Remember that the fork tangs on the tube are almost 2" long and it gets even longer. You can see how much longer it is than the compression tube. The Maccari seal was a really tight press fit. On the 124, it was machined as the forward end of the trigger housing. Today, most spring guns use a separate spring guide. Installing the spring will finish seating the shim. Trimmed to fit the slot for the cocking lever. Worked slowly and carefully to avoid folding or wrinkling the sheet metal. Wanted to tighten the fit between the ID of the piston and the OD of the mainspring.įound a dowel that's about the same OD as the spring. Piston was especially smoothed at the rear where it can drag inside the tube. Spent a lot of time polishing everything. Looks like a lot going on, but it's a pretty straight forward gun to repair. Touched up the safety and all the small pieces as needed with cold blue. It's most likely that I didn't ask, as I've got a brute of a spring compressor. It compresses the spring slightly and can make initial installation easier. I don't remember if I asked Maccari to set the spring before he shipped it to me. Shorter than the FWB springs, yet it promises more power. The Maccari Mongoose spring is on the bottom. They did a great job leaving the lettering clean and sharp.Ībsolute relief when I picked it up. More subdued, it's sort of a light gray satin finish. I took the compression tube down and explained what it was and what it does and had it hard chromed. Akron Plating is less than 10 blocks from my house. A call to a couple of my machinist friends got me the name of the best chroming shop in the area. Finally gave up and thought about the 2-tone Beeman commemorative HW rifles from the early 90's. Couldn't get a cold blue to look even halfway decent. With the gun in pieces, I tried to refinish and salvage the compression tube.
I ordered a Maccari spring and seal kit and waited. Even with the FWB rebuild kit, I wasn't interested in installing a piston seal from at least 20 years ago that we now know will fail due to age. Looks like the old spring is 1.5" shorter. The spring on top is the one removed from the rifle. In my pile of airgun parts was a complete FWB 124 rebuild kit purchased from Beeman probably in about 1990. The mainspring had taken quite a set as well as some cant. I've read about the FWB 124 seals deteriorating, but this was my first experience seeing one. The gun had been tuned before it was given away. I disassembled the rifle (yep, no pics) and dug the remnants of the seal out of the compression tube. I test-fired the gun over the chrony and the pellet didn't even leave the breech. The cost for a re-blue was steep yet do-able, but would push the time frame back another month or more. I was dejected at the thought of dropping this ugliness into a handmade stock. Luckily, the barrel/breech block assembly cleaned up and looked OK.
The compression tube was missing about 30% of the blueing and rust had set in. In the interim, and partly to console myself over the loss of the guns, I bid on-and won-a handmade walnut stock offered on from S. Anyway, I was traveling and it would be a couple weeks before we could make the connection. I'd practically forgotten about it as I hadn't seen it in at least 15 years. When Jerry heard the news, he immediately said he was returning the FWB. Then, a year and a half ago, I lost all my field rifles in a burglary. At the time, I really didn't care whether or not the rifle ever came back. Years-and many other air rifles later-I sent the FWB off my good friend, Jerry, on long-term loan. I've put off writing this post largely because of that, but the 124 is such a classic rifle, Nick and I thought we needed something tangible here.Ĭomplete with backstory: My very first air rifle was purchased used from a gun shop back in the mid to late 1980's, a Feinwerkbau 124D. If you can simply imagine "beat to all heck" you've got the right idea. Specifically, I don't have a single "before" picture. As a result, I have no notes and don't have many of the images that I'd like to have for a blog post. I did the work on my Feinwerkbau before I started writing for the blog.
0 kommentar(er)
