Best Air Rifle?

[MarkD]

Sorry to wander off here, but hey birdmove, checkout this video on dogs killing rats at a chicken farm.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=90ywJZGmZXw

I knew dogs were good at killing rats, but not this good. Of interest to most anyone who doesn't like rats.

[MarkP]

I just sent an email asking Crosman for a new barrel. I felt kind of funny doing so like I was asking a favor but really it is them that owe me a decent product. Now that I am sensitive to the issue I see more posts from others who also feel that Crosman basically put this product out on the market with issues that they must have known about and that they must have opted to just deal with the complaints as they came up. How could it be otherwise? It is clear that others have had issues with bad barrels. One sentiment expressed more than once was how it seems that decent firearms are available for sometimes half the price of these not so decent air rifles. How can a gun, the heart of which is a barrel, regularly be sent out with a crappy barrel without the issue being known to the company? I can see an air rifle being more expensive than a powder burning fire arm because of the powerplant, but what is the excuse for the crappy barrels?

My last line was that I am game to keep trying barrels until I get a good one. Let's see what their response to that will be. Some months ago they had offered to refund my money. I foolishly did not act on that. New barrels would almost certainly cost them less so you would think they would be game too but if they have no confidence that they can produce one they might want to just buy me out. At this point they might just tell me to take a hike. That would make me a pissed off former customer.

Weirdly this evening I was getting some really good groups, the best I have seen yet, and yet a couple of times I swear I missed the entire 6" target from 20 yards. I did some testing with various pellet brands and the tightest fitting ones had the greatest energy. I tried shooting a couple of the pellets that I had pushed through manually. They were looser in the barrel because of whatever swaging and wear took place in the previous trip down the barrel and they were so wild that they nearly missed the pellet trap altogether. So snugger=better. Makes sense that a barrel so loose the pellets slide out by themselves would be the source of the poor accuracy.

[birdmove]

I am going to hope that Crosman will, in order to make a customer happy, send you a new barrel for free, even though your warranty has expired.

I own a gaggle of Crosman airguns, and they are decent.

Jon in Keaau/HPP

[MarkP]

The more I read the more examples I come across where people have gone through a couple of guns before they got a "good" one. Yet most of the comments about this gun refer to trying different pellets, using the artillery hold, breaking in the gun, etc, as though all this is normal for any airgun. After my experience with the two barrels in my possession being lousy I am bitter and all these excuses reek of bulls**t. Why would the Marauder, Discovery, or Maximus barrels be any better? That's what I keep coming back to. How can they not have fixed this problem already? What does it say about the company and by extension all their other products?

All this pellet preference crap comes down to which pellet fits least awful in the barrel. The best performing pellet was the Beeman Kodiak 21 grain. It was the largest diameter apparently. It actually hung up right at the muzzle and had to be pushed through. Though the tightest, while at the muzzle I could see light all around the pellet. All the pellets must be hemorrhaging air past them as soon as they get through the breech. And why is the breech so tight if the rest of the barrel isn't? Is it just a fluke of the barrel being pressed into the barrel block or is it to disguise the fact that the rest of the barrel is not up to par? I for one never dreamed that these barrels would be like they are. It kind of enrages me to read all these posts saying "Yeah, these rifles take a coupla thousand pellets to break in" and "Magnum springers sure are hold sensitive", and ""They sure are picky about pellets". It is like looking at a horse, discussing breed, teeth, and whether he has had all his shots while meanwhile overlooking that he only has 3 legs. If Crosman sells a gun, and they sell pellets, then I expect the gun to shoot the pellets OK and I expect not to be sent off on some wild goose chase.

Birdmove, sorry I never answered your question about the spring compressor. The NP XL has a screw in cap at the end and the pre-load of the spring is all provided for by the nitrogen strut. Pop the strut in, thread on the cap, and it is finger loose for the first few turns. The last turns of the end cap compress the strut a little so it does not "bottom out" when fully extended. That part I really like.

[Bill]

Thanks, Jon, for all your good advice.

I too had a lot of trouble with two brake barrel pellet rifles. Based on your advise I just purchased a Benjamin Discovery PCP and added an aftermarket suppressor. It is amazingly impressive. It is now sighted in for 35 yards and I can keep the shots in an area the size of a quarter. I also added a scope. Thanks

Bill

[birdmove]

Good to hear that, Bill! Break Barrels can be a disappointment. Whereas experience shooting smokeless powder rifles can be directly applied to shooting pcp's, CO2 shooters, and multi pump air rifle, a lot of regular rifle shooters buy a break barrel only to find it throws pellets all over the place. They can be made easier to shoot with a proper "lube and tune". But, if you can shoot a smokeless rifle well, you WILL be able to shoot a pcp, CO2 rifle, or a multi pump well.

Jon in Keaau/HPP

[MarkP]

See in my opinion this has nothing to do with it being a break barrel and everything to do with the barrel being a rusty piece of scrap iron. Multiple barrels in fact, the two I have in my possession now and the one on the first gun that Crosman replaced, and those reported by other posters on the net. Of course I am not sure about that first gun but the symptoms have been the same all along for me. That's part of the problem. Because break barrels have the idiosyncratic nature that they do, a simple mechanical flaw like this gets blamed on the nature of this style of gun.

[rocketman]

I've had my Beeman R9 for at least 12 years, never had a problem with it. German quality, guess you get what you pay for.

[birdmove]

quote:

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Originally posted by Bill

Thanks, Jon, for all your good advice.

