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Air Gun Maintenance.
Unlike gun powder guns, a air gun needs little maintenance. Oiling the spring chamber and the piston is done only once in a while, about every 300 to 1,000 shots with 2 drops of a synthetic oil (high flash cylinder oil) made for lubricating the chamber, how many shots depend on the manufacture's instructions. Most Chinese air gun's piston and chamber should be lubed every 300 shots. Air guns, like Gamo, the manufacture does not recommend the lubing the chamber and doing so might cancel the life time warrenty Gamo air guns have, check with your air gun's manufacture for instructions on lubing the air chamber and piston. Never use regular oil, the friction of the piston creates heat and will diesel the oil, causing problems in spring piston air rifles. You may oil the pivot or hinge points every 300 or 500 shots. Also oil all moving parts of the tigger and the moving parts of the loading chamber.
You should clean the barrel, every 1,000 shots with a light degreaser, to get out the oil mixed with lead dust build up, to insure accuracy, clean and dry, then use a light coat of cylinder oil in the barrel to help prevent rust. Give the outside and inside metal parts a light coating of oil to protect it from rust. You may use a silicone cloth made for that using on guns. NEVER SHOOT a spring piston air gun with out a pellet, this causes damage to the piston and spring. The piston and the spring are not made to take the impact of a empty barrel, the pressure need to expel the pellet, helps to cushion the impact. Never leave a spring piston air gun cocked for long periods of time, this will also damage the spring and make it lose power. You should never repeatly shoot a spring piston air guns rapidly, this will cause the spring piston to over heat, diesel the oil and may burn out the seal.
CO2 air gun maintenance is much like the maintenance of a spring piston air gun. But instead of oiling the spring and piston, you place a 1 drop of cylinder oil on the seal and needle where the powerlet goes. This is done every 500 shots to insure that the seal keeps moist and keeps from drying. This will also help in keeping a tight seal between the seal and the powerlet.
Pump Air Guns, need more or less the same maintenance as the spring piston guns. Oil all pivot or hinge points, every 200 shots. But only oil the pumping piston with 2 drops of cylinder oil every 2000 shots or when you hear the piston squeak, beware oil tends to stop up the pressure chamber on pump air guns.
Summary of the History of Air Guns.
Before the prefection of Gun Powder and firearm catiridges, Air Guns were used for hunting big game. They came in big calibers .30 cal. to .51 cal. and were used to hunt big game Deers and Wild Boars. These Air Rifles were charged using a hand pump, which had to be pumped anywhere from 100 times to 1,000 times to charge a air reservoir (tank) and gave speeds from 650 fps up to 1,000 fps to a high caliber lead balls and bullets.
The Advantages of the 30. to 51 cal. Air Rifles.
The advantage of a high caliber air rifle over a one shot black powder rifle was that the air rifle could be charged to shoot 7 to 20 times with out reloading using a hand pump. The disadvantage of the one shot black powdered rifles was, it shot one shot at a time and had to be reloaded and also created a lot of smoke and tended to blind the shooter. These high caliber air rifles came in different calibers, such as .30 cal. and up to .51 cal..
There was even a Elite Unit in a Austraian Army that carried .36 cal. and .51 cal. Air Rifles that shot up to 20 rounds with one charge, at speeds up to 1,000 fps. In those days this Elite Unit was, what is known today as a High Tech. Combat Unit, they had rapid fire power, other Units in those days did not have rapid fire power. A Austrian Miltary Air Rifle designed by Grandoni in 1779 shot 20 rounds of .51 cal. bullets at speeds as high as 1,000 fps on one charge.
The most famous .36 cal. Air Gun is the one Lewis and Clark took on their Expedition of 1804-06.
Even in modern times a few high caliber air rifles have shown up. A German company RWS has put out two fine high cal. air rifles, a 9mm 60 grain air gun (900fps) and a .44 cal. (750 fps), both air guns use hand pumps to charge and can use suba tanks to charge their air reservoirs. These RWS models are rather expensive, one of these babies can run you up to 800.00 U.S. dollars with the air pump, this is out of the price range of most buyers. But if you check out my Super Discount store I have a fine air rifle, one cock (spring piston) high power air rifle, the Super Max 1000, that comes in both .22 cal. and .117 cal. and gives speeds of over 1,000 fps in .117 cal. and speeds of over 900 fps in .22 cal.
