Are Webley Spring Powered Air Pistols Badly Made?

[zooma]

"Bullseye! Which is summat you dont often hear when shooting with Wobblys. I struggle to load the poxy leg nipping plumbers nightmares".....IJ

"always thought ALL wobbly plumbers nightmares were powered by Nora Batties knicker elastic, the elastic eases up some the loose rattling bits, ...mike"

I was wondering when the "Terrible Twins" would join in

You took your time lads - local power cut then was there?

[I. J.]

You took your time lads - local power cut then was there?

No. I was waiting for my turn with the spoon.

[zooma]

No. I was waiting for my turn with the spoon.

You don't need to wait - you have got the biggest collection of stirring spoons in the north-west......and probably the world come to think about it !

[mickson]

"Bullseye! Which is summat you dont often hear when shooting with Wobblys. I struggle to load the poxy leg nipping plumbers nightmares".....IJ

"always thought ALL wobbly plumbers nightmares were powered by Nora Batties knicker elastic, the elastic eases up some the loose rattling bits, ...mike"

I was wondering when the "Terrible Twins" would join in

You took your time lads - local power cut then was there?

No I was busy sorting out dodgy postcodes, ...mike...

[red bob]

great start to a thread ,got my attention bob;its all been said and from my perspective accurate and fair ;in regard to the overall picture covering
the decades of manufacture and the rather traumatic industrial conditions under which they cross the quality to my mind was high and pretty consistent with it, the mk3 underwent so many mks and attempts to cost cut still maintained a feel of quality above some prominent competitors.
the fact that a majority of collectors have examples in their collections speaks for itself .

[zooma]

No I was busy sorting out dodgy postcodes, ...mike...

....sorry about that

[Leonardj]

I bought a Tempest brand new back in the 1970s and put tens of thousands of pellets down the pipe over the years.
That Tempest is what got me started seeking out and collecting the vintage Webleys.

I'll happily take a blued, solid steel frame vintage Webley (or even an alloy frame Webley ) over pretty much any of the contemporary pot metal and plastic spring pistols.

[zooma]

great start to a thread ,got my attention bob;its all been said and from my perspective accurate and fair ;in regard to the overall picture covering
the decades of manufacture and the rather traumatic industrial conditions under which they cross the quality to my mind was high and pretty consistent with it, the mk3 underwent so many mks and attempts to cost cut still maintained a feel of quality above some prominent competitors.
the fact that a majority of collectors have examples in their collections speaks for itself .

The never ending search to save costs is evident when reading the Webley Air Pistols book (by Gordon Bruce) and yet some improvements were still made and the overall quality was mostly maintained even as all of the hand finishing jobs and anything that was labour intensive was eliminated.

Changes in production methods, materials and techniques only ever seemed to be to save cash and few to improve quality (other than to rectify known faults) so the air pistols were hardly "spoilt" or lavished with new developments and yet they still worked and sold well and most are still working many decades later.

This tells it own story really and who know how good the Webley air pistols would be today if any new research and development cash was invested back in the 1940's and 1950's when sales were good and the product was well known and being sold world-wide.

A huge opportunity lost in my humble opinion.

[red bob]

ive debated the question that diversify s on your thread but has a relevance in conjunction with a majority of our once great industries ;i wont give my opinion but would like to hear the opinion of others on the subject .there seems to be a common failure in the business acumen in this country to compete and survive in the modern world ,bearing in mind we had a head start in most areas ,being a keen motorcyclist for 40yrs theres a subject on its own ,car industry ,general manufacturing etc if its a nationwide problem there must surly be a common route .
taking into account several major competitors had their infrastructures wiped out some more than once still came back and overhauled us .
we now seem to be a nation of cottage industries with excellence in pockets;we have held on to one or two big names maybe only because to have removed them to the buyers country might debase the brand [rolls Royce] [range rover]

