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.