Old pneumatic Crosman air rifles

[trajectory]

Thinking about variable power pneumatics in .22 like the older Crosman models I wondered if they were British .22 or Continental .22 with a view to which pellet variant might suit them better. I'm thinking that they are 5.6 rather than 5.5 since the Americans were not into all things metric.
The older Crosmans seem to have some plus points & a few negatives too. Varriable powers quite usefull on occassions but the open sights arent always very refined, but its the variable power bit & pellet selection that my question really relates to. What's your experience with these at a lower velocity compared to full power. Do pellets always stabilise the same when fired from one of these at different velocity or do you need a low power pellet & a high power pellet to get the best accuracy (lets assume it has a decent set of sights fitted) out if one of them? Or is it a case that in practical terms it makes so little difference it's not worth worrying about? What have you found that works well?

[45flint]

I have fired my Crosman 108 Town & Country quite a bit and it is in the field one of my most accuracy rifles. Speed of pellet seems to make no difference. Modern Crosman Premiers seem ideal as you can feel them seat as you push them home with the bolt. But I really haven’t done a lot of pellet experimentation with this rifle, given these work well and over here they are available everywhere and cheap. I suspect that this rifle is very accurate because with it they introduced what they called in the advertisements, “micro-precision wide land rifling”. Rifling can be inconsistent in Crosman rifles, I think for these high end rifles they got it right? The Peep sight though crude to adjust compared to a target rifle is just as effective once zeroed, and no recoil of a pneumatic makes things a little easier?

With my older prewar Crosman 101’s and 102’s I find similar things as I don’t think Crosman followed the larger barrel rifling of British? They were just not very consistent with rifling, some having what is called “ghost rifling” over here. Though I have been very accurate with these older rifles there is no question these were built for field use and at a price that insured a mass market.

[Oddbob08]

I normally prefer the smaller calibres, but have heard that RWS Superdomes work well in the 5.6mm barrels, may be worth a try?

[trajectory]

Thanks for the replies. Appreciate your thoughts.
Agree the sights can be fine once set up, but i think some of the blade & notch type aren't that easy with wide notches & thin blades.

Thinking about these older pneumatics does anyone know what type of material the o rings are made of that are used in the flat top pump conversions? Are they Viton?

[Geezer]

Until this thread, i had always assumed that older US .22” airguns also used imperial (British) measurements and hence had the slightly larger bores. Because the US until recently always used inch rather than mm in its production tooling.

Now, I have no idea.

I guess what matters is what works, ammo-wise.

[45flint]

Until this thread, i had always assumed that older US .22” airguns also used imperial (British) measurements and hence had the slightly larger bores. Because the US until recently always used inch rather than mm in its production tooling.

Now, I have no idea.

I guess what matters is what works, ammo-wise.

I did take a modern Crosman Premier pellet and with a cleaning rod push it through the bore of a 1930’s 102. It dragged enough to seem right for the rifling. These same pellets are poor through a BSA Standard? I always use RWS Superdomes in my early English guns.

[--ped--]

find the crosman pellets work fine with older crosman guns and jsb in a couple of my sheridans but I'd like to try some of the early trash can pellets sometime as a comparison
for o rings on pumpers I use a mix of nb 70 and 90 but on co2 I also use silicon and polyurethane depending on location and ease of swapping a seal

[series2a]

I bought 8 tins from our sponsors to use in all my older rifles.They work well in rifles up to 90’s
Over chrony they were giving at least 2ftlbs more