Originally Posted by
Hsing-ee
There hasn't been a BSF thread for a while ...
The BSF range was once a happy family of break-barrels and underlevers, all made by bespectacled German craftsmen in a workshop in Bavaria, men who would carry micrometer gauges in their pockets even to social occasions like the annual Um-Pah band Jam, the blessing of a new Lager or the Spring village Liederhosen fitting.
The top of the range rifles were extremely powerful for their time, and very soldily made. They didn't modernise and in the end the firm had to close, the tooling etc being bought up by their bigger sister Weihrauch just up the Autobahn.
These break-barrel rifles all shared the same action....
The S60 - plain stock and long barrel, this ordinary looking rifle was capable of 12 ft/lbs and more - yet weighed little more than a BSA Meteor.
The S70 - walnut stock and long barrel, probably the prettiest and nicest of the BSFs.
The S80 - a last-gasp reinvention of the rifle, with an oddly shaped 'FT' stock.
The B55 - the most popular in the UK, carbine-sized, and also available with a delux stock. Venom made a couple of 'specials' based on this rifle.
The S54 - a long underlever which came in a variety of stocks, including Match and Tyrolean.
The S20 pistol - basically a foreshortened version of the break-barrel rifle powerful but a bit of a handfull and well ... ugly as sin!
There was also the Media and Junior break-barrel rifles, lower-power and smaller rifles for children and youths, but these do not have seem to have been imported into the UK in any numbers. There is also the BSF Model 65 break-barrel which seems to have been a one-off.
I would say that while the full-power BSFs can be some of the most tricky springers to learn to shoot - the combination of light weight and a powerful spring makes hold critical - they are probably one of the most characterful rifles you can hope to own. If you want an occasional antidote to your PCP, this is the rifle to own for fun on the range.
One of the odd things about them is that they seem to have disappeared, as there must have been a few thousand imported into the UK, but they hardly ever come up for sale on the BBS. I suspect they were bought by Farmers, drawn by the traditional looks and tough build, and who are still using them to clobber rats and pigeons in their Farmyards and Barns.