The Webley Falcon

[Hsing-ee]

Has anyone got the history of this rifle, and a review of its performance? Fattmann says it is a German Diana design, it certainly looks a bit like that, but they were made in Brum. Uncharacteristically for a British rifle of the time, it has an adjustable, lockable bolt through the breech - something they should have kept for the Hawk and Vulcan series.

[landymick]

Only thing i know about these is they date around 1960 -1970 & listed with mv of 550 for .177 500 for .22.

[flatrajectory]

I can't answer your question Alastair but I did own one a few years ago. It is a lightweight ,very well made air rifle in the Webley fashion. Very solid,proper machining and excellent blueing.......much better than say a BSA Meteor.
Mine was .22 and clocked at 520 fps, very accurate too.
Pete.

[fatttmannn]

Have a look in Chris Thrales excellent book , great info there. My Falcon is one of the latter ones, it was designed to compete with the BSA Meteor, its a boys/youths gun. Power quoted is 550 in .177 and 500 in .22. To my mind its much better built than the Hawk which followed it. There rarer than you think, has a youngsters gun they were abussed and thrown away so not many out there. I like it,i works very well with Marksman pellets.

[Hsing-ee]

Have a look in Chris Thrales excellent book .... works very well with Marksman pellets.

That looks like a great book, even though Webley airguns generally don't do anything for me. Marksman pellets? I shot thousands of them as a kid but they never had great accuracy in my BSA... horses for courses I guess.

[thevoid]

I restored one for the Finlaw a couple of years back, very well made apart from the spot welded scope rail, The piston rod sear was so badly worn that it would not latch, a bit of weld build up with a hard facing welding rod worked well.
In .22 this one made around 480 fps, I say 'made' as he's shoved in a massive spring since! it shot really nicely untin he attacked it. a very well proportioned rifle

[ggggr]

Has anyone got the history of this rifle, and a review of its performance? Fattmann says it is a German Diana design, it certainly looks a bit like that, but they were made in Brum. Uncharacteristically for a British rifle of the time, it has an adjustable, lockable bolt through the breech - something they should have kept for the Hawk and Vulcan series.

I don't know much about them but I do like them along with the Diana 25 and the Baikal IJ38.
The barrels are not supposed to be tempered right (Waits for Ged to come along ) but for me the main problem is a piston that wears at the point the cocking arm pushes on. I am guessing ID of cylinder is the same as a Hawk and I would love to see one with a converted hawk piston, with a piston rod in it. I would say then that you would have a gun to last several lifetimes.
Very early models had a ramp style rearsight, similar to the mk1 Meteor and the Diana's , but that was changed below number 500 I think.
Also, the very early ones did not have a 4ba grub screw at the side of of the cylinder to stop the trigger block from turning. Somebody will be along to tell you they all did,BUT (I know because I have one without the grub screw hole in either the cylinder or trigger block and i think the odds of getting 2 components like that together would be pretty long).
I don't like the play you can get with the pinned, wire like trigger, but you can stop wobble with a bit of solder (or epoxy I guess?).
Detune one with a Diana 25 spring and you have a very easy to cock, pretty accurate, back garden plinker.