23 replies to this topic

[Plinker73]

Well my Powerline 800 and Crosman 1377 are out of action. So I still wanted to do some backyard shooting. I saw that Wal-mart had a Ruger Air Hawk for $108 with scope. Only problem was that they were all out of the Air Hawk along with all their break barrels. *sigh* what's a city slicker to do. Then a little light bulb turned on and I headed into Big Five. Low and behold they had the Air Hawk ... for $115. *sigh again* I asked very nicely to the pretty lady behind the counter that I'd like to buy it, but that Wal-Mart had it for $108 and if she could sell it to me for that amount. She said, "Sure I can do that!" PHEW! I got it home and the first thing I did was take the scope off. The gun came with open sight, a feature that I personally like. Plus, it's how i learned to shoot. I'd figure that I needed to run a few(100 or so) pellets through the darn thing before it settles down. Until then I'll keep my mind open and see what the gun can do in the next month. We'll see if this relationship can work out. LOL!My first shot I thought for sure that someone was going to call the cops on me. It sounded like a 22 rimfire going off! PLAAACK! I was running some old Crosman Copperhead pellets for the late 80's and early 90's. They seem to fit a little bit tighter than the pointed Crosman pellets that I just bought. Nothing scientific, just an observation.I notice that it seems to have "smoke" coming out of the barrel? Is this normal with break barrel air guns during break-in? Is it lead dust? Atomized oil? I'm going out to see my brother in the Ivanhoe area this weekend. Doing a little plinking with my family. I'm going to employ my little nephew to help me break it in some more this weekend. Any suggestions on ammo? I'm thinking about some Beeman Silver Arrows and some H&N Barracuda Match. Just another observation, the gun seems to shoot hot. Will know more after the month or so. I'll post some pics soon.

[STPilot]

Yeah.. some of the springers are loud! Not sure about the smoke, I'm guessing probably some residual oil? You could run a patch or 2 through it just to see. As far as ammo goes, the H&N's are good and also anything JSB makes is really good. If you're gonna do any pesting or hunting with it, you may try some Predator Polymags, However some guns don't shoot them very well. Good luck, have fun!

[mackeralboy]

Plinker73It's pretty normal for a breakbarrel airgun to smoke and be loud right out of the box. The smoke is caused by the cutting oils, etc that were used in the machining of the gun that are still on the surfaces. Unless you take the gun apart and wipe down all the parts it will take a few hundred pellets to burn this off. As far as the loud pop that it is making, much of that could be related to the cutting oil too. Basically when the piston is realeased it creates heat and causes the oil to heat up and explode much like a deisel engine. This too should get better once all that oil is gone.Mc

[Plinker73]

Thanks for the info guys!

[docskinner]

'smoke' might just be residual oil.

[Air Rifle Hunter]

The smoke that came out for your first few, maybe (10) or so shots, is what they call "dieseling". When the air is compressed in the chamber any residual lubricants or oils are ignited by the compression of the air in the cylinder and burned off; This is why you don't want to put any lubricants in the compression chamber of your gun. It can cause an explosion, ruin the seals in your rifle and, or injure you.The .22 caliber "Crack!" that you heard the first few shots was because of this dieseling. The first few pellets were probably traveling at around 1048 FPS or more which breaks the sound barrier and creates that cracking gun shot sound you heard. How do I know this you might ask... I bought a Ruger Air Hawk for my father and shot it over the chronograph for the first 50 or so shots. The first few shots sounded like a firearm being shot. After about ten shots it began to settle down to it more normal FPS (Feet Per Second) when being shot. With the Crosman Premier Hollow Point 7.9 grain it shot them at around 895 FPS on average, sometimes a little faster. Whatever you do, don't use light (less than 6.5 grain weight) pellets in your springer. It will damage your gun to shoot pellets that are too light because it doesn't provide enough resistance for the piston and it is like you are dry firing it, which is a bad thing.It can be a fun and fairly accurate break-barrel air rifle. Use the artillery hold when shooting it due to the double recoil and you'll shoot dime size groups at 20 yards (it may take some practice). If you want to, after a few hundred shots, run a couple of dry patches down the barrel to clean out the lead and your accuracy should do pretty well.Have fun.