It comes as a considerable surprise to most present-day gun enthusiasts that shooters have used airguns for hundreds of years. The first airguns were lung powered blowguns which date back at least to 125 AD (1), and probably hundreds, or even thousands of years, before that.
The origin of mechanical airguns also is by no means clear.
Evidently more than one early inventor thought of using bellows to replace the human lungs as the power source. The oldest existing mechanical airgun apparently is a bellows gun, in the Livrustkammar Museum in Stockholm, which dates from about 1580. This rifle used a spring-loaded bellows in the butt of the gun to provide a propulsive blast of air to a special dart when the trigger was tripped. Airguns which employed a spring to drive a piston, which also compressed air only at the moment of firing, appeared almost as early as the bellow guns. And, amazingly enough, it apparently was also about 1600 that the first pump-up (pneumatic) airgun appeared - an experimental gun made for King Henry IV of France. By 1800 airguns were among the most accurate, and certainly among the most elite, of large-bore rifles! The modern lack of awareness of such guns is understandable when one discovers that airguns were very uncommon, even then. Good airguns have always cost more to make than equivalent quality firearms. The special skills, knowledge, and great amount of time necessary to make the complex valves, locks and air reservoirs of the early airguns meant that only the wealthy shooters could afford them. All of the most powerful airguns of yesteryear were pump pneumatics. That is, pumping air into a strong valved reservoir which was attached to, or made part of, the gun, charged them. The pumps were sometimes built into the gun but were more often separate. Charging a reservoir could take hundreds of strokes of the pump, but the resulting air pressure, below 600 psi, evidently was very efficient (2). The old airguns offered numerous advantages for those early shooters who could afford them. Some could be fired many times per minute - a striking contrast to the front- feeding powder burners. Such rapid fire was further more practical with airguns because they did not obscure their own line of sight with clouds of smoke. And, although the oft-told tale of their silence is not true, they are quieter than firearms of equivalent power and their lack of smoke and flash did help to make it more difficult to spot the marksman's position. An especially appealing feature was the great dependability of the airguns. Other advantages included lack of residual sparks, faster shot time, more consistent power, and extremely light barrel fouling. The variety of early hunting airguns reflected the variety of hunting. One 18th century specimen in the Beeman collection is a solid .39" caliber carbine, only 40 inches long, perhaps intended for use in heavy brush or on horseback. Another, made by Hass in Neustadt, Germany about 1750, has a beautiful 33" shot barrel, about .33" caliber, which can be unscrewed and drawn out of the gun to reveal a very menacing .46" caliber barrel with seven extremely deep rifling grooves. In just moments, the owner of the gun could switch from doves to deer! One of the fine-cased English air rifles (made about 1850) in the author's collection was regularly used for deer hunting as recently as 1950. It fires a 265-grain, .44" caliber bullet! Perhaps the most historically important American airgun of all was an air rifle carried by Captain Meriwether Lewis on the famous Lewis and Clark expedition of 1803-06. The most recent research (6) fairly conclusively indicates that this was a .31" caliber, flintlock-style, pneumatic rifle built by Isaiah Lukens in Philadelphia. It served Captain Lewis well, both for hunting and to astonish the Indians. Certainly one of the most famous of the butt-reservoir guns was the Austrian military air rifle designed by Girandoni about 1779. Its buttstock also is a detachable air reservoir which could be quickly unscrewed when empty and replaced by a full one. Each reservoir held enough air to fire a series of 20 heavy lead balls fed from an ingenious rapid feed magazine. These formidable weapons could put out their 20 smokeless shots in a minute; it is reported that the .51" caliber (13mm) balls were deadly to 100 yards! A corps of 500 soldiers so armed had a potential firepower of 300,000 shots in a half-hour - incredible for military rifles of the late 1700's! During this same period, and for almost a century to follow, big bore airguns were extremely popular with the wealthy sportsmen of Europe. Among the ancient airguns in the Beeman collection are beautiful specimens of air carbines, about .45" caliber, apparently for boar hunting from horseback, long rifles for deer hunting, and especially beautiful English cased sets with richly engraved receivers and interchangeable rifle