Quote Originally Posted by Muskett View Post
MKI is too much a contraption, though a lovely bit of engineering.

Webley MKIII certainly an elegant hansom rifle. Just didn't shoot well enough with the pellets of the day and that tap loading breech.

Webley Vulcan: MKI, MKII, think even MKIII?? MKI great boys rifle but that trigger is hard. MKII getting better. MII Walnut Deluxe was a great looking rifle too. But with all of them the trigger couldn't get them to shoot beyond the farmyard.

Webley Omega was the best yet. A great handling sporting rifle, one of the best stock designs ever done. A better trigger than the Vulcan, but still not good enough compared to the competition. Wish they had done them in walnut.
The Eclipse was a great effort which could have come off if it hadn't the same trigger as the Omega. It could but wasn't a BSA Superstar or HW77.

Longbows, finished off the the action and trigger to what is necessary, but then changed the stock. Good shooting rifle but not as elegant as the MKII or Omega.

So to me Webley never made a "best" as all had at least a major fault if not two. I have an Omega and MKI, both in .22, which about says it all from me.
Each to his own, and this stuff is very personal. For me, the Omega is a very good rifle, one of the top ten or fifteen factory break-barrels, but I much prefer the scope-optimised stocks on the Bow and Tommie (and their triggers). Maybe they just happen to fit me better.

As a long-time FWB Sport user, the Omega feels to me like a Sport not very successfully crossed with an early Anschutz 335. I don't like the early 335-style barrel latch, and the Omega doesn't have quite the same lively feel in the hands as the FWB.

There could be some subjectivity in this, in that I really wanted an Omega when they came out, but it was years later before I shot one. Maybe my view is in part based on the reality experienced as an adult not quite meeting the overblown impression I had as an adolescent that the Omega was (as Webley hyped it) the last gun you would ever buy.

One of the many tricks that Webley missed was not using the (perfectly decent) Omega/Eclipse trigger (or the better Bow/Tommie one) for the Mk3 Vulcan and Stingray/Xocet. That might have been a very worthy HW95 competitor.