[zooma]

ive debated the question that diversify s on your thread but has a relevance in conjunction with a majority of our once great industries ;i wont give my opinion but would like to hear the opinion of others on the subject .there seems to be a common failure in the business acumen in this country to compete and survive in the modern world ,bearing in mind we had a head start in most areas ,being a keen motorcyclist for 40yrs theres a subject on its own ,car industry ,general manufacturing etc if its a nationwide problem there must surly be a common route .
taking into account several major competitors had their infrastructures wiped out some more than once still came back and overhauled us .
we now seem to be a nation of cottage industries with excellence in pockets;we have held on to one or two big names maybe only because to have removed them to the buyers country might debase the brand [rolls Royce] [range rover]

Taking up your point about the current production only (although at a lower level), maybe the Webley brand has also been "debased" by moving it's air pistol production to Turkey?

To be fair though (despite the early teething problems) the Turkish Tempests (as an example) are not at all bad now although they lack the nice "feel" in certain areas (barrel release lever), in other areas they are just as good as the Brummie Tempest- some would say better !

Maybe the brand had already reached a level that made no difference to where the Tempest was made (?) but loosing the production from Birmingham was still a major blow and I doubt it would have happened if the Webley pistols were still made in the more traditional "all steel" materials and construction?

[Muskett]

I own two Webley Tempests, one in each calibre, and for full bore pistol practice they are the best of all the pistol offerings done. Most of the other offerings have the wrong weight and recently modern CO2's completely the wrong trigger feel. There maybe quality issues... barrel rust... but for the price you get a lot of gun. The few times I've shot older versions they all shoot sweet too. Can't really fault them for what they are which is not 5x the cost FWB 65. Respect.

[Biker_Bob]

The Premier E series is one of the nicest air pistols ever made I think.
I'm not a collector but I've owned a few Webleys and I wish I'd still got that Premier.
The Senior has a trigger so bad that I will never buy another one.
The Premier has a very nice light trigger and I can achieve single hole groups at 6yds with one.
The Tempest is a nice pistol, quite accurate but obviously the cast frame is not up to the standards of the earlier pistols.

An enthusiast from Sheffield showed me the trick of removing the wobble from the barrel. There's a slightly raised blip on the dogleg that connects the barrel to the pivot screw, this was designed to give a secure lock up and also to be sacrificial i.e. to wear over time. It's simply a matter of dabbing a little MIG weld onto that raised blip and then hand filing to achieve a tight lock up in the cylinder front cap of that particular gun. I've reclaimed several "Wobblies" in this way.

[clarky]

The early Webleys up to the Premier E series were solid forged and profiled from solid billets of best English steel. You will never see engineering like this again....least not in an air pistol. It maybe that cared for, Seniors/Premiers surpass 100 years to become official antiques with such build quality.

[D R Hughes]

The Premier was a very nice pistol, compact and so on. Properly made with reamed and rifled barrels but then the factory started to cheapen things here and there. We sold a lot of them in the late 60's but the barrel latch changed to (what I call) monkey metal and new ones would arrive with hairline cracks in them and were returned. We got tired of doing this and stopped selling them after a while. BTW, some of my customers could get between a 3/4 and 2/3 inch group out of them at 10m. The best ever was half inch but people don't believe it but I saw it done...

As for prices, delivery from Birmingham was a lot cheaper than delivery from Germany. Add to that 20% import duty on the cost of the pistol, cost of delivery and cost of insurance and they start getting dearer than English ones. Then VAT would be added to the grand total cost of the German ones. And VAT didn't apply to postage (from England) but did apply to delivery costs from Germany (and, as I said, to the import duty etc as well). And import agents and the Post Office would add a fee for doing the paperwork. So it all mounts up and makes the German ones artificially expensive.

I never thought much of the trigger pull, Joe Gilbart (that's doctor Gilbart btw) once described it as like breaking a pencil in half with one finger. It was improved a little by making the trigger fatter with a trigger shoe. Another great improvement to the Premier was fattening the grips. The cheap way was a few pieces of white plastic sheet cut to fit, the dear way was walnut grips.

Lastly, I've seen one or two presentation ones in wooden cases with a set of special tools. It seems they were presented to people on retirement.

Regards, David