I have just received a gift of a book called the Air Rifle and Air Pistol Maintenance and Repair by Q Cobham, published 2006. I believe it was purchased on a well known auction site (eebé item 8426838317).
I have no financial interest in this book, know nothing of the author, and this review is as objective as I can be.
An interesting book, published by mini-maxi publications. Email mini-maxi@tiscali.co.uk. It costs £18.
It covers almost exclusively collector's guns and only a handful are current production models. Most are British or European guns and three are Chinese.
It is 208 pages long. The first 46 pages are taken up with chapters on safety, law, storage, cleaning, basic maintenance, woodwork, blueing, rust and so on.
It's the next 160 odd pages that make this book really useful. There follows a guide to stripping down about 40 airguns, complete with hundreds of very sharp but small black and white photos. Each gun covers between about two to five pages, which are A5 size, landscape.
There is a brief description of each gun then detailed instructions on how to dismantle and then tips for reassembly.
The guns covered in this way are:
BSA Airsporter, Cadet Major, Cadet, Lightning, Meteor Mk1, Meteor Super, Model L
BSF Model S20
Chinese BAM, SMK B2, XS-S2
Diana G27, G80, Model 6, Model 16, SP50
Feinwerkbau 300s
Gamo Cadet 2000
Haenel 303, 310
Hungarian LG527
Marksman
Midland Gun Co
Milbro Repeater, Scout
Original model 50
Relum Tornado
Walther LP53 pistol
Webley Hawk Mk2, Junior, Mk1 pistol, Senior, Mk3, Sport, Exocet XS
Weihrauch HW35, HW95
All in all this is an invaluable book if you happen to have the above models and want to service them. If you want to do a different model it will be useful up to a point.
The book is printed on good quality paper and the photo close up detail and reproduction quality is excellent.
Why has it taken so long for a book like this to be written?!
Roll on the next edition (if there is one) covering many more guns. The present book's only real drawback is that it covers so few guns.
Congratulations to Q Cobham for a valuable contribution to gun restoration and maintenance.
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