Canadian Airgun Forum

Hello good folks, looking for some salacious info on usable materials to make a custom seal.
The backstory here is a very good condition LUCZNIK87 break barrel springer that I recently acquired.

The leather seal had shed many pieces and performed very poorly. The spring is in decent shape
but will be replacing that also.

What I cant seem to find is a list of viable materials that one could use to make a nice seal without trying to
find a part for a gun made in the 60's or so.

I have a lathe and some round nylon bar stock and was thinking of trying this and or a new top in AL that
holds a set of rubber o-rings. Which setup would be better of the 2?

I know that some heat is generated in tube so any guidance would be of great help.

Also is there any point of lightening or weighing down the piston assembly to improve FPS or accuracy?

Thanks much.

It's probably a clone of another kind of gun so I'd look into which and see what conversion seal the original takes. If you have the gun apart then post pix of the parts so I/we can ID them, plus measure the measure the receiver tubes ID in mm, or at least the pistons OD.
If you still want to make a seal then I suppose polyurethane or nylon. A good source might be aftermarket end bushings for a shock absorber, the spike type end which uses two puck shaped pieces. Rancho or misc brands makes urethane bushings that you should be able to get from an off road place for ~$1ea. Take one of those and lathe it to make your seal. I'm pretty sure they're big enough?? If not there are other parts like bump stops that are much bigger, or whatever other source of raw material you can find. I've also seen seals made of synthetic black rubber, but I'd think that's too soft to lathe? I think most rubber like that will harden, shrink or break down when exposed to oil/grease, which is why I don't use a nice new rubber one I have that fits a Diana 34.
Don't worry about the heat, it's hot but extremely short lived so it should never melt the material. You could also make a new leather seal from scratch but I'd consider that a last resort.