I too had a lot of trouble with two brake barrel pellet rifles. Based on your advise I just purchased a Benjamin Discovery PCP and added an aftermarket suppressor. It is amazingly impressive. It is now sighted in for 35 yards and I can keep the shots in an area the size of a quarter. I also added a scope. Thanks

Bill

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Bill, here is a shooter comparing the sound of a Benjamin Maximus PCP air rifle, with, and without a TKO muzzle break:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kKZu6zio19o&t=19s


I put one on a CO2 rifle (Crosman Custom Shop 2400KT), and it made a huge difference in sound level.

The Maximus is a fairly new model from Crosman/Benjamin. It has a 2000 psi fill level, and most use a special hand pump to fill it. I know you have a Discovery (AKA "Disco"), but the sound level difference would be similar. If you want to look into a TKO muzzle break, google TKO airguns. They don't make them for break barrel models, as the don't work so well on that type. Much of the noise on a break barrle, is the mechanical noises of the spring slamming forward, or the gas ram slamming forward. Whereas most of the noise on a PCP or CO2 airgun comes from the muzzle as the pellet exits. Or from the pellet slamming into a metal pellet trap.

Jon in Keaau/HPP

[MarkP]

My tale of woe and frustration with the NP XL 1100 continues. I examined the barrel that came with the gun and saw that the bore was much more uniform than the replacement. I pushed pellets through it and found that the breech was tight, there were a couple of somewhat less tight spots further in, that the point just before the muzzle was basically loose, and that the pellet would hang up right at the crown. The head of the pellet would literally hang up. When the head was pushed through the pellet would move freely indicating that the skirt was loose in the barrel until the skirt got to the crown whereupon it would have to be pushed through. I set about fixing this with a round headed brass screw and some valve grinding compound. After hours of that I decided to file the deeply recessed muzzle back past the point of the existing crown to try to get past the problem spot. Before doing that I decided to try lapping the barrel to open up the breech and get rid of the sticky spots. It seems counter-intuitive, reaming out the breech because the pellet was loose near the muzzle but I figured that the pellet was getting necked down by the tight spots so eliminating them would result in a better fit at the looser spots. The crown I would totally re-do after the lapping process.

I chucked a #8x32 tpi screw into the end of my cleaning rod, cutting off the head and filing flats on the exposed threads to give more room for the lead. I wrapped teflon tape around the joint where the screw joined the cleaning rod so that it sealed tightly against the bore. This left about 1" of the threaded portion of the screw sticking out past the teflon seal. I inserted the rod from the muzzle until the screw portion was about 1/4" below the breech opening. The trick is to heat the barrel, in this case the breech block, not too much but some, so that the lead would not leave too many voids, then pour molten lead down into the breech so it forms an elongated plug, the "lap", inside the barrel and formed around the screw in the end of the rod. This lap accurately takes the shape of the bore and rifling in the section where it was cast which darn well oughta be good for the rest of the bore too unless you've got real problems. Fortunately the lead contracts as it cools and is easily pushed out the end of the barrel a bit, just enough so you can cut off the mushroom end and cut some grooves around the circumference. Don't push it all the way out or if you do be sure to get it back in lined up with the correct grooves. Then put some lapping compound on it. Pull it back into the barrel, which takes some force, then work it back and forth, smoothing out the rough spots inside the bore. By spending more time at the breech than near the muzzle you can actually taper the bore from breech to muzzle. I of course still had that loose spot in the last inch or two before the crown. Nothing I could do about that but it was smaller now in the sense that the pellets remained tight over more of the bore, not getting swaged as much in the earlier sections. The crown itself was a real pain. Try as I might the pellets still hung up like the crown had a ring of teeth. I finally put compound on the point of a metal pen and worked it around to knock off whatever edge there was.

Finally after hours of work I had the gun reassembled with the original, lapped and re-crowned barrel and...drum roll please...I had lost another 30 fps. It did seem to group better until it broke the latest new scope I had put on, naively thinking I had fixed that problem. I'm about ready to throw this thing in the garbage. It is supposed to shoot lead pellets, I naively assume again that they mean the 14.3 grain Crosman pellets, at over 900 fps and I am now barely getting 800 fps with those pellets. If the spring is still putting out the original power then the power not leaving with the pellets must be left behind in the gun causing mischief like banging the scope around. If the spring is getting weaker then that leaves the scope issue with no likely solution.

So what I have done to the barrel has twice now reduced pellet speed across the board. The reason I bought the second barrel was that I foolishly read on the internet that it was a good idea to chamfer the breech where you put the pellet in. In fact a nice radius was the real deal according to some guy named Cardew. Well I did that and immediately lost 30 fps. I also separately tried seating the pellets just inside the breech. You really have to push on the pellet with a small stick and then the pellet lets go and winds up 1/8" or so further in than you want because of course it suddenly gets easy once the pellet skirt scrapes through. Well you lose a lot more than 30 fps when you do that so there must be a lesson there and I think it is that you WANT the pellet to stick in the breech until the pressure really builds up. If the pellet is free to slide easily then the pellet just moves away leaving nothing for the piston to push against sort of like failing to shift into high gear when driving a manual shift car. If on the other hand the pellet sticks for a while then the pressure really builds up, the piston slows to a stop with all its kinetic energy now stored in the high pressure air, and the pellet has what it needs to accelerate much faster than the piston if/when it ever does let go. So making it easy for the pellet to slide that first inch or so down the bore is actually a bad thing. Or so I have gleaned from the net. Except for that little trick about polishing the breech end of the bore. Dunno how that could work for anybody given how it did the opposite for me. Gee, thanks Mr Cardew.

So now I am contemplating how to put sharp edges back into the nicely radiused breech port. Give it some toothiness to hold the pellet a bit longer. Or swage the bore closed a tiny bit at the breech although that would make the pellet too small from there on unless the pressure is great enough to flare the skirt of the pellet out as I have read it is. Or get another new barrel. No word from Crosman yet.