Quote Originally Posted by Drew451 View Post
You should really have a word with those 50's while you're at it. They don't always realise tap loaders are meant to be old crap...
Very true.
Which is going to come as a shock to my .22 Original 50T01 as it's shooting very sweet right now after a mainspring upgrade.
All jokes aside back in the day there wasn't the choice of piston head materials we have now and ptfe was about the only alternative unless you had access to a lathe and was pretty handy on one. If I could have had someone run me up a few dovetail converters so that the pistons would accept OEM washers I would definitely have gone that route. Diana piston washers are definitely some of the best around giving good sealing qualities combined with reasonably low friction.
As I've said a few times on here now aside of a HW35 with a tapered cylinder end and a BSF55 with a less than true cylinder all the guns I've swapped to ptfe have worked flawlessly and for quite some time now. Maybe I've just been incredibly lucky with all of these? Or maybe ptfe isn't the demon material some make it out to be? For the time being I'm certainly enjoying benefits from swapping over.
The good thing is that nowadays we seem to have more choice in the direction we go with upgrading from leather washers. Which can't be a bad thing and long may that continue.
Dave