and shot barrels for mammals or waterfowl. The ultimate in mechanical airgun development was the fearsome aircanes with their jewel-like internal locks. Evidently no well-dressed English gentleman of the late 1800's would be seen without one of these weapons-which ranged from almost .30" to .49" in caliber and had perhaps the power of a modern police revolver! An interesting trans-Atlantic switch in airgun evolution occurred about the start of the 20th century. In America, the spring piston gun had developed to a fairly powerful and sophisticated level - especially in the form of expensive gallery guns popular after the Civil War (4). The pneumatics had reached a high level in Europe with the advent of the cased hunting sets, the air canes, and finally the first CO2 rifle - the handsome and elaborate Giffard. The introduction of the firearm cartridge and smokeless powder killed the development of airguns as powerful guns. No longer could airguns properly be considered as arms or weapons. The evolution of the pump pneumatics and CO2 guns largely left Europe and appeared here as youth-level, low-power, mass-production guns, while in Europe spring piston airguns became extremely sophisticated and accurate target and light hunting small-bore guns. Finally, in the 1970's the Beeman's blended American styling, increased power, and new features with the European developments and made the successful introduction of precision adult airguns and new pellet designs into the mainstream of the American shooting market (5). Now other companies have come into the precision adult airgun market, but the Beeman company's objective is to continue to earn your respect as that market's leader. 1 Arne Hoff. 1977. Windbücshsen Und Andere Druckluftwaffen.105 pp. Parey, Hamburg & Berlin. 2 Tom Gaylord, 1998. The State of Big Bore Air Rifles in the US.,pp. 26-37. Airgun Revue #3, GAPP Inc., Ellicott City, MD 21042-6329. 3 Robert Beeman, 1977, Four Centuries of Air Guns, Air Guns Digest,pp. 14-25. DBI Books, Northfield, Il. 4 Eldon Wolff, 1958. Air Guns.198 pp. Milwaukee Public Museum, WI 5 Dennis Adler and Steve Fjestad, 1998.Beeman Precision Airguns dedication,pp 1272-1273. Nineteenth Edition, Blue Book of Gun Values, Minneapolis, MN. 6 Beeman, Robert D., 2000. Proceeding on to the Lewis & Clark airgun. pp.13-33. Airgun Revue No. 6, GAPP Inc., Ellicott City, MD 21042-632 Note: There recently has been a claim that the airgun carried by Captain Clark was a Girandoni-type repeating airgun made by Lukens. At the time of this website publication, Dr. Beeman was preparing a paper indicating that this claim apparently is not credible. See Robert and Toshiko Beeman's private website at www.Beemans.net for additional details. (That private website is not sponsored by, nor connected in any way to Beeman Precision Airguns.)
Airguns come in many shapes and forms. You know this to be true because you just thumbed through this catalog. You think you might want to own one of these swell airguns but can't understand why Beeman imports so many when you want just one. I'll give you some basic information so that you can make a considered choice. Besides the question of caliber, modern airguns fit into three basic groups defined by their powerplant (means of pushing a pellet out the barrel).
Pneumatic Airguns
Spring-Piston Airguns
CO2 Airguns
PNEUMATIC AIRGUNS
Pneumatic airguns use compressed air for power. The way you get the air compressed in the airgun depends on the type of pneumatic it is. The most common pneumatic airgun is the MULTI-STROKE or sometimes called a PUMP-UP type pneumatic airgun.
To get the tiny bit of air compressed in a Multi-Stroke pneumatic takes, as the name implies, between two and ten strokes of the forend pump lever to get the internal pressure needed to power the pellet out the barrel at a decent pace. Most Multi-Stroke Pneumatic airguns are compact,
recoilless and light weight. Multi-stroke pneumatics are moderate in power. The big down side to a Multi-Stroke pneumatic is all the time and effort needed to get a shot off, and when hunting a second shot is near impossible before your quarry runs or flies away. As you pump up the Multi-Stroke airgun each progressive pump takes more effort. Accuracy from a Multi-Stroke is just O.K. There are too many variables in the pumping procedure to allow for stellar performance aside from the human error. A more preferable form of Pneumatic is the Single-Stroke Pneumatic Airgun. As the name implies, one motion of the cocking lever is all that is needed to compress the air for propulsion. The SINGLE-STROKE format is used on many high end 10 Meter Match airguns, such as the Beeman/FWB 603. Consistency, accuracy and lack of recoil are the reasons top shooters gravitate to this type of power plant. The downside is lowish power, but with tack driving accuracy at close range, again the reason 10 meter shooters love them.
