Now that is a question.Originally Posted by Muskett
Our business was created by our success at Field Target. We wanted to win, pure and simple.
We had a 50’s Bedford coach that my Father and Dave had converted into a caravan and we used to travel the country competing at FT. Travelling with all us Welhams was National Champion Terry Wheeler, John Ford of Sportsmatch fame and his son Matthew, Mark Hicks, Roger Cameron and a few others. They were great days for a young airgun enthusiast. All that airgun talent in one place, discussing new ideas, their latest modifications, what works - what doesn’t. We all learnt so much in a very short time.
Our success led to people asking us to work on their rifles. Our philosophy was simple - accuracy is all that matters. Back then we didn’t give a hoot about aesthetics, recoil, noise, vibration so long as the result produced an edge that won competitions. Terry Wheeler's 45 was ridiculously noisy but by god was it accurate. Our super successful Mastersport is also a gun with a certain ‘hum’ to it and John Ford’s 124 in its Sportsmatch stock was like shooting a box of angry bees. But they were all tack drivers and between us we won many big competitions.
FT was different then though. 30 shots divided into 6 lanes of 5 targets, 90 seconds to shoot each lane, position determined by the target. This meant that you had to shoot and move so we were tuning not only for accuracy but consistency of zero in different positions.
When NARPA collapsed and BASC stepped in, shooting against the clock was removed from FT. Reason being quoting Gerry Turner 'FT is practice for hunting, we shouldn’t be encouraging people to rush their shots’. For many of us at the time this was a massive mistake, we fought against it but it became the norm. This led to most people adopting the FT ‘Cuddle’ hold. With that there came a change in what shooters wanted from their rifles and the HW 77 gave them exactly what they were craving.
The 77k changed everything. The combination of small diameter lightweight piston wrapped in 9lbs of steel and beech opened ours eyes to what was possible and it became the standard platform for 99% of FT rifles.
In all honesty, in my experience, the accuracy gains of any kind of tuning on the 77 are marginal. The biggest gains were to be made in the ergonomics of the stock and trigger and that’s what we really concentrated on.
But we did offer three stages of tune.
Stage 1 . Deburr, new spring, sleeve piston (this was soldered into position), fit piston head, re-lube.
Stage 2 . As above plus a solid guide fitted into the trigger block, top hat and and thrust race to remove torque.
Stage 3 . As above plus glided piston with bronze skirt and ptfe bearing. We designed this not for feel but to isolate the cylinder from any lubrication used on the spring. Then cylinder wasn’t glided, it was just shortened to accommodate the skirt we added to the piston. The piston was fitted with an Original 75 seal. These were fitted with two counter wound springs in the manner of the FWB 300.
So that was the standard offering but if you bought a full FTS and had the time and inclination we also changed the stroke length to suite the individuals style. Our back yard at the shop was 35 metres and we spent a lot of time setting up rifles. We re-barrelled to suite certain pellets, we would venturi cylinders, we tried every possible route with the sole aim of winning FT comps. So when you open one of our race guns, you could find anything.
As to numbers, 75-100 is as mentioned a guesstimate. Chatting to my Dad, we can’t believe we produced more than 100, in fact I would ere more toward the lower number, but most would have been full FTS, the difference in price being marginal between the two.
When launched, the FTS was nearly twice the price of its nearest competitor. When I calculated the cost equivalent at todays prices it suprised me. I calculated this by using the base cost of a 77 in 85 and the base cost today so I think £1700 is pretty accurate.
Richard
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