Tom Gaylord's Tips: Volume 1

By Tom Gaylord

How to sight-in a scoped air rifle

Start with a scoped rifle. Place a target in a safe backstop ten feet away. Wear safety glasses because high-speed pellet fragments, this close to the backstop, will hit you. Aim the scope at the center of a small black dot, one-quarter to one-half inch in diameter. The target paper should be at least nine inches tall and five inches wide, with the dot as close to the center as possible. The dot will be blurry in the scope. If the scope is adjustable, use the lowest scope power setting. When you shoot, your goal is to have the pellet strike the paper in line with the center of the dot and as far below the center as the center of the scope is separated from the center of the barrel. In other words, if the center of the scope is 2-3/4 inches above the center of the barrel, which is approximately how far below the aim points you want the pellet to strike the paper. Adjust the scope until you get the pellet striking where you want it, then move the target out to 10 yards and shoot again. The pellet should now strike in line and approximately one inch below the center of the dot. If not, adjust the scope until it is. Once it is striking there, you are sighted-in for distances approximately 20 to 30 yards away. Closer or further and the pellet will land below the aim point.

How to hold a spring air rifle for best accuracy

Lay the forearm on your off hand (the one that doesn't touch the trigger). Never lay a spring rifle on anything but flesh — sandbags do not work well for spring guns. Do not grasp the stock with your off hand. With your shooting hand, touch the trigger and pistol grip as lightly as possible. Do not pull the butt into your shoulder and only kiss the stock with your cheek. The goal is to allow the rifle to recoil as much as it wants to. By doing this, you are influencing the rifle as little as possible, which allows the pellet to exit the muzzle at the same place in the rifle's recoil and vibration pattern every time. If you have ever watched a field artillery piece fire, you know that the gun recoils violently each time it is fired, yet the round strikes very close to the same place, even though it lands miles from the gun! For that reason, this method of shooting a spring airgun is called the artillery hold.

Airgun seals

Most of us tend to tighten things like jar lids as tight as possible, so they won't leak. But airguns have special seals to prevent leaks. The parts of an airgun that are mean to be opened for inserting powerlets, have seals and do not need to be tightened as much as you think. The term "finger tight" does not mean as tight as you can make something without a wrench or pliers! It means just a little tighter than when the seal is first made snug. The type of seal is a clue to how tight the connection should be. An O-ring usually needs the least amount of tightening. It tightens when gas pressure hits it. A flat seal usually needs more tightening, but many so-called "flat" seals are really shaped to receive whatever is being screwed into them. Those need only a little more tightening than O-rings. True flat seals are usually white nylon disks and they require more tightening force, though even they do not need a lot! Then there are seals made by wrapping Teflon plumber's tape around screw threads. These seal by blocking the flow of air through the tiny valleys in the threads. They do not need to be tightened much at all, though there does need to be many threads with tape on them for a reliable seal.