Spring Gun Tuning

[Rapidnick]

Just a thought. If the spring does not bear on surfaces why do tuners put grease on it.Is it to mask problems which should have been taken care of by the tune itself.If not, the problem which is being masked is surely one that needs to be taken care of. It will always be there!
HERX77 .

I don't follow this. Of course the spring 'bears on surfaces' otherwise it would be suspended in thin air and couldn't do its job which is to convert the work the shooter puts in when the rifle is cocked into a pulse which in turn expels the pellet from the rifle.

[Bulsaye]

Anyone thinking that the grease they just applied to their mainspring means they've tuned their gun is delirious. The grease is there to lubricate the mainspring, which is in contact with both the spring guide and the inside diameter of the piston. A tuned gun has much better fitting guide set which does keep the spring straighter, and THIS is what reduces spring vibration. The spring tar is there to supply lubricant to the snugly fitted guide. Tar-like greases are used because they are much better at staying put when the spring coils are freely released during firing. Loose greases and oils will be flung around all over the internals of the gun and migrate where they are not wanted.

[jeff0100]

Just reading through this thread, and really enjoyed it..I was wondering if the lubes used are still relevant? The original post was in 2006, so what are the preferred lubes these days ?

[Hsing-ee]

Just reading through this thread, and really enjoyed it..I was wondering if the lubes used are still relevant? The original post was in 2006, so what are the preferred lubes these days ?

The original lube scheme was from 1980, so it is a 'traditional' tune - as it says in the sub-title of the first post, for 'tuning the older springer'. It works for leather seal guns, 'O' ring seal guns and parachute-types and will give a smooth, consistent rifle which will become better with use and will not wear out. Dri-Slide will work well with the metal piston rings fitted to Webley Service and Feinwerkbau rifles.

It is a tried and tested tune, there are other probably simpler ways of effecting a tune on modern rifles like the TX etc, and I refer you to Tony's (bigtoe01) threads, or have a look at Jim Maccari's website.

Hot Sauce reel lubricant is the latest thing it seems, but I think Tony said you need to be careful about not mixing it with other lubes. With the internet it is much easier than in the old days to try out lots of different things, so get a rifle that is easy to strip (HW35?) and do some experiments!

[jeff0100]

The original lube scheme was from 1980, so it is a 'traditional' tune - as it says in the sub-title of the first post, for 'tuning the older springer'. It works for leather seal guns, 'O' ring seal guns and parachute-types and will give a smooth, consistent rifle which will become better with use and will not wear out. Dri-Slide will work well with the metal piston rings fitted to Webley Service and Feinwerkbau rifles.

It is a tried and tested tune, there are other probably simpler ways of effecting a tune on modern rifles like the TX etc, and I refer you to Tony's (bigtoe01) threads, or have a look at Jim Maccari's website.

Hot Sauce reel lubricant is the latest thing it seems, but I think Tony said you need to be careful about not mixing it with other lubes. With the internet it is much easier than in the old days to try out lots of different things, so get a rifle that is easy to strip (HW35?) and do some experiments!

Thanks for that,I'd like to try taking a rifle apart and tuning it so it's a good idea to get an old one.I've looked at a few videos on youtube and the HW's don't look too hard to strip.

Still not sure what lube to put on which bit of the gun though.I'll take your advice and have a look at Bigtoe's blog and the Maccarri site.

thanks

[Hsing-ee]

Thanks for that,I'd like to try taking a rifle apart and tuning it so it's a good idea to get an old one.I've looked at a few videos on youtube and the HW's don't look too hard to strip.

Still not sure what lube to put on which bit of the gun though.I'll take your advice and have a look at Bigtoe's blog and the Maccarri site.

thanks

You can get all the lubes in the original tune (post #1 in this thread) from the BBS's sponsor...

http://www.jsramsbottom.com/products...-lube-kit.html

Only £7.50, although I would stick to the suggestions in the first post rather than the Ramsbottom protocol!

[jeff0100]

You can get all the lubes in the original tune (post #1 in this thread) from the BBS's sponsor...

http://www.jsramsbottom.com/products...-lube-kit.html

Only £7.50, although I would stick to the suggestions in the first post rather than the Ramsbottom protocol!

