Black
Powder by Chris Risebrook
Photo 5 shows a quite ordinary modern Air Arms 200TX - after the accident! The rifle was doing fine until I decided to fit a very long scope and in my exuberance at shimming the mounts, broke the scope in two! This isn’t easily done but it just shows what stupidity you can achieve when you really put your mind to it. It occurred to me that I could glue the two halves back together, if I could just find a suitable jig. Eventually it occurred to me that the best jig was the rifle itself. So, with two sets of mounts and copious quantities of Araldite, and the usual input of bad language, something was salvaged from the wreckage. I’m not quite sure if the rifle is holding up the scope or vice versa but they seem to be supporting each other. The only problem is trying to explain to onlookers why there is a Forth Bridge on top of my rifle!
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Photo 6 is an Air Arms EV2, state of the art, modern PCP with all the bells and whistles, all alloy and plywood, a world away from my two old match air-rifles shown in Photo7. These have been modified for specific classes of benchrest shooting by removing their barrel-weights to bring them within hunter class etc. and substituting their aperture sights for scopes. Although really an air pistol shooter, I always entered the rifle competitions at the County matches to make the best use of the day. In those days, apart from a few hernia- inducing Walther LGRs, which were clap hands single-stroke pneumatics, all the rifles were spring powered with various ingenious recoilless systems. The lower rifle is an FWB300 which used a sledge where, on firing, the whole receiver/barrel assembly was free to recoil a short distance - to every action etc. etc.
The upper rifle is an Original 66, which
uses two pistons and two springs, each travelling in the opposite direction with a rack and pinion system. Re- springing this is a real treat! This rifle was bought in a fit of frustration after I lost the sight in my right eye half-way through a season. Graham Manley at Surrey Guns sold me the 66 with a left-hand stock and I struggled through the season shooting from the ‘wrong’ side. Luckily, my eyesight partially returned, so I bought the right-hand stock and used it thereafter as a dedicated 6 yard rifle.
Like all my guns, I buy them for a specific purpose, fulfill that purpose - or otherwise and then move on to something else. The trouble is I can’t bring myself to part with them, which is how you acquire twenty airguns in the first place!
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