Airguns

Everything else
21

My mom dug out my early 1980s pump airgun bb rifle – turns out it is a classic model, the Daisy PowerLine 880.

https://www.daisy880.net/

It had 35 year old BBs in it (!), and it still worked great, very accurate. Good thing I was an oiling all-the-things fetishist, even as a young lad! Had great fun plinking some cans and trees with my 9 year old son, using only the BBs left in the well from so long ago…

Of course I then had to research the current state of the art in airguns and it sounds like there are five types now?

  • spring
  • gas piston
  • precharged pneumatic
  • variable pump (mine is this kind)
  • co2

It seems like the current hotness in power-for-effort is nitrogen gas piston, typically barrel break so you “pump” the actual barrel down one time to prime it? Anyone have experience with multiple types of airguns and the pros and cons?

I also didn’t realize pellets are not only more powerful (more mass) but way more accurate as well. I had a bunch of pellets as a kid but I preferred the BBs as they are easier to load fast and shoot fast with, versus hand feeding pellets.

Anyways, I gave my old one away to a cousin who stopped by, and bought a new pump model in the same spirit / style to keep at grandmas place, this one:

It gets really good reviews:

22

I left the Crosman 2100 at grandma’s house. Overall a fine starter air rifle for BBs… as noted in 2004 🤣

I did have a bit of trouble with the “fiber optic” (really just neon plastic) front sight, which is a circle that I found difficult to square against the back sights properly:

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There’s a … surprisingly fantastic article about all this at the Crosman website:

https://www.crosman.com/sights-sighting-and-accuracy

I shot dozens of times but never felt I could get it properly lined up as the neon circle kinda wiggled against the back sights for me rather than “squaring up” on the edges as the old timey sight on my 1980s air rifle did. Anyway, I’ll probably get some kind of cheap aftermarket red dot sight for that rifle the next time I go.

I couldn’t resist getting one of the barrel-break nitrogen gas piston models for myself to see how it does.

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B016IMDBH2

Everyone complains about the scopes on these things, I guess I can understand why given a good scope is $50 to ~hundreds and these rifles are like $100, maybe up to $200 for the very fanciest models… some, including this one, don’t even include ironsights! I went ahead and bought one of the chinese aftermarket scopes that gets good reviews.

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B007UT3O4S

I thought about getting the .22 caliber versus the classic .177 BB caliber but there’s no reason I need more “varmint stopping power”, the rule of thumb for varmint hunting is that .177 is for birds and very small animals like mice, and you realistically need .22 for anything larger including squirrels and up.

This rifle is exclusively pellets, of course, and here’s the pellet shape guide, which I had no idea about, even as a kid I was clueless about why you’d use pellets versus BBs other than maybe weight and force I guess?

TL;DR basically domed have the best aerodynamics and are thus best for accuracy, beyond that it’s a specialty shape.

I gotta figure out where I can go to shoot this thing here in CA though, my back yard is way too small + neighbors and I don’t have easy access to “the woods” anywhere super nearby.

23

The state of the art sure has advanced since I was a kid.

Re: scopes, you can get away with pretty fragile ones for airguns. If people complain about durability, that’s generally durability on a rifle, where the impulses are a lot more severe.

24

OK, I got the Crosman Fire Nitro rifle and interestingly…

  • I assumed the scope would be pre-attached and sighted in, but you have to attach (and presumably calibrate) the scope yourself, I am waiting for the aftermarket scope so I’ll defer on that for now.

  • The barrel break mechanism is kinda interesting, I guess it’s analogous to the ol’ DOOM double-barrel shotgun. Slap the front with your hand to loosen the break, then pull it the rest of the way to compress the nitrogen piston. Takes a moderate amount of effort that should be no problem for an adult, but not something my 9 year old could (or should, obviously) do.

  • Continuing with the DOOM shotgun metaphor, you load a pellet into the breech once you’ve fully compressed the piston. Then snap it back up and you’re ready to fire.

  • I fired it dry (no pellet) and … wow, this is MUCH louder than I thought it would be. Which is surprising since the nitro piston models advertise themselves as 70% less noisy than spring pistons. I can only conclude that spring piston models must be loud as hell. This is dramatically louder than the Crosman 2100 pump. (Unless maybe firing with a pellet is quieter than dry? I dunno.)

So, yeah, I wasn’t really planning to fire this in my back yard but I definitely won’t be now – it is noisy enough that at least the direct neighbors would probably be concerned that I’m firing some kind of actual weapon in my back yard.

25

I finally got the adapters necessary to mount the scope. For $30, I gotta say the aftermarket scope is a great upgrade – having the option of variable magnification (this one goes 3x to 9x) and LED lit crosshairs (green or red, 5 levels of intensity, or off) is really nice.

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I’ve accommodated to the noise a bit, but this is definitely not a quiet air rifle. Imagine slapping a sizable piece of flat wood against another sizable piece of flat wood as hard as you can. That’s about the sound signature here. It’s not a gunshot per se, but it is a loud hard clap that would startle most people nearby.

26

This is actually a thing.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00MRAPIGC/?coliid=IXW4S1FAKTNUN&colid=38ZGON0HM1B21&psc=0&ref_=lv_ov_lig_dp_it

Just wondering if the quality of the plastic light pipe is the same. Doubtful.

27

Yeah it makes sense, for sure, mostly when you can line up both front and rear with them (the crosman only has a front neon green)

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… but I think “fiber optics” is just a fancy way of saying “clear neon plastic”

28

Dry firing (which on nitro piston air rifles is a BIG NO NO, can ruin the seals) is gonna be significantly louder than firing with a pellet in there. Give it a try with a pellet and you’ll notice an immediate difference.

EDIT: Apologies, seems you have been using it quite a bit. Enjoy! If you are looking for an extremely quiet rifle, though probably not as high quality as the Crosman, the Gamo Accu is the quietest I’ve ever used (in .22) and has an underlever to cock the spring, meaning no barrel breaking > more accuracy)

29

On high-end pistol sights, it is actually colored fiber optic. The action pistol competition circuit prefers black rear sights and a bright front sight, since the front sight is the main point of focus for fast pistol shooting.