Osprey accuracy

[hwtyger]

Mine even has the rare militairy rearsite, but its VERY accurate for belltarget. If yr score is not 100%, its not the rifle's fault. It will shoot the 10 ring out of the 6yrd belltarget practise cards no prob.
I use JSB Exact in mine.
I dó find it more hold sensitive than my mk3's

[evert]

Have noticed that the Osprey piston seems lighter than the Tracker counterpart.. HMM, lighter piston and lower compression, sounds reasonable. I need to get those measurements taken methinks, and perhaps accept the low power of the Ospreys. Just gotta get all my exams done first

[ggggr]

I have some Ospreys in my collection, they are nice to handle, nice to look at, and the front heavy barrels combined with the pisol grip angle makes them good for offhand shooting... but..

The orignal piston rings, combined with the unguided spring make them quite horrible to fire, and most other guns i have of similar vintage are more accurate(HW35, BSA Meteor, Webley Victor)

One of my opsreys has gottem a bit of mechanical attention, with a tracker piston and a diana/gami type seal, A Maccari HW50 spring and delrin guides- a much improved gun, but slower than the Trackers with the same setup. Im currently planning to take the Ospreys and the Trackers apart this christmas, the Osprey transfer ports looks larger than the trackers, but measuring is needed.
Im also planning to convert an ospery to take the HW30 seal, hoping this will improve things further.

Wasnt the Osprey intended to be some sort of target gun back in the days? Were they better when the piston rings were fresh?

A few things here. As quite a few of you know, I like some guns with softer mainsprings and the Dian 25 is one I use in a few guns. A Webley Falcon fitted with one plinks lovely. I have found that Bsa Meteor springs fit Webley Hawks and Ospreys better than the Webley mainsprings, which always seem tight. I have tried fitting O rings to a few Hawks and Ospreys but have found a couple of problems (1) you have to really make sure that there are no sharp edges on the cylinder (2) even then, the O ring is tight. (3) I have never had any luck fitting 2 O rings like Bowkett used to do? (A .177 Osprey would not push a pellet out after about 30 shots. (4) After that I started to fit an O ring in the front groove and the old Ptfe ring in the back groove, in the hope that it would hold a tiny bit of lube.
Using the set up in 4^, I have found Hawks and Ospreys nice to shoot.

Our Mod Mick T20 has sleeved transfer ports down and gotten Hawks up to the legal limit, although one was fitted with the Hw seal (sure he will put links up)----So I see now real reason, why if you sleeved an Osprey port, you could not get more power as they are more or less a sidelever Hawk, like the Mercury is a break barrel Airsporter.
I think Torrens on here fitted a Leather seal to an Osprey and got a very nice shooting gun.
I do like the Osprey, once you get rid of the safety and fit the Victor sear spring.

[torrens]

Hi Guy,
yes I've now fitted leather washers to both my Ospreys but it involves cutting the piston head back, so a one-way mod. They shoot well at 9ft lb with springs I can easily fit without a compressor. I would say the original plastic rings give a very smooth quiet action, but they wear out after a while and I got fed up with yearly replacement ( I used one a lot....) I also shortened both barrels to 14" and accuracy seems good for target / plinking up to 30yds but neither the modified carbine or the original version will equal a TX200 at 50yds. Having said that I sold the TX because I prefer the slimness and easy loading of the Webleys.

I did try a HW30 piston washer in one Evert, it worked well but the action soon got harsh because the seal was damaged by small scratches or machining marks at the end of the cylinder. These might have been unique to my Osprey but it's worth doing some careful polishing if possible.

Cheers
torrens