The third type of Pneumatic Airgun is the Pre-Charged Pneumatic. This is the best of both worlds. You can get variable power from low to high if you want it. Incredible accuracy, easy cocking, no recoil and lots of shots from an air charge. The charge takes little effort on your part because the air is compressed at the Dive shop
into a scuba tank. All you need to do is siphon some of the 3000 psi out of the scuba tank and into the airgun via a special hose with a pressure gauge. Pre-charged pneumatics come
as competition airguns for the field target set, and lightweight hunters for those so inclined. Some of the pre-charged airguns are multiple shot repeaters so the airgun hunter with poor aim can get a second chance with no pumping.
SPRING-PISTON AIRGUNS
When someone says airgun these days they probably mean a Spring-Piston airgun thanks to Dr. Robert D. Beeman's relationship with Weihrauch and Feinwerkbau, two of the best and most prolific makers of high quality Spring Piston airguns over the years
Spring-Piston airguns are the easiest airguns to shoot, maintain and own. The Spring-Piston gun most shooters cut their teeth on is the break barrel. The break barrel airgun is cocked by holding the stock in one hand and breaking the airgun in half at the breech holding the barrel with the other. This action of breaking the airgun moves a piston backwards within the receiver as well as compressing a stout spring behind it. The trigger sear clicks into a notch in the piston and holds the whole works in tension. With a break barrel airgun the pellet is placed directly into the breech and the barrel is swung back into position and now you are ready to fire. Take the safety off and put positive pressure on the trigger. When the sear releases the piston, it moves forward briskly with the power of a big spring behind it. All this action pushes a column of air forward into the rear end of the pellet sitting in the breech. The effect of all this causes the pellet to move briskly out the barrel towards the target of your choice. Spring-Piston airguns come in all shapes, sizes and powers. Spring-Piston airguns are cocked by breaking the barrel, cocking an underlever, a side lever, or a top lever (overlever).Inside they all are basically the same in principle. Things like spring rates, diameter of the compression tube (receiver) and swept area can be different depending on the gun designers ideas. Spring-Piston airguns are very reliable and long-lived. The worst thing you could do to any Spring-Piston airgun is to "dry fire" it; that is, fire it without a pellet in the breech. What happens when this error occurs? The piston head is smashed into the front of the receiver (compression tube) because the missing pellet cannot offer the needed resistance to the air column. This resistance cushions the piston from the tremendous energy the ompressed spring releases to move the air column. Spring-Piston airguns last a long time, but the springs do wear out after awhile. Do not worry. A spring piston replacement and piston seal change are relatively cheap and very easy for an airgunsmith to ccomplish, but again we are talking years of use and thousands of pellets. Most firearms shooters like the recoil sensation felt when shooting a spring airgun. This is a smooth steady push to the shoulder as the spring inside the airgun does its work pushing the pellet out the barrel. CO2 AIRGUNS
As their name implies, these airguns are powered by CO2, either in the 12 gram cartridge form or decanted from a bulk CO2 tank into the airgun reservoir.
This all depends on the airgun. CO2 as a power plant for an airgun is kind of funny because it is used in some of the mass-produced non-precision airguns along with the highest of the high-tech 10 meter match airguns. Kept at room temperature, CO2 is approximately 900-1000 psi and very consistent, but raise or lower the temperature and the point of impact of a CO2 airgun can change. You wonder with this point of impact change situation why would these serious match shooters choose the CO2 propulsion system to break records. Well, these people are smart. They bring their CO2 airguns to the range, let the airgun stabilize to the ambient temperature in the range and sight in. Right-left (windage) point of impact will be constant, your up-down (elevation) zero will vary slightly until you sight in. The real issue with CO2 as a powerplant is for the airgun hunter or plinker. The airgun hunter who sights in on a warm day and goes out to hunt on a cool one or visa-versa will not know where the airgun will hit. A temperature change during the day will also be a problem. CO2 airguns are generally easy to cock and recoilless to shoot. The match CO2 airguns are very consistent and incredibly accurate at 10 meters.
