Catch-up Time

Been a while since I've done a bit of an up-date.

Picked up a pretty nice scope at Cabela's here in Winnipeg. It's a Stoeger branded air rifle scope, 3-9X 40 mm with A/O. The optics are clear and bright, and it focuses down to 10 yards at the full throttle 9X. I think I may have stumbled onto a deal at 69 bucks before taxes. I'll have more on this once I get it mounted and shot. I couldn't find a country of origin on the packaging, or the scope it's self. The plastic wrap has a few words in german and english on it warning that the wrap should be kept away from children...
Just as an aside, there's various and sundry Stoeger, Browning and Ruger air rifles in the bargain cave that I did not buy. There's too many springers sitting in my closet, not seeing the light of day. Pricing may be of interest to those with a bargain bent.

I ordered in a .177 24" Crosman bbl. I mounted it on the 1701-P just for chuckles. I couldn't get it to group. 5 of the Crosman ultra mags went into an inch and a half at 12 meters. Didn't fare much better with the 8.2 gr meisters- best I could get with them after several efforts was 5 into 3/4" at 12 meters.

I took the bbl off, and ran a lead slug up the bore. Very tight at the leade, loose in the middle, and then snaggish at the muzzle. Both ends of this bbl are going to need work. Bbl has a flat milled into it at the midpoint. It appears to be for a bbl band set screw. It's off-set to the transfer port inlet by a good 5 degrees. I'm hoping this isn't what's going onto the .177 Disco... At any rate, I'll get it to shoot. The semi-fine crosman polish is gone now from the exterior finish. It's been replaced by a porous surface that was drenched in cold black, and not even carded. Hopefully the 24" .22 bbl that accompanied it will shoot. I have yet to mount and test it...

Had a look at the Crosman M-4 .177 tonight- the pumper version. I'm tempted to buy one, if that butt stock will adjust for more length... Was a bit surprised by the forward weight of the gun. It's probably quite a fun shooter, as is, out of the box...

The 1701-P is fairly well broken in now. I'm getting the classic sine-wave curve from a 2900 psi fill, with a good 48 usable shots, starting at upper 420's, peaking at mid 480's, and then dropping back down. There are more shots after those 48, but drop becomes a noticeable concern. I have an older 24" .177 bbl that I will get onto it for test purposes. There's much ahead of me yet, with transfer port experimenting, and playing with the hammer and hammer spring adjustments.

A point of interest is how the wandering pump arm pivot roll pin affects velocity in the crosman pumpers. In .177 with a 24" bbl, that sliding pin is good for an 80 fps variation over ten pumps~ and that's with the roll pin just starting to sit on it's sloped edge on one side... that variation of course, being a drop in velocity.

Hopefully, the next few weeks will see me get some of these air gun to-do projects done. And it's already been 5 months since I shot a QB of any kind...

Regards,

Doc Sharptail

The 24" barrels are all from Discoveries these days- Crosman stopped producing the 24" units from the old 1760's about a year ago- thus the cut-out in the middle. No idea why they did this when they use them on their "Custom Shop" guns as well...

That's what I figured the milled flat was for. Gotta guess right sometimes :icon_mrgreen:

Picked up the M-4 tonight. Pumper madness is still with me yet. :crazy: Pix to follow. I actually like some points on this little gun- especially the way the pump handle acts as a guide for the pumping motion. Wonder why this wasn't thought up earlier, like 40 or so years ago when the really good pumpers started surfacing. I may actually be able to use the sights that came with the gun. About time rear peeps started catching on...

Regards,

Doc Sharptail

Dis-assembly/re-assembly can be a bit tricky with the M-4.

Briefly, there are parts missing from the gun from the factory~either that, or the EVP off the Crosman site is heavily typo'd....

There's supposed to be 2 stock weights in the grip handle- only one present in the gun. It's also missing an alignment pin for the plastic grip pieces. Neither issue has a bearing on the performance of the gun.

Regardless, the bbl is now clean, which is what I set out to do. Sort of suspect this bbl is U.S. made- it's got numbers roll stamped on it that make no sense to me at all.

There's a bleed hole in the valve, but no restrictor washer in the transfer port opening in the valve. Hopefully I'll get to shoot it Monday evening sometime. I'm not expecting much in numbers. I'll have to make a pin block for getting the pump handle roll pins off, and that is going to take a bit of brainstorming.

Regards,

Doc Sharptail