That looks good, decent price too.thanks

[Herx77]

I don't follow this. Of course the spring 'bears on surfaces' otherwise it would be suspended in thin air and couldn't do its job which is to convert the work the shooter puts in when the rifle is cocked into a pulse which in turn expels the pellet from the rifle.

.

When cocked the spring dia expands and is effectively loose on the guide,held in position by the sear, and in mine, the rotary thrust needle bearings at the base of the spring.When the sear releases the spring it extends and eventually 'grips' the spring guide at max extention,any rotary movement taken care of by the bearing.
The spring movement mainly is expansion and contraction,with minimal if any slide,if properly arranged. Mine does not seem to suffer from my set up!.Only my imput.
HERX77 .

[torville]

Saw recently in wellknown . airgun magazine an article for young folk showing a can of "3-in-1" next to an airgun which kinda disappointed me as this oil is ,in my book a def.no-no if it gets in front of piston and even if it builds up in workings of springer-;iBELieve "3-in-1" contains silicone and molecules of this useful substance can nevertheless "clump" into diamondhard granules interacting under metal-to-metal friction and these indeed scarred c/cylinder of an airsporter I had AS a kid in the early seventies also piston washer lost it's zip drastically and in only a short time after I enthusiastically started dosing the entire action via loading-tap (fascinated by smoke).
Does anyone know for certain if there's a lot of silicone in the above as it's my theory that there are far better gun0oils to use with the spring-gun and those that claim rust-inhibiting properties may or may not contain the silicone molecules-;believe that [ballistol] and [jansonite] are two old-fashioned (shot)gun oils which were formulated before the spaceage and both remarkable for the rust-beating quality which has seen them stand the test of time appearing, as they do in sporting stores of today;[bisley] and [parker-hale] are two good oils which are stressed as purely mineral- only, as well as the budget[napier] and the rarely seen [hoppes] (pron.from polish surname "hop-ee") this trad.gun-oil of the U.S.A. known to be one of the oldtime rust-inhibitors without silicone involved and all extremely hot if they find their way in front of piston in more than the smallest amount tho' a tiny drop does no harm I reckon indeed the first airgun designers were delighted by the diesel phase at the core of the original concept sp-ring-gun circa eighteen sixty-six*regards .torville
*Havilland & Gunn/[quackenbush] nr.1&1/2

[torville]

Back in the eighties Cardew recommended popping [hw] spring-guide into piston as a simple way to add weight and a home-turned tophat at the breech end with thrust bearings on both parts to ease spring torque dynamics.regaRDS torville.

[Snooper601]

Back in the eighties Cardew recommended popping [hw] spring-guide into piston as a simple way to add weight and a home-turned tophat at the breech end with thrust bearings on both parts to ease spring torque dynamics.regaRDS torville.

It's the other way round!

Top hat shaped guide in the piston, short and light.
Long spring guide at the rear end, breech, ideally fixed to the trigger block to save damage to the rear block by rotational forces. Non moving part so weight is unimportant, meaning it can be long enough to almost touch the top hat when the spring is fully compressed.

Cheers

John

[leon1935]

I have a 1919 BSA Standard .22

Would the tuning guide apply to a gun of this age.

It is surprisingly accurate to about 30ish yards, further than that it is me...and Iron sights..

Leon

[Hsing-ee]

I have a 1919 BSA Standard .22

Would the tuning guide apply to a gun of this age.

It is surprisingly accurate to about 30ish yards, further than that it is me...and Iron sights..

Leon

Ideal for a BSA like that, although the parts should need very little polishing after all that use! You might need to buy or make a new piston washer from leather, or you could possibly get an adaptor for a plastic parachute washer. Have fun.