[Plinker73]

Thanks for the heads up! All I have in my area is just the run of the mill Crosman Wad Cutters or Field Points. Hummm.... maybe I should open up a airgun shop in Central Cal. I have an order of ammo from pyramydair.com, 4 tins of ammo with various weight, Eun Jin .177 Cal, 16.1 Grains - Don't know if my gun will push these bad boys out or not, JSB Match Diabolo Exact .177 Cal, 8.4 Grains, Beeman Silver Arrow .177 Cal, 11.57 Grains, Pointed - maybe not the best one of the bunch, but I thought I'd give them a try, and H&N Baracuda Match .177 Cal, 10.65 Grains, Round Nose. I really can't wait for the Barracudas and the Diabolos to come in. I did notice today, as I remounted the scope, that my pellets were either going high, or to the right. I'm attributing this to the "light load" ammo that I'm running through it right now. It might be putting a hard spin on these lighter pellets and thus "curving" them? Is that even possible?So far I'm loving the gun. My kids are loving it too. I've got it accurate enough to hit a cola can from across the yard. Again, I can't wait for my ammo to come in and really test it.-P73

[Air Rifle Hunter]

The "Light Load" ammo may be the cause of the inconsistant groupings. If the pellets happen to be pointed, that may be the issue. I haven't had an air rifle yet that shot the pointed pellets good at all. The groups were always horrible with the pointed pellets. Also light pellets always grouped horribly in my air rifles too. Light pellets are mainly for air guns that don't shoot that fast already (down in the 400 to 600 FPS range) and it allows air gun owners with those type of air guns to get a little more velocity out of their gun if desired without loosing accuracy too badly. When light pellets are shot out of air guns that are already shooting "hot" the accuracy will never be there and the pellets typically tumble through the air because they don't retain stability during flight. Typcially domed pellets will give you the best accuracy in any air rifle. Make sure to let us know what pellets of the new ones you ordered end up working best for you.

[Jeff213]

I wouldn't try out the Eu-Jin pellets in a springer, they are too heavy and could possibly break the main spring. I would go with mid to heavy range pellets though. Don't forget to try out the crosman premeir hollowpoints they sell in a tin at wal-mart for 6 or 7 bucks, some guns really like them. I wouldnt try anything heavier than a beeman kodiak/h&n barracuda (same pellet). Try lots of pellets. I have had good luck with the crosman premeir hollowpoints myself. You wont go wrong with the JSBS either, they shoot well out of a lot of guns.

[Plinker73]

Hey guys!Well I think I've got the gun broken in good a well. I've done some sighting in with some of the H&N Baracuda Match pellets. See image. I haven't had much time to try out the other pellets. I hope to get back to testing the other pellets by FridayWell that's it so far. I hope to get back to it this weekend or before.

[Air Rifle Hunter]

What grain weight at the .177 Baracuda Match pellets? How big is each square on the target you show in the picture. If that is 1/2" then that is pretty good. Now the shots just need to be in the bullseye...

[Plinker73]

Oops! forgot to add that info. The Pellets are a 10.65gr and the squares are 1 inch.

[Plinker73]

Ok got some target shooting done today with all 4 of the pellets that I bought. Got some very interesting results. Now I understand the pick the right pellets mantra. So I set up my target at 20 yards as I did before and took 3 shot groups one right after the other. Now, i've sighted my scope in with the run of the mill Copperhead pellets. They were the only pellets I had at the time. i was aiming for the center of the small diamonds on this target sheet.Pic of all 4 groupsAs you can see the Diablo's barely made it on paper, low and to the right. Plus, one of the holes looks like the pellet went in sideways.Again the Baracuda's seems to do well in this gun. One high flyier, but was the best group of the bunch.The surprise batch were the Pointed Silver Arrows. Not too hard to believe since H&N make both the Baracuda and this brand.As you can see the Eunjin's didn't even make it on paper after 3 shots. I was able to find the 2 of the 3 impact marks, one on my fence the other on my 2X4 target stand. I heard 1 of my shots ricochet off my neighbors house!One of the 2 impact marks. It thwacked that 2X4 with authority.Oops! Sorry Mrs. Smith about your prized Shitzu. This was the round that I head ricochet off of the house behind me. And yes, that is daylight coming through a freshly installed Cedar fence.

