron piston, a simple and elegant system compared to the usual springer setup. However, the piston stroke is quite short – I didn’t measure it but I’d estimate it to be around 40mm. Not surprisingly the seal is leather and was bone dry and filthy, but a quick clean and overnight soaking in some 0W30 synthetic engine oil brought it back to life.

The cylinder internals were marred by sharp edges from the various manufacturing cutouts, not unexpected, but disappointing as the rest of the fabrication was reasonably good. These were cleaned off with files and the rust in the cylinder bore removed as best I could with an improvised honing tool and various grades of wet & dry paper. Surface rust on the piston was removed with a wire wheel and said honing tool.

I’d noticed that the trigger spring was quite firm, so this was removed and replaced with a lighter version from my own collection. The trigger assembly is welded to the cylinder and unable to be dismantled without removing the peened over pins, so cotton buds and brake cleaner proved to be to easiest way to clean it followed up with oiling of the pivots and moly lube on the sear contact surfaces.

The barrel appeared to have some rust particles in the bore which didn’t come out with my normal cleaning routine so I resorted to using my brass wire brush set for the first time. I didn’t check to see the result as there was really nothing more that I could do if they were still there.

The leather breach seal was damaged so a replacement was punched out of an old trouser belt (which happened to be exactly the right thickness) and then soaked it in the same oil as the seal.

The fixed sights are pretty hopeless with no windage adjustment on the rear site which was also loose on its two tiny peened-over mounting pins. With a bit more peening the sight firmed up nicely but the adjusting screw was sitting in clear air. Trying to bend the tab to fix this was only going to make it loose again so I left it as it was.

With all the parts now cleaned and prepared the piston was installed with moly grease applied to the surfaces on the spring side of the piston and the spring itself, with more on the cocking lever guide pin, breach lock and pivot pin. Those pivots that couldn’t be separated were treated to a very small amount of a my special high-grade, low-friction oil.

Time for testing and unfortunately the results were every bit as underwhelming as I’d expected. Firm, but easy to cock, and the trigger now requiring less pressure and feeling quite reasonable in use.

Testing itself comprised multiple shots with two hands standing at about 3.5m. Only the best QYS pellets were used to give it the best chance of impressing me, but as you can see the results were abismal. There was no real accuracy although shots were generally in the same direction relative to the target. I also have virtually zero experience in pistol shooting standing with fixed sights so that wouldn’t have helped.

Power was equally disappointing. The paper target was stuck to a piece of coreflute on my pellet trap and at the 3.5m the pellets were unable to penetrate it, in fact many just bounced off. I didn’t bother putting it over the chrony as it probably wouldn’t have registered. I’d guess at maybe 2-3 ftlb (or less even).

At this stage it’s going back into the cupboard it came from. Hopefully other members might decide to take it home and have a play now that it’s working.

From my perspective it was an interesting exercise, not a lot of time spent but quite a bit learned and the satisfaction of bringing yet another airgun back to life. The next project is already on the bench and fully dismantled!