BSF 54 Match with a different detail

[MDriskill]

"Air Rifle Headquarters" (ARH) in West Virgina was the major US importer of BSF airguns in the 1960's and 70's. They commissioned some custom Williams aperture sights for the various brand of guns they offered, including BSF.

I recently mounted this "ARH 833T" sight on my S54 M. I actually like it better than the BSF diopter, which is a bit on the fragile side, has quite coarse adjustments, and doesn't easily allow fitting anything but the OEM eye disk. Oddly, both types of sight use the Parker-Hale and US-standard 7/32" x 40 eyepiece thread too, so no change there.

The rather odd architecture of the S54 underlever demands a VERY low-seated rear sight, so I'm happy to have this alternative.







ARH catalog cut:

[coburn]

Stunning air rifle, no further words are necessary.

[wickerman]

lovely rifle always wanted one

[Geezer]

Looks lovely, Mike, but how does it shoot, and at what power?

[Unframed Dave]

Very nice.

Dave

[MDriskill]

Looks lovely, Mike, but how does it shoot, and at what power?

I just put the sight on it yesterday, and did some quick 10M bench groups. The group on the right seems not too shabby for ten lowly Hobby pellets fired from a new acquistion by an old guy. Mostly I was making sure the sight would adjust low enough; as you can see, not an issue.




I have not chrono'd it yet, but the beast clangs the pellet trap with some authority. This very gun, serial 4707, was previously owned and fiddled with by writer Tom Gaylord, who in the course of this 2019 blog series on it, clocked it at around 700 fps with light ammo:

https://www.pyramydair.com/blog/2019...-rifle-part-5/

[Geezer]

I just put the sight on it yesterday, and did some quick 10M bench groups. The group on the right seems not too shabby for ten lowly Hobby pellets fired from a new acquistion by an old guy. Mostly I was making sure the sight would adjust low enough; as you can see, not an issue.




I have not chrono'd it yet, but the beast clangs the pellet trap with some authority. This very gun, serial 4707, was previously owned and fiddled with by writer Tom Gaylord, who in the course of this 2019 blog series on it, clocked it at around 700 fps with light ammo:

https://www.pyramydair.com/blog/2019...-rifle-part-5/

Nice. 🙂

[HW777]

Venom tuned BSF rifles there's probably a few out there, a Gaylord BSF must be even rarer

I think I now see where Venom got their standard stock checkering pattern from BSF.

[BSFNUT]

Of course, I like them all

[MDriskill]

Venom tuned BSF rifles there's probably a few out there, a Gaylord BSF must be even rarer

I think I now see where Venom got their standard stock checkering pattern from BSF.

I re-read Mr. Gaylord's blog posts...he actually doesn't mention ever doing anything to the internals! So I stand corrected...but he did chrono strong velocity, and it's still shooting hard.

It's a running joke that our relatively small US band of old airgun enthusiasts really just trade the same few pieces back and forth. This rifle has also been owned by master collector Larry Hannusch (who sold it to Tom because he has an older better one!) and Carl Wise (who traded it to me). At last year's Findlay show I was between those two, and Larry had a good chuckle when no. 4707 landed on my table.