[Air Rifle Hunter]

Ok, after looking at those groupings at 20 yards here are my thoughts:First, it looks like the barrel might need to have J & B Bore Paste run up and down the barrel to polish it out a little bit. I've done it to a few of my springers that were a little sporadic at shooting and it helped to make them more accurate. I just put the J & B Bore Paste on a .177 nylon brush, since your air rifle is a .177 (Do not use bronze, copper or other! It must be Nylon!) and from the breech end of the barrel push in down until the brush exits the barrel and then carefully pull it back up until it exits the barrel. Repeat this anywhere from 10 to 15 times. Then run clean, dry patches down the barrel until they come out clean. Now your barrel should sparkle and shine, and it should be more accurate.Second, once the barrel is clean, I would give the JSB's another try and see if the accuracy increases now that the barrel lands are nice and smooth. Typcially the domed type of pellets will work better than the pointed, especially at longer ranges. Maybe even try a different brand of domed style pellets. Maybe even Crosman Premiers if available.All in all, your groups look good for 20 yards with a Ruger Air Hawk. I know that you will be able to squeeze a bit more accuracy out of the rifle, but that will take a little practice too. Learning to deal with the double recoil and getting the proper hold down for the rifle will make all the difference in the world.Keep it up, your groups are definitely getting really good.

[screwwork]

ARH,Thanks for sharing the Barrel polishing procedure. I have heard about but it never saw a write up on it on how to do it.I cannot agree more on the way to hold the springer type air rifles.Holding my Beaman RS-1 tight the double recoil really messes up the accuracy.Holding the gun steady but not tight the accuracy increases as the gun moves.

[ratassassin]

My Air Arms ProSport prefers JSB Exact 8.4 grain or JSB Exact Heavy 10.2 grain domed pellets. My R9 prefers Beeman Field Target Special 8.9 grain domed pellets over everything else and is my go-to bunny puncher. My R7 prefers H&N Match, JSB Exact 8.4 grain or the tipped Predators for rat hunting. My RWS Panther Pro Compact prefers JSB Heavies or RWS Meisterklugen wadcutters. All of my rifles also shoot the Crosman Premier HP's from Walmart very well. Here's a pellet comparison for what I had on hand:

[mackeralboy]

PlinkerAnother thing to consider with regards to accuracy and springers is making sure that all screws are tightened down. The double recoil of a springer is quite natorious for rattling screws lose on springers and throwing off accuracy. One way to combat this is to remove all of the screws that anchor the receiver to the stock, wipe them clean of oil, and put some low strength blue locktite on them and screw them back in. You will also want to do this on all of the screws that hold your scope mounts to the receiver and the rings to the scope. If after following all the advice that you have received you still are getting erratic groups, your springer might have rattled your scope to pieces. I've had this happen to two scopes on springers. One day it was shooting great then all of a sudden it's shooting all over the place. I switched out to a different scope and resighted it in an it was shooting strait again. Hope all this helps,Mc

[Plinker73]

Thanks Guys for the info. I'll look into cleaning the bore out and polishing it. I have taken it apart and tighten everything down nice and snug.After I did the tightening. I was able to cap a Starling that was in my back yard. He was looking for some worms about 15-17 yard away, not far. I loaded up a Baracuda, took aim just under his wing/shoulder, held the rifle as lightly as possible and let it fly. THWACK! lights out for the bugger! One sec upright, the next on his side with his ass up in the air. LOL In my excitement I went to prop up my gun against my work bench in the garage from where I was shooting. My house has a drive through garage, i.e. two doors, one in the front, one in the back. And, not looking at what I was doing. I was trying to prop up my gun against the work bench while looking at the Starling, half way expecting it to fly away... I felt my gun start to fall over. It was all in slow motion... My new rifle falling over.... me yelling NO!!!!! me reaching for my Air Hawk and THUNK! Well their goes that scope. *sigh* well I did plan on replacing the scope anyways, I was just hoping it was a bit further down the road, C'est la vie! So now I'm in the market for a decent air rifle scope, any suggestion? Budget, $100-ish? Am I being too delusional?

[Air Rifle Hunter]

One thing to make sure of is that the scope is springer rated. This means it is built to handle the double recoil of a spring or nitro-piston air rifle. Many scopes we use on air rifles are not springer rated because they are used on PCP air rilfes and such. I still have a CenterPoint Optics 3-9x40AO scope that I use on my Discovery that came off of my Benjamin Trail NPXL1100. It never had a problem on my BT NPXL1100 so I would think that something like that would work well and suffice for use on a Ruger Air Hawk. I think they run anywhere from $50 to $70 depending on the exact model you get.

[Shoot-it]

I have that rifle and with open sights I killed 2 pigeons at 30 yards.
It's like day and night compared to my gamo viper.It's harder to break open and the spring is loud and trigger is rough and the stock does not fit me either.Why I have it you ask a friend wanted it to kill some pigeons that roost on his house and wanted to use my gamo so we traded for awhile.Not trying to bash it it's a good starter rifle.
If you are looking for a air rifle scope check out the gamo mil dot they are pretty clear.I almost took it off and put it on my 17 lol.

