That I hope is now behind me and onwards and upwards as they say.
I left you reading my Epic Saga post which saw me turn my back on Air Arms and the mighty Pro Sport due to many problems I had when trying to be the proud owner of Air Arms flagship Spring Piston Rifle.
I turned my back on them and returned to Weihrauch purchasing a stage two tuned Sandwell Field Sports HW97KT. I wont talk about the rifle or my outings with it to much as most of you will know the rifle itself is probably regarded as one of the finest springers out there. What I will say however is that it was a damn fine rifle and was pin point accurate which in part was aided greatly by the tune the rifle had done at Sandwell Field Sports.
However curiosity got the better of me and I soon started hungering after a Pro Sport again in the hope that I could find one second hand that didn't suffer from the same problems as the two I had previously had. It was at this time that I coincidently happened to bring the issue up with a good friend of mine who as it happened owned a walnut Air Arms Pro Sport in .177 and dressed in a lovely walnut stock and no longer wanted the rifle as he was truly hooked on the HW tuned Sandwell Field Sports rifles. We managed to work out a deal and before I knew it we had swapped rifles as he assured me his rifle did not suffer the same problems that my previous two had. For me it was a chance to reunite myself with this beautiful rifle and hope it was better built than my last two.
Sure enough I put the rifle through its paces at my local club and sure enough my mates word was true, it didn't suffer from the same problems. I could however feel that something wasn't right within the rifle. The accuracy was first rate but on firing the rifle it certainly sounded like it was missing a beat and twanged like mad. This concerned me as I wanted to rectify the problem and get the rifle shooting smoothly. This was also a relatively new rifle and was only about 6 months old and had hardly been used. A quick conversation with another good friend of mine who goes by the username Timmytree on the Hunting Life Forum and the Air Arms Owners Forum saw me book a date and time to go and see him so he could strip the Pro Sport down and take a look at what was going on.
So, one summer day I made the trip to see Timmytree and we went about stripping the Pro Sport in the workshop and drinking some lovely home made cider whilst enjoying each others company. The hours rolled by and the end result was simply worlds apart from when the rifle first went in. Timmy showed me that the workmanship is slipping somewhat in the Air Arms quality control department. The spring and spring guide were not a good fit with a lot of slack between the two. The innards of the rifle were only very slightly greased with a white tar similar to gorilla snot and the spring ends were rough. Some swapping of internal parts, polishing of others and regreasing the insides with real gun grease and the end result as stated was worlds apart.
An intensive power check over the chrono showed the rifle was very very consistent and was putting out 10.8ft/lb which was ideal as it still had some bedding in to do and would settle at around 11ft/lb all being well to keep it well within the UK legal limit of 12ft/lb.
So a quick zero check on Timmytree's private range and the rifle was smashing pellet on pellet at 25 meters.
The rifle was now everything it should have been before it left the factory and was so nice to shoot that it accompanied me to the local range most nights and was put to the test. Here you can see the rifle in action with a good friend of mine Si Pittaway.
The summer months continued in much the same way with the Pro Sport but eventually life got in the way and shooting took a back seat as mentioned at the start of this post. That backseat turned into six or so months of no shooting.
Thanks
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