Couple of oldish guns

[ATClarke]

I dug out two oldish airguns from the loft, I hear they're collectible so I thought I'd post them here and let you guys/gals judge..

Baikal 38, USSR, fully original bah a missed bold on the right side of the stock which seems to just hold the wood flush although the wood doesn't move around at all.







Series 70 / Model 75 (Don't know the maker) again fully original but some wood stain coming off and missing the medal thing on the side.






Both fire fine, oiled well, etc..

[Nikkormat]

Bigger pics:

http://img248.imageshack.us/img248/2738/dscf1150.jpg
http://img202.imageshack.us/img202/8804/dscf1151d.jpg
http://img413.imageshack.us/img413/977/dscf1152a.jpg

http://img143.imageshack.us/img143/15/dscf1154n.jpg

I don't know about the second rifle, but Baikals have quite a following; decent, solidly made plinkers. A very rough guess as to value, maybe £45 including post. Others may know better. One was recently sold on here for £60 including scope, so maybe use that as a guide.

[Iain K D]

Series 70 Model 76 sounds like it will be a Milbro (ie, British made) Diana.

Iain

[draftsmann]

It's a Baikal IJ38. It isn't entirely clear but what you have looks like it might be the less desirable variant, without the barrel-latch on the left-hand side of the breech. D'you have a close-up pic of the LH breech side?

I bought one of the barrel-locking variety in 1983 at the tender age of 17 for around 25 quid, from Budget Guns & Tackle. Also bought a Baikal O/U 12 bore from them a few months later. Foolishly sold both a few years after.

My IJ38 didn't have scope grooves, but with the excellent iron sights (and youthful eyesight) I could regularly chop matchsticks in half at 15 yards.

Low power, but a clean firing cycle. Very much a "traditional" spring-piston air rifle, with a leather piston seal. They came with a spare mainspring (and IIRC also a spare piston seal) in the plain cardboard box.

The single stage trigger is often said to be the worst feature of these rifles, but honestly I never found it too bad, although it's no Weihrauch trigger. One of the magazines in the mid-80s had an excellent article describing how the trigger can be improved (safely!) with a little careful sear-shaping. For my money, a trigger shoe on the narrow steel blade would give enough improvement.

Incidentally, I'm buying the one recently advertised here. I also have one of the non-locking variety with a slightly different stock. One of these days I am going to see how far I can "improve" one of these, tune the action, polish, reblue and a custom stock. If I'd said this when I first joined this forum in 2002 people would have laughed, but I highly recommend these little Baikals as excellent fun/garden guns, better any day than a BSA Meteor in my book.

Adrian

[ogilkes]

The Milbro is probably worth about £40

[ATClarke]

Thanks Nikko, I was trying to do thumbnails but, didn't seem to work

Left side:


Right side: