cinstone posted on July 08, 2009 16:11
Afternoon all!
I've been toying with the idea of getting one of these break barrel springers after first seeing them in my local gun shop about 2 weeks ago. The model I fancied was the synthetic stocked version in .177" and last Friday, myself & Shirley paid a visit to my local gun shop in Kidderminster for a couple tins of pellets and as I was there I had a play with the above said rifle.
For £164 you get a full U.K power rifle, which is very well finished, with a synthetic stock that comes close to the quality of the one on my B.S.A T-10, "day glow" open sights, the rear of which is adjustable, and a Ruger 4 x 32 scope. The rifle is fitted with an automatic safety catch too, which is located at the rear of the action so you can use your thumb to move it to the shoot position. The finish is far better than £164 would suggest and although it has a synthetic stock, the rifle is not too twangy in use. Mind you, all this was made all the better by the fact that Shirley bought it for me!
I wanted a little more "useful" scope than the one provided with the rifle, so I came to a deal with the shop which essentially saw me part exchange the supplied scope for a Nikko Stirling Mountmaster 3-9 x 40AO scope.
I had a few shots with the rifle in the shop and the first couple of pellets I put through it were accupells. A word of warning here. My experience of accupells, both under the Crossman and Webley brands, in two different makes of spring air rifles have given very poor results. Why? Well, in both rifles, one of which was a .22", I found that they promoted not only sevear dieselling, but I have a theory that they are very small in diameter & thus allow air to blow past the pellet & then the piston head slams into the transfer port. I can't say for certain that this is the case, but it's an awful sound when you shoot the rifles with these pellets. The rifles where this happened were the above Ruger and my .22" B.S.A Stutzen. My next shot with the Ruger was with an Air Arms Field pellet and the rifle shot very well indeed.
Due to the synthetic stock the rifle is a tad front heavy, but the butt is shorter than all my other rifles, which probably makes the rifle more front heavy than normal, however, the short butt makes the rifle a very handy tool for kids and the ladies. The rifle is quite easy to cock too. During cocking there is a slight roughness as the spring is compressed. To be honest, "roughness" is a far too strong a word to use, but I can't think of a suitable description of the feel of the cocking of the rifle, which sort of underlines the fact that this"roughness" is so slight that it really isn't very noticable.
Once i've run the rifle in a bit more I will be fitting a scope, so I haven't done much with the open sights, apart from having a quick fiddle with the rear sight. I do feel that the rear sight is very much of of the budget variety, but seems to work quite well.
With just a few shots put through the rifle in the shop, before chrono' testing I first pulled the bore through with dry cloth patches. The bore was very grubby and it took about 8 pull throughs to get it clean. I then put 45 pellets through the rifle, to run it in and warm it up a little, but I felt that there was something loose. I checked the action, but it seemed nice and firm in the stock, but I checked the stock bolts anyway and although they were not loose as such, they wern't quite tight. I suspect that they wern't tightened up properly when the rifle was put together in the factory.
I put another 5 pellets through the rifle to see if it was o.k after tightening the stock bolts and everything was fine, so I then fitted my Combro Mk 4 chronometer to do my usual test with light, medium and heavy pellets. The rifle has been very well lubed, too much really, which has meant that the rifle has been doing quite a bit of "new gun" dieselling. Not much of it has been too violent, but there has been consistant slight dieselling for the whole of the test, which made the testing a little pointless from a true power & consistantcy point of view, so I won't bother to post these results.
After the above tests I decided that the rifle would need a fair bit of running in, so I grabbed hold of all the pellets that I don't really use for anything anymore, after they had been trialled in one gun or another, so I thought it was a good way to run the rifle in and create some space in my ammo' safe. I tried some unknown domed pellets that were given to me to try by Big_Phil555, (I can't remember what make), Crossman Pointed, AGS double seal pellets, (some of which were too large a diameter to fit in the bore), and Umarex flat heads. The rifle shot well with all but the Umarex flat heads, which promoted heavier dieselling than the rifle was usually doing, so I stopped using these. After many, many shots I finished with 20 shots of Air Arms Field 4.52's and the dieselling was quite minimal. Hopefully, most of the excess of lube has been burnt off now.
There has been a bit of discussion as to the origins of this rifle and other Ruger models, both in my local shop & on the web'. After a bit of research both myself & my local shop reckon it's a Diana Model 31 Panther, less the raised scope rail, but with the 4 x 32 scope added. Some folk on the web' think it's a Chinese copy, which is quite possible these days, but the quality is far, far better than any Chinese air rifles i've seen, including my QB78 DL CO2 rifle, which is arguably the best made Chinese air rifle.
The rifles are at the very least distributed by Umarex of Germany, but I don't know if they are made in Germany at all, let alone by Umarex for Ruger & Diana, or by Diana for Umarex/Ruger. It doesn't say on the rifle if it is made in Germany, just the "Made under licence from Ruger", etc, etc., so last night I contacted Umarex via their website to find out.
Ruger Black Hawk .177" break barrel springer in synthetic stock.
Shots upto;-
07/07/09 = 250.