Tom Gaylord's Tips: Volume 2

By Tom Gaylord

How to hold a spring air pistol for best accuracy

Spring air pistols recoil just like spring rifles. A few exceptions to the strong forward lunge are guns like the Beeman P1 Magnum (Weihrauch 45) that have the piston moving in the opposite direction. Those guns recoil to the rear more strongly than to the front. For all of them, though, the hold is the same. Squeeze the pistol back into the web of your hand with the middle finger. No other fingers should put pressure on the gun, especially the thumb. Let the bun bounce in your hand when it fires. Don't try to fight the recoil. If you hold the gun this way consistently, the pellet will exit the muzzle at the same point in the recoil cycle every time and your accuracy will be as good as that gun can produce.

Should you clean the bore?

Usually, the bore of an airgun should not be cleaned. There is no combustion to foul it, nor do lead pellets deposit on the walls of the bore like bullets do. The only thing that does happen is a small amount of anti-oxidant compound from each pellet is deposited. This is usually a graphite compound, though some pellets use an oil-based treatment. This stuff is scraped out with every pellet, but more is deposited at the same time. In other words, the barrel remains in a steady state, once it gets some buildup. Cleaning removes the material, but after ten shots it's back again. You can shoot for thousands of shots like the Olympians do and never clean your bore, or if you do clean it, you'll probably have to keep cleaning it frequently from the scratches you introduce from the cleaning rod and brush.

Seating pellets

When seating pellets in the barrel of an airgun, get the base of the pellet beyond the end of the bore. If you don't do that, the air blast will hammer the bas of the pellet against the back of the barrel and create a restriction. In some guns, the pellet will simply not exit the bore. It the AirForce rifles, the pellet will hold the air valve open and exhaust all the air in the reservoir. Many guns have a bolt that pushes the pellet past the end of the barrel for you, so you don't have to think about it. But if you are putting the pellet directly into the barrel yourself, always seat it deeper than the end.