Are Webley Spring Powered Air Pistols Badly Made?

[zooma]

One of the often made comments about Webley air pistols is that they are badly made - this comment is often made in jest by the anti-wobbly brigade along with other such heresy such as they have crap triggers and that they are inaccurate and difficult to shoot.

My reason for starting this thread is that it is likely to be well read and that it will also give the opportunity for both sides of this popular debate to be expressed and contested.

To start the ball rolling I would suggest that the Webley quality has always been good for the price charged at the time it was in production, and this has to be considered when comparing them with any other air pistol. It is also pointless to compare them with more expensive pistols or those made at different time periods as this just makes "flexible goal posts" and no meaningful comparisons can be made.

As far as accuracy goes, when we can see scores from hippo and example targets from certus shot at 10 meters that are as good as most of us can achieve with a PCP we can hardly claim that Webley air pistols are inaccurate.

The final comments regarding the trigger I find a little harder to defend as they do not have the finest match triggers ever made - but the point is they are not sold as match air pistols and never have been. The first Webley air pistols were firearms substitutes for training and for youths to use in comparative safety and as such the triggers are more like a firearms trigger and work well enough.

Again when we can see such good 10 meter scores from Webley owners and users it is obviously a trigger that does give enough control to achieve these excellent results.

Are they difficult to shoot?......well they do work a little differently from most other air pistols and so they require a slightly different technique to get the most out of them but I would say that they are not difficult to shoot - just different!

This takes us back to the comment for debate: -

"Webley spring powered air pistols are well engineered for the price and the time period in which they were made, they are accurate and have a good firearms standard trigger".

[pegasus]

One of the often made comments about Webley air pistols is that they are badly made - this comment is often made in jest by the anti-wobbly brigade along with other such heresy such as they have crap triggers and that they are inaccurate and difficult to shoot.

My reason for starting this thread is that it is likely to be well read and that it will also give the opportunity for both sides of this popular debate to be expressed and contested.

To start the ball rolling I would suggest that the Webley quality has always been good for the price charged at the time it was in production, and this has to be considered when comparing them with any other air pistol. It is also pointless to compare them with more expensive pistols or those made at different time periods as this just makes "flexible goal posts" and no meaningful comparisons can be made.

As far as accuracy goes, when we can see scores from hippo and example targets from certus shot at 10 meters that are as good as most of us can achieve with a PCP we can hardly claim that Webley air pistols are inaccurate.

The final comments regarding the trigger I find a little harder to defend as they do not have the finest match triggers ever made - but the point is they are not sold as match air pistols and never have been. The first Webley air pistols were firearms substitutes for training and for youths to use in comparative safety and as such the triggers are more like a firearms trigger and work well enough.

Again when we can see such good 10 meter scores from Webley owners and users it is obviously a trigger that does give enough control to achieve these excellent results.

Are they difficult to shoot?......well they do work a little differently from most other air pistols and so they require a slightly different technique to get the most out of them but I would say that they are not difficult to shoot - just different!

This takes us back to the comment for debate: -

"Webley spring powered air pistols are well engineered for the price and the time period in which they were made, they are accurate and have a good firearms standard trigger".

No need for any debate, you have covered it all in an unbiased and fair manner

[mrto]

I think that just about nails it for me too!

[pennineway.fswo]

Hi Zooma

There is no doubt in my mind that the steel Mk1's, Mk 11's, Seniors,Juniors and Premiers were very well engineered and were among the very best spring powered air pistols available at the time.
The Walther LP53 was a early 1950's example of even better design and manufacture but this was a much more expensive air pistol. However, slightly less powerful and not more accurate.

The alloy replacement Webleys did lower the bar somewhat, but pistols like the Tempest still offered a superb product to the shooter. OK, triggers were far from sophisticated, but with a lot of use or some simple polishing the trigger is more than satisfactory for informal target shooting/plinking and better than most of the competition.

Webley advised that 5 shot accuracy was of the order of 1" at 10 yds (I believe) and we certainly have a couple of shooters at our club who regularly come close to this achieving this sort of group size at 10 metres

The compactness and handling of these Birmingham manufactured pistols are also hard to fault.

I would not include the resurrected, foreign Typhoon model as a Webley The early 'Junior' Typhoon (smaller gripped Hurricane) on the other hand was quite a nice little pistol.

I believe Webley pistols offered great value for money and have proved to be well made and durable

John

[shabee]

I am not a webley fan, and ive never made a secret of that but you cannot ignore the quality of webley firearms, shotguns and even early airguns upto lets say the MKIII rifle at the price.
Where webley fail for me is in the design and mechanics, particularly in the overlever design, ive still got a couple of pistols that I can barely cock due to the mechanical inefficiency of the design. The design puts one hell of a strain on components and linkages and is possibly the reason why you see so many bent barrels, wobbly barrels in their pivots and the reason why they are called wobblies. However I think we must not confuse design issues with quality of workmanship here and I think the quality of the work in early airguns and the bluing was as good if not better than many others. The design however good or bad did stand the test of time and there are a league of fans of these airguns, if only because they are English.
ric

[Abasmajor]

Hi,

I am fortunate enough to own and shoot examples of most contemporary spring powered air pistols that tried to compete with the classic Webley (Warrior, Abas Major, Titan, Acvoke etc) and none in my opinion come close to the Webley package.

