Award-winning Airgun Anorak
Beautiful, Brian, thank you! Missed this 1st time around.
I had a non-historical Brocock revolver (9mm?) in the late 1980s or early '90s but it had a cut-back cylinder, exposing some of the air cartridge, which marred the appearance somewhat.
As I recall, the air cartridges were incredibly fiddly and unreliable. They often wouldn't fire, even after resealing. All in all, it was a fun pistol to rehearse my Dirty Harry impersonation, but very unsatisfying as an airgun!
Last edited by Garvin; 27-01-2020 at 04:35 PM. Reason: Big brother...!
Vintage Airguns Gallery
..Above link posted with permission from Gareth W-B
In British slang an anorak is a person who has a very strong interest in niche subjects.
Registered User
The first Ensign cartridges could be unreliable, but we're very simple.....the next Servo's were more reliable but more complex with 5 ball bearings used as a sear/trigger. Personally for me the most reliable were the TACs if charged with a Ram. I have chrono'd all my carts and batch them for more consistent loads.....
2,602.00 GBP −10.00 (0.38%) at the close
Any idea what the crown tacs are like inside?
I have a couple of clips worth but no idea what they are like inside and how repairable when seals eventually fail
Gun control means using both hands.
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Crown's version of the TAC is actually a Servo cartridge, it's the same as the CS900 and alike. As to seals their all STD sizes so currently available, it's the little spring inside the piston you need to be careful off....
They are a lot more complicated than TACs but require less impact to detonate..... I have a few of each various cartridges produced......great to compare each type.
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I still use my tacs in a lovely revolver with a 6" barrel. Load with a ram charger and tacs seem to hold up pretty well, and in some cases I have left for several months and still fired off well.
My pistol is all steel with a very nice single action, target sights, trigger shoe and target grips. I think I purchased from Michael Tawn many years ago and cost a lot !!!
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The cartridges certainly were adaptable. Other oddities were....
- Single shot brass turn barrel pistols from Steve Harper (plus his air canes and miniature pistols)
- derringers which were adapted from blank firers from Jeans Military Memoirs (and cannons if i remember rightly...)
- pretty sure there was an rfd (in glastonbury?) who would adapt pretty much any s1 firearm to shoot air cartridges
- a shop in Markyate used to specialise in modifying air cartridge revolvers - i had a scope rail fitted to my colt single action, and always wanted his .30 conversion....
- and then there were the Crown cartridges - pretty sure they did a rifle which looked like a modified pedretti shotgun, and I recall seeing primer powered cartridges which could be used in air cartridge guns, advertised in airgun world, though I was not sure of the legality of these, even back then, so best avoided!
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I knew a fellow club member many years ago who tried primer powered tacs and they performed pretty well, but were very messy. He also had the equipment to machine the tacs to accept pistol or shotgun primers.
Very illegal I would think.
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Yes it was/is.....Originally Posted by archie
Back in the mid 90s iirc a company did actually manufacture and market a primmer powered cartridge, it was designed to 'only' be used on approved section 1 ranges..... At the time things like 'X' ring plastic bullets were primmer powered section 1 ammunition....but it got messy with legislation.A section 1 pistol was always a firearm regardless of its propulsion methods, but a Brocock or Saxby Palmer was an airgun,( a non licencable firearm to be wholely correct) therefore if you used explosive force it made it a firearm (licencable) and as these were unlicenced (at the time) it was quickly stopped irrespective of what range it was being shot on.
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Funny you mention the ‘x’ ring rubber bullets - years ago i tried using tac cartridges with the .357 ‘x’ ring bullets which conveniently fitted over the top of the cartridge. I used these in a .357 Winchester lever action - worked quite well loaded singly!
Wonder if this would make it a section 5 firearm if I did the same now (which I won’t!).
Seems to be little information on the web regarding the Crown cartridges. I think their break open rifle was called the Wasp. Never saw one on the flesh.
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There is info about Crown if you know where to look. The break action was 'the Hornet' it used a 44 40 cartridge (cs900) the same as their Yellow boy. Their pistol was the Firefly.
They were marketed by WASP..... weapons and shooting products..... Bexhill.
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The .30 Cal's were PDS developments.....
Dodgy Diana User
Which helps explain the ban. Not going into details for obvious reasons, but they were not in most cases, if you knew what you were doing and had some relevant machinery/skills, too easy to convert in a number of ways.
Back on topic. I only owned the rifles.
The early plastic cartridges were unreliable and inaccurate. And the rims wore rapidly with use.
The conversion kit that placed the innards from the plastic ones in a new metal cartridge body were unreliable and inaccurate.
The metal early (Elite/Royale/Galaxy/Saturn) cartridges were unreliable and inaccurate.
The “NATO bullet” TACs for the No4 and Herald were unreliable and inaccurate. The rounds would rattle around noisily in the mag (try hunting with that). The NATO bullets would eventually, rattling around in the mag, fall off, jamming the thing (I tried hammering them in with a rubber mallet - they still fell off).
I gave up after that point. I always hoped the later BACS and normal pellet guns like the Safari and the other one whose name I can’t remember were better, but noted at the time that the AGW/AG reviews were a bit vague about accuracy.
I had a brief phase, with great support at the time from Nigel and Gary Silcock of trying to make it work across both systems.
That led to, per system, one pile of accurate, reliable cartridges. One pile of inaccurate but reliable ones (cue service kit, though usually unhelpful). One small pile of accurate but unreliable ones (cue service kit). And another, rather large, pile of inaccurate and unreliable ones.
I gave up on the basis that it was just too much bleeding faff and life was too short and my tuned 77 actually hit small targets at range reliably by picking it up and just shooting it, not by spending hours mucking about with stupid bleeding air cartridges.
Final point. The TACs were much heavier than live rounds. That led to ejectors breaking on, in my experience, especailly the Heralds.
Have I said “inaccurate and unreliable” often enough?
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I owned a lot of them before the ban they were great to own,but impractical shooters.The ban achieved nothing as tens of thousands of them remain at large for which licenses were never applied for.
Without incident I might add!
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Wow a very impressive collection you have. Do you have any photos of them?
2,602.00 GBP −10.00 (0.38%) at the close
Ill see what i can find re photos and set up a hosting account....been meaning to sort that for ages.
As to accuracy at the juniper green club a member by the moniker figjam was able to reliably hit a knock dow and whack spinners at 55yds over open sights using my uberti henry. A better shot than i
I have several hundred tacs with many upgraded to full stainless. I found regular use soon sorted out which had duff seals and once sorted they were reliable. I havent used the rifles for hunting but they were more than capable. Just a bit of a fiddle catching your ‘spent brass’
I never got on with the 20 bore sized s&p carts plastic or metal and rapidly got rid of anything that used them. The ppk pistols using the microbacs were fun but manually cycled so not as fun as the valtro 92f
Gun control means using both hands.
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