Artemis PP700S-A PCP journey

[Antoni]

Bought from a car boot with pump, reasonable price. Not ridiculous cheap.

An accurate and highly adjustable/customisable gun! What a journey! About the cheapest PCP pistol you can get new. I think a very good design but made to a price and also with a nod to the lawyers.

First job, lighten the ridiculous combat-force trigger. Tried my own way of making the stage-one adjust screw (which was missing) double as a 'remove stage-one and act on stage two' screw. Long story short. There's a better way. By accident I came across the true stage-two-adj grub screw. Some say the trigger is not adjustable - it is.

After removing the grip (side cheeks off first and back on last) it's a small allen grub-screw between the hammer spring assembly mounting screws and rear trigger guard screws. The adjustment is measured in degrees of arc of the screw! Abt 20 degrees (one 18th of a turn) is the adjustment between 6 pounds force+, to 'hammer will not latch'. The last adj to abt one and three-quarter pounds involves juggling abt 5 degrees of arc. The hammer latch is stable.

The trigger has two variables, one is a random variation of abt 3 quarters pound ie anywhere between 3/4 to nothing, and the other is what you set on the grub screw. You can imagine that if you go too light you get near to hammer latch instability and the random variable becomes a large part of the total trigger force, meaning that you always have to ramp up your trigger squeeze to fire, taking a precious second or three, instead of knowing exactly at what point it will fire. An average of 1 3/4 pounds total is a good compromise. I'm not into sear polishing.

The trigger guard fouls my finger very slightly. Removed guard.

A Hawke Red dot sight was fitted. This has the advantage of no eye-relief, and so you can use your face as a support for the gun. Acquisition is quick and effective when up to my face.

Having the gun that close pointed out another problem. It's bloody loud. The old trick of tissue paper over the breech seal was tried and it was no surprise that the gun didn't just blow it off, it totally disintegrated the tissue! The answer is to depressurise the gun take off the grip and guard and get access to the hammer pin valve block. There are four holes which would engage with a pin spanner. There's a tiny locking grub screw on the right of the pistol hidden by the grip when it's in place. loosen that, screw in the valve block so that when rotating breech closed just a little bit of resistance is felt as it passes over the barrel's breech seal. Tighten the grub, re-assemble, then you have a more powerful and quieter gun.

The power does wander a bit. A previous owner made an additional hole in the base of the grip to allow access to the hammer spring. I made a tool for the job (which he must have done) to keep the gun honest. The other two power adjustments are regulator pressure and transfer port 'resistance' I'll not go into detail here but the info is available on the web if you want it. Beware, these pistols can do north of 20 ftlb in 22.

[EDIT: Power. Was set at 5.5 when at mid-low green, 15-20 shots, checked again, still 5.5. Pumped back to max green - down to 2.6 consistent (with accompanying high shot count - good for sighting experiments). This confirms my subjective experiences and some internet rumblings that the standard regulator is not much cop. Low power at high tank pressure. Two choices:

1. Pump to max green and add hammer spring force, then remove same when down to half green or less. Don't forget else heat will become involved.

2. Only pump to half green. This policy leaves the gun at or near full power and unconditionally cool. /EDIT]

There'sa lot of info on the web but they often miss out an important detail or advocate permanent mods to the gun. I'm not going there.

The red dot is OK but I like irons. Advantage of them is they are close to the barrel and so zeroing of a range of ranges is less particular. There is no adjustment for elevation - sad because several people agree that the POI is low out of the box. Nowt you can do?

I was lucky in having an unknown rear iron. Didn't fit so I had to file its dove tail to fit the gun's doves. A lot. I could have filed up a complete rear iron from ally. Point is tho, that I had to over-file the foreign sight's doves (one side only) to get the sight high enough to both fit the gun and to correct the POI. Advantage of this is that, unlocked, you can rock the sight for and aft in the gun's doves, Now, having over-filed one side only - that makes the actual sight off centre for-aft and overfiling allows the sight to rock. That gives a small amount of elevation adjustment. Rock forward, the back of the sight rises a smidgeon. Then lock to the gun by the sights' grub screw.

The gun has a floating barrel (not obvious) under tension, which comresses a kind of shroud via a combined air stripper and nut screwed onto the end of the barrel "8.0mm x 1.0, on both sides of the barrel". The shroud acts as a kind of silencer because three small holes along its length act as a baffle.

It should be very easy to cut and turn down an old .22 barrel and thread it to make a good cheap dual calibre PCP pistol.

Unfortunately I can't work out why the air stripper / nut is so stiff that I daren't try to remove it and it doesn't seem to loosen the assemblage even then - and that's after finding its locking grub screw hidden under the foresight.

Anybody know what's wrong there? Buggered if I do...

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[Alakar]

The air stripper nut is so tight that despite removing the grub screw and using the required tool , a set of pliers or mole grips is often needed.

[Halimede]

If the ally shroud is under compression (and the steel barrel under tension) then how about cooling the shroud rapidly to try and relieve load on the nut?
No idea how to attach a link but I googled PP700S-A exploded view and found plenty of what might be the correct diagrams. Best advertise a tool, is it what you need?

[Antoni]

I found that two 5/64th / 0.078" drill bit shanks put into the nut then held in a vice allowed me to turn the nut but it was a fiddly operation.

The nut came off its full tight position and with difficulty I took it through one turn. I thought that would be enough to at least slacken the assembly of barrel and shroud slightly but it remained as solid as before. I thought it best to turn the nut back, retreat and re-group. I tightened it back as it was.

The internet stripdowns of the gun all show fingers being used to screw the assembly together then the special pin spanner to tighten. Why is mine different? Do I just keep graunching away until it comes apart as suggested by Alakar?

All I wanted to do is knock up a .22 barrel for it - which I don't actually need. Maybe best left alone.