The Webley offered and still offers firearms quality, compactness, reliability, ease of maintenance and acceptable accuracy at the reasonable ranges intended.

Admittedly some triggers mainly on the Senior may need a bit of tuning, but most of my pistols have reasonable trigger pulls without modification. The additional cocking link introduced with the pre-war Senior certainly helped with reducing the cocking effort needed for the Mk1.

I have a FAS 604 with which I shoot competition cards and often find that without the pressure of placing stickers on cards and with a bit more care I can often shoot similar groups with my Webleys. I have also found the element that has single biggest effect on accuracy when shooting any spring powered air gun is "Follow Through" which ironically is probably the easiest bit to master.

Regards

Brian

[ggggr]

I think that they are pretty well made. I did a thread about how the pistol could have been improved ( larger diameter cylinder, better/stronger linkage etc).
From what I have seen of them, from an earlyish Mk1 with the safety catch and the tin grip junior, right up to the Hurricane/Tempest, most of the problems occur through abuse or lack of knowledge to maintain them. This stands for a lot of other guns as well, with too much oil,wrong screws,monster springs etc.
The Mk1 and junior pistols can be very hard to cock, due to the single linkage, the Senior/Hurricane/Tempest are quite easy, with the "knack". Some people will try to wrestle the gun with brute force, rather than use a smooth action.
Other than missing screws (which loctite should stop happening) and the slots in the grip screws being too narrow, my main gripe it the triggers on the guns. The junior is a simple and heavy trigger. The Mk1 and Premier versions I dont like and the sear is prone to wear. However, this trigger can be a lot lighter than a Senior. I shoot 2 handed and prefer the feel of the Senior trigger. It seems safer than the Premier.
The Premier mk2 and Junior mk2 are not really any less accurate than the earlier guns.
The Hurricane and Tempest with the plastic forends look a bit crappy but the trigger is an improvement on earlier guns, although you need a full strip to get the piston out. getting pretty good at fettling these triggers now.
The Hurricane would look better with a different rearsight. I adapted a Chinese one to fit one a gun I sent to someone as the original was kaput. Even though it was a cock up it looked better than the Webley one.

The earlier guns with none adjustable sights are a bit of a pain (junior) to use.
It comes down to this really---If you have one of these guns (any of them) and you splash out on a set of wooden grips (Airgunner .177 does them) then you have a good gun.
If someone did a rearsight adapter that would screw on in place of the Mk1/Senior plate, then that would make things easier.
I recently bought the Senior off Crusader and stuck on a set of wooden "plinking grips" and I am happy with the gun. There is a slight tight spot with cocking and a mark on the cylinder, but I reckon in another 55 years or so it will be just about run in.

Waits for IJ the iconoclast to step in for a dual assault on Webleys and Relums

[Garvin]

The Webley offered and still offers firearms quality, compactness, reliability, ease of maintenance and acceptable accuracy at the reasonable ranges intended.

This about sums it up for me. Looking back from the comfort of the PCP era it's easy to make mental comparisons with the incredible triggers on dedicated match pistols and perhaps to look back and think of the FTC (fails to cock) problems with the Webley linkages as being a design or quality weakness. But we shouldn't forget, as Bob said, that these were mainly developed to provide youth training at safe, short ranges, as a firearm replacement. The cocking problems only occurred with pistols that had many years of use.

It seems to me that critics of wobblies do it partly in jest and probably to cover their own inability to shoot them well. I'm really impressed that great pistol shots can get equivalent scores to modern pistols. It says a lot about the essential Webley quality. I never got more than very average accuracy out of my Senior, although I could shoot fairly well with a Tempest. And I'm a average-to-poor shot at best.

[walnutfarmmick]

No need for any debate, you have covered it all in an unbiased and fair manner

That was my thought too!

Asked and answered, as they say in US courtroom dramas.

Not that it will prevent the odd diatribe .......

ATB, Mick

[Fat stig]

My mk1 Chrome special edition from the late 1930's with all it's original internals is still going strong so build quality can't be an issue.
As for accuracy my best 5 shot card with it was only a 46 & the norm around the low 40's so there could be an issue there (probably behind the gun )
That only leaves the triger most of the time mine is very good but it can be inconsistent, it will be working fine then you will get a shot with a heavy pull followed by a couple of hare triger shots 
When you compare the Webley with anything from the same time & price bracket nothing comes close in my humble opinion