Have you got a friend you can swap barrels with for 1/2 hour?
Its new to me, the previous owner used it for ratting I believe and seldom used it at range. I am however a paper puncher and regularly user mine at 20-50 yards for either tins or targets.
I'm not the best shot in the world but in favourable wind conditions I can regularly group my .177 rifles under a 5p at 50 yards day in day out. At the moment the closest I have managed to get with the hw100 is about 1.5inches centre to centre. A little more than I am comfortable with.
Going to work my way through some jsb testers to see if there is a specific pellet it really likes, but 1.5inches centre to centre can't, or rather shouldnt be, as good as this rifle gets
Have you got a friend you can swap barrels with for 1/2 hour?
I will admit to not having read every single post on this thread so I may well be repeating advice already given. As a general rule a deterioration in performance from a quality air rifle like the HW100 means either 1)the barrel needs cleaning 2) the barrel is loose 3) the moderator is causing the pellet to clip so test without the moderator or 4) try different pellets. In addition as a specific issue with the HW100, the 'figure of eight' barrel clamp may be causing a problem so try a test with the clamp removed.
'It may be that your sole purpose in life is to serve as a warning to others'.
Welcome to the world of airguns, a far from perfect world as you are finding
Geezer sums up my findings over the years shooting airguns
Pellet fussy, for what ever reason is a well know fact,this was the issue with my gun not saying it is the problem with yours
As for expecting higher cost guns to be without faults I feel you may be disappointed, a good comparison could be made with cars
Good debate keep us informed
Thank you for your response: 1) done 2) done 3) done 4) done
The barrel band does not appear to be restricting the barrel and it serves to hold the barrelled action into the stock at the front end. It may be possible to nip it up far tighter than is desirable and bend the barrel and hold it bent. I guess the torque required to do that would be significant. Until I removed the barrelled action, there was no previous removal of the barrel band and no obvious reason for its retaining bolt to have tightened itself. I will let my gunsmith know that this is a thought that requires some investigation.
Feinwerkbau 700 Evolution Top - Air Arms Alfa Pro J
If the gun had misbehaved from day one, when it was first purchased, I could accept the concept of a Friday night object. Because it has behaved well and shot perfectly for the 18 months during which I have owned it, then the issue is not clear cut. I don't necessarily expect a manufactured product to exhibit no faults. I do expect higher costs to be reflected in materials and care in manufacturer; with a percentage of those costs being reflected in quality assurance.
For example; the trigger mechanism of the Anschütz 9015 (which I had held recently) was so light that I kept missing the slight break before the ultra quiet release. Compared to the Weihrauch Rekord, which is known to be a good trigger unit, the Anschütz was a whole world away in terms of its quality and predictability and an absolute revelation to me once I had learned to use it. Can a £200 gun with a plastic trigger replicate that very sweet release? No! Can a gunsmith make a cheap trigger feel like the Anschütz? No! There has to be a reason to charge what manufacturers set their prices at and almost certainly it will be reflected in material choices, manufacturing techniques, tolerances and QA.
I shoot an Air Arms Alfa Pro J pistol. It is as accurate as I required. However, some kind person lent me their Feinwerkbau pistol to shoot with and it was a very different experience. It felt far more accurate and designed to assist the shooter in every way. I wont be replacing my Alfa Pro J anytime soon but I could see and feel where the extra cost is buried in the Feinwerkbau.
I will report back all transactions with my gunsmith.
Feinwerkbau 700 Evolution Top - Air Arms Alfa Pro J
I would hardly call an HW100 barrel 'mated' to the action, these are 'assembly line' guns not hand built specials. A barrel will be taken from the rack and inserted to an action and the grub screws tightened to lock in in place.
By changing barrels it could well indicate whether your barrel has developed a fault or whether it is a power plant issue.
People who have been there focus on the fundamentals. People who sit at keyboards all day focus on the trivial and inane.
Thanks for the helpful response.
I don't have a barrel to exchange. All guns must be tested to some degree at the factory and signed off as a collection of parts that can be sold as a whole gun, which meets the company's QA standards for that model. For my purposes, that is mated to the action.
Where the barrels can vary widely, as is suggested by many of the posts here, a change to another barrel may not reveal the issue because of the inherent variability in manufacture. For now, I have not received any explanations which can tell me why the gun is no longer able to group pellets. There have been many suggestions but not all of them have considered all of the circumstances which were posted. We are not talking about a millimetre or two away from the expected point of impact.
The behaviour I wish to have explained is this: I can hold the gun on a sandbag and point at the target centre through a reasonable scope, that was exchanged for two others without making any difference. I don't shoot drunk or drugged. The cross hairs of the sight are on the dead centre of the target and the pellet may land within a few millimetres of the centre of the cross hairs. The next pellet may land 2 inches below that one and be at the extreme edge of the target. I was used to having every shot land where I pointed the gun.
It may be that the pellet goes right, up, down or left. The following pellet will also hit the target randomly. The gun is not moved and the scope cross hairs are not positioned differently. Ten shots in ten different places is not about the large group made by covering 6.5 inches of the target face. There is no group at all. The gun has not been abused, nor dropped. The scope is not at fault.
