After many years searching I have just managed to add a French MAS air pistol to my collection (central pistol here: http://i135.photobucket.com/albums/q...psinfk7kun.jpg )
After putting it through its paces l was struck by the beautiful simplicity of the pellet loading system. As the trigger guard cocking lever reaches the end of its stroke a peg in the end of the lever rides in a sloping notch in the barrel and pulls the barrel forward a short distance, which allows you to insert a pellet in the breech. Returning the cocking lever reverses the process and pushes the barrel firmly back into the breech seal. So with a bit of simple but ingenious engineering design the complications of a barrel hinge and a barrel catch are avoided and an infallible positive breech seal is achieved. This photo shows the cocking lever at full stroke: http://i135.photobucket.com/albums/q...pscbfksiwh.jpg
This set me thinking, what other additions or modifications have been made to traditional air gun designs, which are both highly effective yet ingeniously simple? Which ones could be classed as the cleverest and most cost effective?
One of my favourites is the breech closure that Frank Clarke invented for his range of Titan air pistols.
His first model Titan, usually referred to as the Mark 1, used the barrel-over-cylinder design, where the piston moved rearwards and the compressed air has to make a tight U-turn before it reaches the pellet in the breech. http://i135.photobucket.com/albums/q...psxp0a2zxk.jpg
The pistol design had several disadvantages: the cocking plunger had to be pulled forwards so making the use of a strong spring impractical; the plunger itself made the gun ungainly and you certainly couldn’t keep the pistol in your pocket; the breech seal was achieved by a bolt action, the barrel itself serving as the bolt. The last feature meant that you could never be sure that the front sight was vertical when the barrel was firmly locked against the breech washer. Not surprisingly the Mark 1 was not a great success and was soon replaced by the improved Mark 2 . And with a final refinement he produced the Titan series Marks 3-7.
What Frank Clarke did was pure engineering genius. He introduced a closure to the air cylinder that instead of being fixed, as in all air pistols made before or since, was rotatable. With this simple design change he was able to (a) provide a closure to the rear end of the compression cylinder; (b) provide a channel to direct the compressed air from the cylinder to the barrel; (c) provide ready access to the barrel for loading a pellet, followed by positive barrel sealing by a simple quarter turn of a breech block; (d) allow a cocking push rod concealed in the grip to be rotated until it was in direct contact with the piston head, when the piston could be pushed back into the cocked position, and the rod then rotated back into the grip. And all this was achieved with a simple breech block engineered from a single piece of steel. The following pics show the essential working of the breech block. http://i135.photobucket.com/albums/q...psdmsnrnwg.jpg
The manufacturing cost saving must have been dramatic, and the subsequent Marks 2 -7 Titan pistols based on this design were a great success. So although the Titans could never be regarded serious target weapons, they were sturdy and affordable plinkers, far ahead of the push-barrel pistols available at the time.
Although this is my favourite bit of air gun engineering design, there must be many other examples of ingenious air gun inventions (simple ones I mean) out there that have impressed you. What is your favourite one?
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Originally Posted by jassi