Frequently my phone conversations concerns the customer's airgun which "can't hit the broad side of a barn." Invariably, the frustrated owner has "tried everything, but it still won't group no matter what!"
Unfortunately, the information supplied with most new airguns is fairly ordinary at best and won't offer much assistance, so here is a list of the frequent problem areas to look at before you give up in despair. Most of the this information applies to conventional spring piston airguns but is appropriate to other systems as well.
Loose Stock Screws are probably the most common cause of inaccuracy in airguns. Even a quarter turn loose can translate to 50mm difference at 25 meters. Most airguns have hree blade or Phillips head screws securing the action to the stock - two in the forearm and one through the trigger guard. These must be firmly tight at all times with any lock washers in place. Loose screws on the breech-block assembly will also affect accuracy on break-barrel models.
CAUTION! Before you stampede to your tool box - airgun, just like regular firearm slottedscrews, are different. They require special screwdrivers with parallel tapers unlike carpentry screws. Use a regular screwdriver and you risk damaging the screw head, the gun and yourself-sometimes irreparably! We offer the handy and compact Gunsmith Screwdriver Kit that covers most of the screws you will encounter on your airguns including Phillips heads. Don't overtighten! Any more tension than firm will probably compress the wood and destroy the stock, particularly in the forearm.
Loose Sights. Open Sights - check that the front sight attachment screw is tight and the sight element held within is secure. Check the rear sight for play and tightness on the breech block. Scope Mounts - Any old scope mount just won't do on an airgun! On magnum and beyond sporters, you must use a scope mount specifically designed for airgun use. These may have an integral scope stop pin that locates in special arrestor holes milled into the receivers of the best sporters. Spring piston airguns don't just recoil backwards, they snap forward too and coupled with the vibration of the mainspring will continually drive a less than proper mount off the scope grooves. Separate scope stops are also available for the same purpose. Scopes can also move through the scope rings but this problem is usually eliminated using the right scope mount.
Using a Regular Firearm Scope. Leave your old .22 scope on your old .22! If you are serious about your airgunning and want the best performance out of your airgun, you must use a scope specifically designed for airgun use.
Don't get conned or laughed off at your local gun shop! Today's magnum spring piston and gas spring airguns will promptly break a less than proper airgun scope. As mentioned previously, airguns recoil backwards then snap forward; this is what destroys regular scopes. Proper airgun scopes have their lenses and reticule braced at the front and the back whereas most regular firearm scopes are only braced at the rear. This double recoil peculiar to airguns, coupled with the vibration of the mainspring, will quickly destroy even the biggest brand names in scopes.
Secondly, airguns shoot at shorter distances than regular firearms, and finally most regular firearm scopes are parallax corrected to 50 yards or more.
Proper airgun scopes have an externally adjustable parallax ring on the objective or front end to focus clearly at all distances down to about 10 meters. This can also be used as a range finder to estimate distances to your target. Finally, airguns have a much more pronounced trajectory than firearms and proper airgun scopes have an elevation bias so there is more up than down adjustment, eliminating the need to shim the scope mount and possibly crush or bend the scope tube.
Incorrect Barrel Tension. Barrel cocking airguns must have the pivot tension set carefully. Too much and the barrel detent will not consistently lock up and there will be galling of the breech block. Too little and there will be blow by at the breech. Both situations will cause wild and erratic groups. The correct tension is the point where the barrel will just stay anywhere on the return arc after cocking. Better barrel cocking airguns have adjustable pivot tension.
You must use proper gunsmith screwdrivers, keep your fingers out of the trigger guard and don't adjust a cocked gun! On Beeman R series, Weihrauch and FWB Sport, loosen the right hand side screw/nut and tighten the left hand side bolt. When the tension is correct, tighten the nut against the bolt and recheck. On Diana, Anschutz and others remove the small lock screw and tighten the pivot bolt to a compromise position that allows the lock screw to locate into one of the cutouts in the pivot bolt head.
The Wrong Pellet. Most inaccuracy queries emanate from owners of .177 magnum sporters capable of muzzle velocities in excess of 1000 fps. In the power race, many manufacturers use the very lightest pellet available to achieve their advertised velocity and boost their sales. Invariably, this pellet is not the best for these guns, in terms of accuracy, energy and velocity retention downrange where it counts. Every gun is different and what works for one gun doesn't mean it will work on the next gun even if it is the same make and model.