[Plinker73]

Ok... I've done some shopping around on Amazon and I think I've narrowed it down to one scope. Keep in mind, I may at some point in the very near future plunk down some $ for a .22 Benjamin Discovery(Walmart has them for $329 with free shipping!). I've got some birthday cash and some freelance cash coming my was very soon. So for right now I'm thinking about getting a UTG 3-12X40 1-Inch Full Size Rubber Armored TF2. I'd figure that I can either mount it on my Air Hawk, or mount it on the Discovery-If I get it, or I can mount it on my 10/22. I feel a bit like a virgin, this is going to be my first scope!

[Air Rifle Hunter]

Plinker 73,

This is just my personal opinion, but I don't think that would be a good scope for you to use on either the AirHawk or the Discover. First, it doesn't seem to have an adjustable objective. Having an adjustable objective on an air gun is pretty important so that you can bring your target well into focus. Second, it's not totally necessary, but I recommend getting one with a sun shade attachment. You will really like having that sun shade when shooting on sunny days, it will keep the glare off of your bell lens.

If I was gettting a scope to use on both air guns (keep in mind this is just my opinion and others may have ideas too), in the price range of the scope in your link I would get:

http://www.pyramydai...aver_Rings/3163

You can order a pair of dove tail scope mounts and I think they sell an add on sun shade for it. Whatever you get, make sure you can focus in down to about 10 yards for the sake of your eyes and clarity of picture.

[Plinker73]

Ok it's been a while now. I've been shooting with this gun almost everyday. It seems to like the run of the mill Crosman 7.4 grains pellets. I can get beer bottle cap size groups at about 20-25 yards now. I bought a cleaning kit at Big-5 for a .177 cal and gave it a good bore cleaning. It really seemed to help out ... a lot! Thanks guys.

For $100 it's been deadly in the back yard. Nailed a Staling in my tree offhand about 15-18 yard. He's head was covered by some leaves, so I did a chest shot. PLACK! He dropped like a stone. Must have hit him right in the heart, because he didn't make a peep. Another was an English House Sparrow that I shot while resting on my patio table. He was out about 20 yards in the dirt milling about. I attempted a head shot, I loosened my grip ... just let the rifle rest in my hands ... breathe ... waited till i got a side profile of his head ... and squeezed the trigger. Bullseye! He spun around on his side with one wing up. Didn't know what hit him. When I got closer, my pellet hit him at about the 7 o'clock position from his eye. LIGHTS OUT.

I bought 2 of the UTG 4-16X40 AO scopes from amazon. I had some gift card money from my birthday. One I put on my 10/22, the other on my Air Hawk. The scope on my 10/22 has preformed flawlessly at the range. I must have put about 200-250 rounds that day. Was very very very pleased with the performance. However, on my Air Hawk, that was a different story. I bought a UTG rail, weaver to dovetail mount for my Air Hawk. Everything seemed to go together great, till I tried to zero it in. I could not get vertical alignment to meet the POI. I turned the knob all the way down and it was not getting anywhere near the POI. So I figure the rail must be too high. I ordered another pair of rings for dovetail fitting, med height, NcStar rings. Took off the old rings and that's when I noticed that something was wrong. The scope had shifted and was further back on the rifle. i.e. the scope was moved back on the rings from where I had mounted it. That's when I noticed a bulge around one of the rings, the scope tube had been compromised. By me or the double recoil, in any case ***SIGH*** GULP! I made a tentative call to pyramid air and got a RMA number! In a few weeks I'll should get my scope back. By then I'm I should have a Discovery, and I'll mount the scope on that gun and keep the Air Hawk stock.

By the way, it seems that the dropping of my rifle did less damage to the scope then I had thought. I did all the shots above with the crappy 4X scope that came with the gun. I think the cleaning brought out more potential then the UTG scope did. LOL So, the Air Hawk as a backyard plinker, and bird smacker, it's been great. I love it.

Next up, field test and I'll give another try with the UTG scope when it comes in at the range. I hope that I can get my POI to work with the scope. Can't wait for the guys at the range to give me a hard time when i whip out an air gun. ***Sigh***

[Air Rifle Hunter]

Sounds like you are having a good amount of fun and getting good with your Air Hawk too. Nice job!