The gun appears to have no damage to the bore or crown of the barrel and all of the working parts work without giving any hint of obstruction or damage. The magazines appear to feed the pellets cleanly and on axis. To all intents and purposes, the gun appears to be working correctly except in the single respect that the pellet point of impact cannot be adequately guided or predicted.
My knowledge is insufficient to draw any adequate conclusions from what has been said here and from the gun's behaviour and my limited inspection of it. If you tell me what faults a barrel can develop just by being used as intended, then I am reasonably sure that I could devise a test to reveal that developing fault.
Feinwerkbau 700 Evolution Top - Air Arms Alfa Pro J
I've had a quick read and this did stick out:
.... and a gunsmith told me that the barrel had become loose and the silencer was bent out of true.
Now I am not familiar with the HW so pardon my ignorance on the finer details. My first thoughts are did you buy the gun new?
Reason is this gun might have been dropped and damaged, but by a bit of fettling by the previous owner (such as loosening the barrel) was restored to firing great. For a while. Until maybe the barrel got a bit too loose where re- tightening put it back to the broken state.
If we rule the barrel out then I think the only other possibility is pellet damage either due to some misalighment in the breech or pellet probe. Again this loose barrel seems to stick out a bit (as does bend in the moderator - how?).
Is it possible to manually load a pellet into the breech and push it into position without using the probe on the bolt? maybe a matchstick? the you could feel if there was a step that would damage the pellet.
Finally - a bit of lead stuck in the rifling which won't budge!
Hope you get it fixed
atb
Simes
Welcome to the sometimes frustrating world of airguns.
As to barrel variability - yes this can occur, but generally such variability is not to the extreme you are experiencing.
You mention you have tried cleaning the barrel - how thorough was the cleaning?
Sometimes lead deposits can be stubborn to shift.
You also mentioned at some point that the rifle has been stored in a case, is there a possibility that some moisture could have been trapped in the barrel that has caused a patch of corrosion in the bore?
One other thought, IIRC the HW100 has a two piece action block - is this still firmly bolted together as if the scope is on two piece mounts it could theoretically cause some movement if the two halves are loose.
People who have been there focus on the fundamentals. People who sit at keyboards all day focus on the trivial and inane.
To recap:
The rifle grouped well, then the next time you used it (and subsequent times) it won’t group.
A gunsmith reported the barrel was straight, but a little loose. It has been tightened and it still won’t group.
The same gunsmith said the silencer was bent. You have shot the gun both with no silencer and with a new one, it still won’t group.
You have cleaned the barrel, it still won’t group.
You are using pellets from the same tin that previously grouped well, but it doesn’t group now.
You are experiencing the same problem with all the types of pellet that previously grouped well.
You have tried another scope and still it won’t group.
You have looked at the barrel internally and cannot see anything.
You have looked at the breach end and crown of the rifle and cannot see anything.
You have the same problem when using different magazines.
You have looked at the magazines and cannot see anything.
You do not think anything you, as the shooter, is doing is different.
The barrel band you feel is not the issue.
You have tightened the stock/action, it still won’t group.
You say the gun hasn’t been damaged.
Indeed a confusing position. It sure sounds like the pellets are being damaged in some way that is giving an inconsistent trajectory. The one thing that stands out to me from all your posts, is after cleaning the barrel the grouping changed for a short while, this surely has some significance. Fingers crossed the gunsmith finds the answer.
Ooo! An afterthought, can you video the pellet in flight in slow motion to see how it is flying?
Thanks for your response. The gunsmith I referred to is obviously not a gunsmith. He decided that the Weihrauch moderator was bent out of true. That was not the case. He only told me about the barrel. I never experienced it and there are no tell-tale index marks on the barrel which would suggest that he removed and inspected it and then he re-tightened the grub screw holding the barrel in place. There does not appear to be any pellet misalignment in the breech or the probe. i suspect my new formal gunsmith will be able to tell me that for a fact. As it stands, the notion of a misalignment appears to be plausible, given the symptoms exhibited by the gun. The magazine thickness is only approximately 5 or 6mm in depth so manually loading a pellet into the breech is not really possible. Weihrauch do a single pellet holder but you may not consider that to be manual loading.
Feinwerkbau 700 Evolution Top - Air Arms Alfa Pro J
I am following this thread with interest as it intrigues me. All the comments about the barrel: would there be anything to be gained by loosening the barrel, turning it through 90 degrees and tightening it again? Asked in complete ignorance as the barrel may be screwed in then secured, in which case my comment may be utter rubbish.
Cheers, Phil
Thanks for this response. The cleaning was carried out with Napier and patches on a pull-through. I guess the point about corrosion in the barrel through moisture is a possibility. The house is kept at an even temperature and does not suffer during the cold weather. Moving from well heated to a cold environment could potentially provoke condensation and that may provide enough moisture to corrode the barrel. When I inspected the barrel from both ends against a strong light source, I could see no variation in lands or rifling grooves. Good point about the action block. It is very firmly bolted together.
Feinwerkbau 700 Evolution Top - Air Arms Alfa Pro J