[torville]

This is a term coined by the late ,great gerald cardew,airgun boffin of the seventies and particularly interested in the [v-rok] mod.35 export with it's leather wasjer-;card reckoned that the piston washer,reciprocating back and forth is intended to scrape some lube i.e.whatever petro-chemical oil/grease is present in the action and either prepped on n/cylinder walls or emerging from "fuel store" on spring which he recommended as three teaspoonfuls two-thirds up mainspring ,"fuelglobule" nestling inside piston and a piston sleeve/grease shield to prevent too much flying off thru cocking slot onto walls of n/cylinder and from there scraped forward in front of piston with each shot and this scraped fuel righteously detonating in the diesel phase .
our experiments with the [v-rok] mod.80 show that with no lube there is only a popgun phase;with too much finding it's way in front of piston result erratic vel. and interestingly some diesel giving high reading but most excessive detonation/diesel remarkably hampering downrange performance with low vel.resulting.
our verdict that with modern [v-rok] piston without open cocking slot where grease can get flung thru there can be no call whatever for piston sleeve of thin stainless which would be superfluous but certainly have heard of ptfe/synthetic sleeve which might well reduce mechanical noise but any grease shield function redundant due to all grease being confined inside piston of modern [v-rok] pattern .
ideal fuelling we reckon is one drop of ramsbottom[sm50]via t/port ( allow cocked gun to stand a few hours) every three tins pell )note: first shots after fuelling use two heavy pell each time for a coupla loads until any excessive smoking dies away)and on rebuild smear of [abbey LT2] on area where piston washer meets piston so it remains in this slight groove also [moly paste] on skirt of piston and some on upper rear of n/cylinder cos piston gats pushed upwards as wellas backward on cocking and thus bears on this upper surface of n/cyl at rear action plus of cours an amount of grease on mainspring to lube coils but not so much to reduce efficiency in effort to dampen mechanical noise.regards.

[Hsing-ee]

This is a term coined by the late ,great gerald cardew,airgun boffin of the seventies and particularly interested in the [v-rok] mod.35 export with it's leather wasjer-;card reckoned that the piston washer,reciprocating back and forth is intended to scrape some lube i.e.whatever petro-chemical oil/grease is present in the action and either prepped on n/cylinder walls or emerging from "fuel store" on spring which he recommended as three teaspoonfuls two-thirds up mainspring ,"fuelglobule" nestling inside piston and a piston sleeve/grease shield to prevent too much flying off thru cocking slot onto walls of n/cylinder and from there scraped forward in front of piston with each shot and this scraped fuel righteously detonating in the diesel phase .
our experiments with the [v-rok] mod.80 show that with no lube there is only a popgun phase;with too much finding it's way in front of piston result erratic vel. and interestingly some diesel giving high reading but most excessive detonation/diesel remarkably hampering downrange performance with low vel.resulting.
our verdict that with modern [v-rok] piston without open cocking slot where grease can get flung thru there can be no call whatever for piston sleeve of thin stainless which would be superfluous but certainly have heard of ptfe/synthetic sleeve which might well reduce mechanical noise but any grease shield function redundant due to all grease being confined inside piston of modern [v-rok] pattern .
ideal fuelling we reckon is one drop of ramsbottom[sm50]via t/port ( allow cocked gun to stand a few hours) every three tins pell )note: first shots after fuelling use two heavy pell each time for a coupla loads until any excessive smoking dies away)and on rebuild smear of [abbey LT2] on area where piston washer meets piston so it remains in this slight groove also [moly paste] on skirt of piston and some on upper rear of n/cylinder cos piston gats pushed upwards as wellas backward on cocking and thus bears on this upper surface of n/cyl at rear action plus of cours an amount of grease on mainspring to lube coils but not so much to reduce efficiency in effort to dampen mechanical noise.regards.

I think that is too much lube; Cardew's experiments were fine on the leather-washer out-of-true-cylinder guns of the time, but modern rifles work well in the pop-gun phase and do not NEED the boost from 'fuel'. If you over-lube with a drop of SM50 every 1500 shots you will get diesel shots and inconsistency generally, weakening the spring and losing accuracy. The combustion theory is a controversial one, even during Cardews heyday - in 1981 there was an experiment with a DRY lubricated FWB Sport which made a healthy 11 ft lbs. Note this rifle had a plastic parachute seal and the legendary FWB cylinder which is made to extremely close tolerances.