Canadian Airgun Forum

It's a shooter not a safe queen, been used and abused since about 1955 I guess. Bears serial number 005172, putting it in the mid-1950's anyway as I understand the history. About 125,000 of these were made in a handful of variations. This one has a smooth black finish on the frame which is largely intact. The finish on the barrel shroud is mostly gone from handling. There's the odd bash and ding from mishandling, but the original black plastic grip panels are intact. It showed up yesterday on my local Craigslist - don't know why I was looking for airguns on Boxing Day... oh, wait, yes I do; my best present was a nice new pair of waterproof low-cut Sorel boots. And they're great, really! Haven't bought myself a nice pair of boots in forever so this is wonderful especially with all the slush I'm having to shovel lately.

But yeah... Christmas morning there was no airgun under our tree. Of course I was hoping for a Leshiy but knew that wasn't going to happen. Even a fun plinking target or some pellets would have been nice. But no, I got a couple of little hand crafted things from my son - a 'pocket' he sewed from some scrap cloth and a pair of glued-together little boxes made of miniature popsicle sticks - and some little bits and pieces of nonsense from my wife and daughter. Leaving me feeling like treating myself. So yeah, I was looking on Craigslist on my phone and WHAM, there it was! Beaten up, missing the rear sight blade and adjuster, missing front sight blade, a hairline crack in aluminum shroud where the cast pivot flange meets the barrel round shroud, lots of wear, but functioning nicely. Anti-beartrap is functioning perfectly; no way it's going to fire as long as the barrel is bent down for loading.







The pivot pin was wandering out slowly when cocking, so I made a new one of polished drill rod, fitting it snug at one side. Of course I'll be pulling everything apart and cleaning up whatever's not quite right. But as soon as I got home from a coffee shop meeting with Dustin, a minor collector with a lot of enthusiasm from just up the road, I gave it a drop of oil in the cylinder and a string of shots over the Chrony F1 with H&N Finale Match 7.56gr wadcutters. It gave me ten shots ranging from 381fps to 389fps, most around 384fps. So 2.5fpe. Weak, but very close to factory spec and that's awesome. The action is smooth with no play. The trigger is an early enough model to be adjustable, though it feels good enough that I might not mess with the setting.

I'm surprised at the aluminum shroud. I had studied Leonard's excellent contributions on Network54 some time ago, but somehow the barrel liner cast into aluminum escaped my attention. I see it now, looking at the close up pictures of the muzzle here - http://www.network54.com/Forum/681456/t ... 404822/2/W - and of course it makes sense, as they  had to integrate the cocking arm pivot pin in a compact yet strong manner. Think I may even see a similar hairline crack on one of the pistols pictured in that thread. It doesn't look like it compromises integrity too badly. A simple compression fracture in the aluminum, with the steel barrel liner probably plenty strong to prevent it ever breaking all the way around. I'll think about perhaps having a precision welder friend (guy makes high end bikes, prosthetic limbs, thoroughly expert in aluminum, titanium, stainless, any sort of TIG welding - Toby Cycleworks if anyone's ever looking for top of the line machining and welding) run a small bead through the crack then file it down again, but probably won't bother. I've seen a lot of folks say you need the wooden cocking ball, but I'm having little difficulty with cocking. Seems smooth and no harder than a Webley Tempest, with the heel of my left hand up against the ramp on the front sight mount or even not touching that.

So, any thoughts folks? I'm pleased as heck of course. Late Christmas for Gerard! Haven't bought myself an airgun in a while, and was frankly feeling pretty well satisfied with my small collection, but this is a treat. Especially the restoration bit. I'll have a go at making a new adjustable rear sight blade, though of course buying an authentic one would be great - anyone got one sitting in a box? There's a couple of sharp little dings just below where the rear sight used to be, so it looks like the pistol got dropped right onto it and smashed that off. The elevation adjustment works fine and is intact. I'm confident I can make a new front blade easily enough.

Quite a relic for an operational air gun.

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Best Wishes
Daryl

Yup, about 6 years older than me so relic it is. Just made a new front sight blade for it so I can get a bit closer to seeing how it groups... or rather how much technique I'm going to need with this thing to get it to group for me. Looks like it'll be every bit as challenging as my Webley pistols. If I can manage 2" groups at 10 metres I'll be happy, 'cause right now the shotgun spread is more than double that size. A rear sight blade will likely help a little.