Buy an assortment pack in your caliber, and see which pellets shoot the best group at your preferred shooting distance. Pellet induced accuracy problems on lower powered airguns can usually be cured by switching brands or types. Don't use old and oxidized pellets or any deformed examples - discard them immediately. Only use high quality lead pellets from respected manufacturers. Cheap pellets are false economy.
Dirty Bore. Airguns do foul barrels but not in the same manner as regular firearms. Instead minute traces of lead and the gun's mechanisms spray lubricants from the compression chamber that deposit in the rifling. This must be carefully removed with a proper airgun barrel cleaning kit. We strongly recommend the Beeman Zip Clean Kit which is a compact flexible rod that won't damage the delicate crown or rifling and it covers all four calibers. Carefully follow the directions for the best results.
Don't use regular firearm solvents because they will attack the seals. Use a gentle degreaser on a pure cotton patch and make sure the bore is dry before applying a very light coat of polarizing oil to protect against rust. A good quick fix in the field is to use "Quick Clean" felt pellets which are fired through the barrel every 1000 shots or so. On any airgun with greater than match velocity, use multiple Quick Clean pellets.
Always sight in your airgun each time you open a new tin of pellets. Variations can occur between batches.
Incorrect Shooting Techniques. Regular firearm dogma doesn't work on spring piston and gas spring airguns. That is why many expert firearm marksmen can't shoot airguns accurately and why many expert airgunners shoot regular firearms so well. There are two basic reasons:
A. Hold your airgun loosely against your shoulder and let it jump around when you fire it. Don't pull it in hard into your shoulder or strangle its forearm and don't rest the forearm on a hard surface. Let it recoil and vibrate freely - don't try to prevent it.
B. When you sense that your airgun has fired, the pellet is only just starting up the barrel. The lock time is so much slower on airguns compared to firearms so you have to adjust and follow through. Hang onto your sight picture just a little longer and your groups will shrink.
Naturally, trigger, breathing and stance principles still apply and there are plenty of books available on these topics to consult. If you have followed all these suggestions and still have accuracy problems your airgun may need the attention of an airgunsmith.
Don't even attempt to disassemble your airgun - this will void your warranty! From experience it is far cheaper in the end to have an airgun specialist attend to it.
It comes as a considerable surprise to most present-day gun enthusiasts that airguns have been used by shooters for hundreds of years. The first airguns were lung powered
blowguns which date back at least to 125 AD, and probably hundreds, or even thousands of years, before that. The origin of mechanical air-guns also is by no means clear. Evidently more than one early inventor thought of using bellows to replace the
human lungs as the power source. The oldest existing mechanical airgun apparently is a bellows gun, in the Livrustkammar Museum in Stockholm, which dates from about 1580. This arm used a spring-loaded bellows in the butt of the gun to provide a propulsive
blast of air to a special dart when the trigger was tripped. Airguns which employed a spring to drive a piston, which also compressed air only at the moment of firing, appeared almost as early as the bellow guns. And, amazingly enough, it apparently
was also about 1600 that the first pump-up (pneumatic) airgun appeared - an experimental gun made for King Henry IV of France. By 1800 airguns were among the more powerful, and certainly among the most elite, of large-bore rifles! The modern lack
of awareness of such guns is understandable when one discovers that powerful airguns were very uncommon, even then. Good airguns have always cost more to make than equivalent quality firearms. The special skills, knowledge, and great amount of time
necessary to make the complex valves, locks and air reservoirs of the early airguns meant that only the wealthy shooters could afford them.
All of the most powerful airguns of yesteryear were pump pneumatics. That is, they were charged by pumping air into a strong valved reservoir which was attached to, or made part of, the gun. The pumps were sometimes built into the gun but were more often separate. Charging a reservoir could take hundreds of strokes of the pump, but the resulting air pressure, below 600 psi, evidently was very efficient.
