An L pattern lives again

[slow_runner]

I came upon an L pattern from a mate down the line.

The story on this Light pattern.
Bought by the previous owner Declan as a complete air rifle, upon its arrival he found it to be in need of a bit of work.
What to do with it? Complete but now in bits, it was put aside as a donor/project rifle.
I was told that he had not fired it, had a locked trigger and the stock had some cracks. It was a 2 hole and judging from images of it I had seen previous was of reasonable appearance and showed promise.

It arrives in the post
Cosmetically, the action will clean up well. The stock has been well sanded with only light checkering remaining, is a 14 1/4” and has suffered from dry storage with a couple of cracks and other associated damage. It would be true to say that it has had a harder life than the action.
Not too bad though, barring a few missing fasteners and the usual anticipated potential problems I was optimistic.

The serial number is L147XX which I assume places it somewhere near 1920/1921??
Although it has the pressed steel trigger guard, the block is one that accepts the cast guard.
Maybe the pressed trigger guard came with the 14 1/4” stock?

To get it up and working again.
I'm hoping that it will do the job once more, but how well?
Holding the action up to the light, the barrel looked a mess and not promising at all.
The wire brush was pushed down the barrel more than a few times, followed by the brass scrapper and on. With plenty of rust evident, you would be excused for thinking that the barrel was beyond redemption.
It seemed like a few metres of cloth patches were used to clean up before it came clean.
Surprisingly, after all that attention the rifling now appears to be looking quite healthy; the pellets move the length without the hesitancy that rusted out rifling would give.
It doesn't look too bad after all and the bore is now treated with some graphite powder.
The piston is in good condition as is the leather washer. In fact, the leather holds promise to live on more than a few years.
The cylinder was clean and no work was needed there beyond removing old leather remnant and a good wipe out.
From among the spares drawer, a suitable but stiff spring was selected.
Getting low/mid 700fps and it felt harsh too. That one was removed and from amongst a bag containing the remnants of original flat springs that came with it, two broken springs were placed back to back and slid into the cylinder. Now 580fps and feeling more comfortable.
After the work and assembly, the first lot of groupings were poor to say the least.
The spread is over 2 1/4”. This is nothing to do with pellet selection.



The L was stripped down, then the barrel was set up in the lathe for crowning. The cylinder and tapered barrel are not on the same axis so the 4 jaw, fixed steady and spider had to be used.





After setting up. Zero run out of the bore; interestingly, there is no rifling here. No indication of loss from corrosion either, ie pitting. Maybe lost from wear, neglect or other; who would know?



Four point spider





After crowning.



After reassembly, these are the results it gave.



Very much improved but there is still something amiss....

After some debate and head scratching it may be down to this.
On assembly, the original trigger sear spring had been missing and a suitable(??) replacement was fitted from the box of bits
So with nothing to lose and possibly more to gain, this spring was then substituted with another stronger one.
The thinking being that the post-crowning results were from early trigger release due to too light a trigger.
And it was.
These are the results from more than 10 shots; the grouping is now more than satisfactory.
Everyone is happy and time for a coffee, it will be sighted in later. I will post a couple more images of the results and the air rifle after sighting in.
All credit to Jeff.

[Garvin]

Big improvement! Thanks for that account. Cleaning the barrels out thoroughly on these old BSAs seems to improve performance no end, although in this case it was clearly the trigger spring that made the biggest difference.

[slow_runner]

Big improvement! Thanks for that account. Cleaning the barrels out thoroughly on these old BSAs seems to improve performance no end, although in this case it was clearly the trigger spring that made the biggest difference.

I will edit the thread Danny.
The barrel clean was the greatest improvement by far. Honestly, the rifling was barely discernible, it was the dirtiest bore I have seen.
I had given that bore a thorough going over; it was the continued use of the formed brass scraper and brush after Jeff got hold of it that that finally eliminated the oxide.
If it had been assembled without cleaning that bore I doubt the pellet would have made it half way down the tube.

[ggggr]

Well done on sorting another out Ken.
I find I get similar problems with old gun accuracy. I was recently trying to get together a Cadet lash | (actually 2 lash ups)up sorted for plinking, rather than having bits lay around. I found the accuracy was terrible even at 7 1/2 yards. With the Cadet having a really heavy trigger (It was a selling point for safety!) I find you have to grip the gun a fair bit to stop it pulling over anyway. Both guns shot like crap, even after having the barrels cleaned and me attempting to recrown one barrel with a drill, countersink and wet and dry paper. The beech seals were ok as well.
BUT--as I have often found after putting together the type of crappy examples I get, putting shots through the gun gets it "in the mood". I think it is something to do with the piston washer settling down again. After cleaning a cylinder out and using modern superlubes ("Burn him!") of gn paste and a bit of Sm50, I find they take a while to "chase out" older mineral oil (Ptfe washers are really bad for it, like on a Webley Hawk).
Gradually the grouping starts to tighten up. I did a thread years ago titled something like "When a gone gun starts to come in" where I mentioned this.
I hope you have some fun plnking with the thing now.

[slow_runner]

Thanks Guy, but the credit lies entirely with Jeff.
He wanted me to put up this example to again illustrate what can be done before some contemplate junking what could be redeemable air rifles.
It is worth the effort if only for the experience and the learning. The further and greater reward is when it succeeds and another is operational again, as you know. Especially these old BSA's

I'm on the lookout for the correct stock for it, one may appear, you just never know.
That will require some further digging to find out what style was used in this period.
Perhaps IMD style stocks were still being used after the end of the Great War??
Any advice would be welcome.

[Garvin]

I will edit the thread Danny.
The barrel clean was the greatest improvement by far. Honestly, the rifling was barely discernible, it was the dirtiest bore I have seen.
I had given that bore a thorough going over; it was the continued use of the formed brass scraper and brush after Jeff got hold of it that that finally eliminated the oxide.
If it had been assembled without cleaning that bore I doubt the pellet would have made it half way down the tube.

My mistake - I didn't realise the first target was done after extensive bore cleaning.

I know some IMD stocks were used on early Light Patterns in 1919 but IIRC John Knibbs reckoned that by the serial number of your rifle they had moved on to the interwar patterns.

[slow_runner]

My mistake - I didn't realise the first target was done after extensive bore cleaning.

No worries.

I know some IMD stocks were used on early Light Patterns in 1919 but IIRC John Knibbs reckoned that by the serial number of your rifle they had moved on to the interwar patterns.

That is not what I wanted to hear Danny; I have a IMD straight stock that may have done the job but now, thinking on, that would be somewhere near sacrilege.


I finally got my A into G.
The original rear sight still needs some kindness and will be refitted later. Until then a Cadet Major with a fabd blade will do.
The images tell their own story.


Stock





A bit of leather that came with it works a treat for access to the stock bolt. If the stock was in better nick I might have found another better piece and tooled it to match the stock butt grooves.
As it is, there are no worries about breaking that walnut insert



Glued in a taper plug for the trigger guard screw. Note the precision rebate for the guard tang (don't look at us! )


Crown, now blued.



Home brew cocking latch (4140) wont blue; but it works well enough.



Here are the results for that what really counts, accuracy.
Pellet speed has dropped a bit I will settle for that given the two broken springs.
The trigger let off is sweetness; just right and still safe. Lovely....