Cocking Methods.

[El Garro]

Although it's a BB gun, would the "Top Score 175" count as unusual with its barrel hinging back on a pivot in a similar place to the one on top of a Luger ?

[Abasmajor]

Strangely Brian, I found the twist grip to be one of the nicest pistols to cock of any, from the point of view of convenience of muscle actkion, but not of power of course.

Unlike any other action, it does not involve any pulling or pushing and one quick turn of the wrist is all it takes. Using the more retangular profile grip shown in the patent, instead of the round profile in the above illustrated version, one can get a good purchase and one's grip does not have to be particularly strong. There were two main problems however, why this system would never have been commercially viable as it stood. Firstly, for anatomical reasons the rotation can only be about three quarter of a turn, which means that the piston can only be drawn back a relatively small amount, so limiting the design to low power. In practice it was not so bad though, and using a spring that did not place too many demands on wrist strength, it was possible to get a consistent 200 fps with 7.5 grain waisted pellets (pre-sized). The power situation could have been significantly improved by introducing a ratchet system, so that you could give it two or three twists to cock. The second drawback was the tedious loading system, using a breech scew. If an automatic repeat loading magazine could have been introduced, the result would have been an excellent quick fire plinking pistol.

Cheers
John

Hello John,
Thanks for explaining the idiosyncrasies of the twist grip cocking solution which would make sense if it had as you say been developed to include a ratchet mechanism to increase efficiency. One pistol I would love to own had it gone into production would be the Whiting pistol particularly for its close resemblance to the small Webley semi-auto pistols of the period. Even fitted with a long barrel, the muzzle velocity of that design must have been quite low making it quite low on power.

Brian

[Garvin]

iod. Even fitted with a long barrel, the muzzle velocity of that design must have been quite low making it quite low on power.

Brian

Brian it's a while ago now but John described the (poor) power of his repro Whiting (see here, scroll down):

https://forum.vintageairgunsgallery....ting/#post-177

[Geezer]

Hello John,
Thanks for explaining the idiosyncrasies of the twist grip cocking solution which would make sense if it had as you say been developed to include a ratchet mechanism to increase efficiency. One pistol I would love to own had it gone into production would be the Whiting pistol particularly for its close resemblance to the small Webley semi-auto pistols of the period. Even fitted with a long barrel, the muzzle velocity of that design must have been quite low making it quite low on power.

Brian

Agreed. They’d probably have sold very few of them, but its “replica” nature and rarity would make it very sought after now. I have always thought that the Webley autos, while not as good a design as Browning’s (something you can say about almost any type of gun between 1880 and 1920) were cool.

[Geezer]

Although not an old pistol (in fact very much still in production), I like the fixed barrel, over lever - rack and pinion design of the Cometa Indian air pistol. Definitely a collectable of the future. Nice accurate and powerful design.

Only thing I am not keen on is the amount of plastic components on the gun, such as sights, slide etc. But I guess that is a sign of the times.

Lakey

Yes, always rather fancied one of those.