The old airguns offered numerous advantages for those early shooters who could afford them. Some could be fired many times per minute - a striking contrast to the front-feeding powder burners. Such rapid fire was further more practical with airguns because they did not obscure their own line of sight with clouds of smoke. And, although the oft-told tale of their silence is not true, they are quieter than firearms of equivalent power and their lack of smoke and flash did help to make it more difficult to spot the marksman's position. An especially appealing feature was the great dependability of the airguns. Other advantages included lack of residual sparks, faster shot time, more consistent power, and extremely light barrel fouling.
The variety of early hunting airguns reflected the variety of hunting. One 18th century specimen in the Beeman collection is a solid .39" caliber carbine, only 40 inches long, perhaps intended for use in heavy brush or on horseback. Another, made by Hass in Neustadt, Germany about 1750, has a beautiful 33" shot barrel, about .33" caliber, which can be unscrewed and drawn out of the gun to reveal a very menacing .46" caliber barrel with seven extremely deep rifling grooves. In just moments, the owner of the gun could switch from doves to deer! One of the fine-cased English air rifles (made about 1850) in the author's collection was regularly used for deer hunting as recently as 1950. It fires a 265 grain, .44" caliber bullet! Explorers Lewis and Clark carried and air rifle with a butt reservoir in .44Cal, capable of approx. 20 shots. This is an example of a specimen of that type with interchangeable barrels of .40 and .36 Cal. made in the 1800's. Lewis and Clark carried an air rifle on their famous expedition of 1804-06. It has not been clearly established if the actual specimen has been located. For many years, a .31" caliber air rifle made by Lukens was the most likely specimen, but newly located copy from the trip's journals indicates that the air rifle on this trip was the same caliber as the firearms carried by these explorers: .54 caliber, and, as earlier known from the journals, it had been repaired by the expedition's blacksmith. A specimen in the National Rifle Association Firearms Museum meets these qualifications and is now considered as the most likely specimen. It is a pneumatic muzzleloader with the air reservoir shaped to serve as the buttstock. It served Lewis and Clark well, both for deer hunting and to astonish the Indians.
Certainly one of the most famous of the butt-reservoir guns was the Austrian military air rifle designed by Girandoni about 1779. Its buttstock also is a detachable air reservoir which could be quickly unscrewed when empty and replaced by a full one. Each reservoir held enough air to fire a series of 20 heavy lead balls fed from an ingenious rapid feed magazine. These formidable weapons could put out their 20 smokeless shots in a minute; the .51" caliber (13mm) bullets were deadly to 100 yards - an energy nearly comparable to muzzle loading rifles of the time or a .45" Colt automatic of today! A corps of 500 soldiers so armed had a potential firepower of 300,000 shots in a half-hour - incredible for military rifles of the late 1700's!
During this same period, and for almost a century to follow, big bore airguns were extremely popular with the wealthy sportsmen of Europe. Among the ancient airguns in the Beeman collection are beautiful specimens of air carbines, about .45" caliber, apparently for boar hunting from horseback, long rifles for deer hunting, and especially beautiful English cased sets with richly engraved receivers and interchangeable rifle and shot barrels for big game or waterfowl. The ultimate in mechanical airgun development was the fearsome aircanes with their jewel like internal locks. Evidently no well-dressed English gentleman of the late 1800's would be seen without one of these weapons- which ranged from almost .30" to .49" in caliber and had perhaps the power of a modern police revolver!
An interesting trans-Atlantic switch in airgun evolution occurred about the start of the 20th century. In America, the spring piston gun had developed to a powerful and sophisticated level especially in the form of expensive gallery guns popular after the Civil War. The pneumatics had reached a high level in Europe with the advent of the cased hunting sets, the air canes, and finally the first CO² rifle: the handsome and elaborate Giffard. The introduction of the firearm cartridge and smokeless powder killed the development of airguns as powerful guns. No longer could airguns properly be considered as arms or weapons. The evolution of the pump pneumatics and CO² guns largely left Europe and appeared here as youth-level, low-power, mass-production guns, while in Europe spring piston airguns became extremely sophisticated arid accurate target and light hunting small-bore guns. Finally, in the 1970's the Beemans blended American styling, increased power, and new features with the European developments and made the successful introduction of precision adult airguns and new pellet designs into the mainstream of the American shooting market. Now other companies come into the adult airgun market, but the Beeman company’s objective is to continue to earn your respect as that markets leader.
- Robert Beeman Ph.D. -
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