Saturday 23 February 2013

A Glut of Air Rifles

As many, many air rifle enthusiasts discover, the joy of airgunning can become an expensive business. What with pellets and maintanance, then scopes and other must haves for your rifle, and sometimes spares and repairs (though with a little skill and a decent set of tools, repairs and some spares can be done yourself at home!), it soon adds up. Luckily for me, a couple of weeks ago I was given 'a glut' of air rifles from a friend. They were all in a state of disrepair and needed varying degrees of TLC, so it will be my mission to fix these rifles and tell you about their progress as I go.

Note the bend on the barrel on the 1st rifle next to the BB gun
He called some months back to tell me he had some damaged air rifles I could have and all I had to do was pick them up. By the time the wifey took me to see him he had sorted out another four, two small scopes and two electric BB guns. This is what he gave me and what was broken or wrong with them:


  1 - .22 BSA Mercury with the barrel bent very noticeably upwards at the breech, no open sights, a SMK B2 spring fitted, and needing a good polish.

  2 - .177 Diana/Original Mod 16 which fires but will not move the pellet. It is needing a repaint.

  3 - .22 Relum Tornado which will not cock and is covered in surface rust with a chip in the stock.

  4 - .177 Norica Quick which is missing a piece of metal that holds the under lever in place. It also has a stiff trigger, but I think that is common with direct sear triggers as this rifle has.

  5 - .22 Sharp Innova which only holds one pump and is missing bits off the rear open sight.

  6 - .177 SMK B45-3 multi pump which jams and releases air after three pumps.


The BB guns have no chargers with them and the sights are Crosman, one a short 4x20 that actually looks more like a 2x20 and a 4x15 which is missing a mount.


Some of these air rifles are pretty easy to fix but will take a lot more time, effort, and money to get into top condition. I say some because not having had any experience with multi pumps before, I will have to trouble shoot for an answer to fix these and even then I doubt I will be able to get spares for the SMK. But this is what this blog is all about so hopefully it won't be long before the next blog with updates on how their restoration is coming along.

TTFN. 

Wing Commander Sir Nigel Tetlington-Smythe