The Feinwerkbau 300 S Mini As A Back Yard Varmint Air Rifle
Member Henk van Bronkhorst
The FWB 300 S Junior (or Mini) Match is a side lever recoilless 10 meter Target rifl e with muzzle weight and Bushnell 6-18x40 Trophy scope in a one-piece mount. At a length of around 40 inches, it is lighter and has a shorter barrel than the regular Match version. Note the beech stock with the dark stippled pistol grip, the fore end step and the adjustable buttpad. Apart from the aluminum muzzle weight, it is factory original. It makes a fi ne low power FT rig, but also an excellent “back yard” minivarminter.
side levers, which may very well also make nice small pest hunters. Some call these spring guns the peak of mechanical air gun engineering and their construc- tion is indeed a bit complicated. These 177 caliber side levers are wonderfully easy to cock as well. Now obsolete for high level 10M competition, these turn up for second hand sale by clubs and in- dividuals. More and more shooters seem to be enamored by these rifl es, especially novice match shooters. Some specimens that are for sale are about 30 years old and have lost their once wonderful blu- ing, but often the internal components are still in top shape. In my opinion they make not only excellent training rifl es but also short range Field Target or small pest control rigs by just taking off the metallic sights and mounting a suitable scope. The more sophisticated genera- tion of spring match guns, to which the gun below belongs, are of the recoilless type, making accurate shots easy. At one time, spring piston match
M
guns were succeeded by single stroke pneumatics (predominantly also side levers), which are inherently recoilless without needing a complicated antire- coil mechanism and which also have a quicker lock time. Another advantage is their greater shot to shot consistency, giving more uniform muzzle velocity. These still needed some physical power input to compress air for every shot,
Page 170 Spring 2012
y 10 Meter Match rifl es are all German-made spring-piston
however. Presently many of those have been replaced by fully precompressed guns not needing any air compression stroke because the compressed air is precharged in the air cylinder. Such air charge is suffi cient to give the shooter all the shots he needs for the match, warm-up shots, and more. However, what makes spring piston match rifl es especially interesting is that they are likely to turn up at lower prices than the more recent pneumatics. In addition, their report is not as sharp and loud as that of pneumatics. Some years ago I ran into a sec-
ondhand 177 caliber Feinwerkbau 300 S spring piston target rifl e for juniors. In the USA this version is known primar- ily as the “Mini” version, in Europe as the “Junior.” This version is about 1¾ pounds lighter and some 3 inches shorter than the full length Match version and, as you might know, it is no longer in production.
Compared to the full length “se-
nior” version, it has a shorter barrel with- out the weighting sleeve and a shorter and lighter stock. With additional butt spacers fi tted, mine is about 40 inches long. The action and other mechanics of the senior and junior guns are identical. At this moment none of the major Euro- pean manufacturers make any spring- piston match rifl es. Certainly in offi cial matches they now have been replaced with single-stroke pneumatics or more recently, fully precharged pneumatic
rifl es. However, this does not mean that such guns are beyond good use. As a matter of fact, even after a long life full of hard use in shooting clubs, let alone use by individual shooters who can take all possible care of them, these guns do produce excellent accuracy and can be used for starter rifl es or for training. Over time they do develop some spring twang and their velocity may lose some feet per second, but thanks to their very high quality of design and manufac- ture, accuracy often is still wonderful. Generally it is found that their power decreases so gradually that shooters hardly perceive any change of velocity, point of impact, or accuracy. In addition, the Feinwerkbau
300 design, including the improved S-version, is such that they are not very diffi cult to work on and a minor refurbishing job can be done by many a shooter himself … something that cannot be said about its even more complicated German contemporary counterparts, the RWS Diana 75 and the Anschutz 380. Together with the FWB 300 S, these side-lever guns represent the ultimate of spring piston engineering and belong to the last generation of recoilless spring piston top rifl es. Their accuracy and me- chanics are often compared with Swiss watches by many shooters. It does take some shopping around
to get spare parts for the FWB 300s, but these are available. The internals of the action that often need replacement
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