In praise of Webley air pistols

[Gerard]

You're not kidding. My 7 year old boy has taken to climbing into our bed about 3 in the morning lately, afraid to sleep by himself. He has a very vivid imagination, especially as concerns monsters. Last night he was not only between my wife and myself, but in an extra-insecure demonstration he insisted on pressing up against me the rest of the night. I had about 10 inches at the edge of the bed to sleep on. Little bugger's strong as heck. So I couldn't really toss and turn and spent at least 4 hours on my right shoulder. Feels now like someone hit me with a baseball bat. Deep pain all the way through the shoulder 'spring'. Dammit. Got to resolve this nightmare nonsense somehow. I need that shoulder for air pistol competitions!

The Wobbly pistols are indeed entertaining, all the more so when they're hitting hard with new springs and properly fitted breech seals. But the majority of my shooting time goes to formal 10 metre training. Got a new Pardini K12 arriving within the next week and I'm REALLY excited about the new trigger design, which by many accounts is one of the best triggers ever made. At least a couple of high scoring shooters have declared it to be superior in action to that of the electronic Morini. And the absorber is a bonus; lately my 'good day' groups have been inner 9's and strings of 10's, but my 'bad day' groups have shown a distinct upward flipping when I can't quite control the grip. The recoilless design might just be the ticket to eliminate some of those upper 9's and even some 8's... though really I can't blame the 8's on my K10.

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With new springs in the Tempest and Senior .22" pistols and a new homemade leather seal in the Junior bringing up the velocities on all three I thought to have a comparison shoot today. Not very formal, just shooting from 5 yards. Here's the result. The Junior and Tempest fought me the least. The Senior is shooting somewhat harshly. I'm hoping it'll settle in. Took 10 shots with each pistol but lost track with the Tempest and think I stopped at 16. The last is a baseline with my competition pistol, the Pardini, and at that range the group is a bit big for me so I must be having a bad day.
http://www.luthier.ca/other/forum/comparing_Webleys.jpg
Have to say the Junior is currently the most fun to shoot. It's just so light! I'm off the Pardini. Too much like work, and as I'm anticipating the K12 it's starting to feel like it's not my pistol any more... be selling this one soon.