I have a buddy who used to raise rabbits. For Thanksgiving he would bring over a huge farm raised bunny, and they definitely had some fat on them. I never dropped a wild cottontail that I saw noticeable fat on though. Used to eat quite a lot of mesquite grilled cotton tail back in the late 80s and early 90s when I ran traps.
Most air gunners go for head shots on tree rats.
Sure. Those of us who hunt them with .22s like to do that, too.
I'm not going to Pennsylvania just to shoot squirrels with a rifle, though.
That was the Girandoni. A seriously advanced piece of metalwork and design at the time.
From wiki
While the detachable air reservoir was capable of around 30 shots it took nearly 1500 strokes of a hand pump to fill those reservoirs. Later, a wagon-mounted pump was provided.
The reservoirs themselves, made from hammered sheet iron held together with rivets and sealed by brazing, proved very difficult to manufacture using the techniques of the period and were always in short supply.
I've taken two - and justify them as home-invasion defense. Walmart .17 caliber Daisy pump-action.
AS an aside, when I first got my chronograph I couldn't wait until I could arrange it with the range, so I went out back and set up a back stop on the barn.
From four strokes up to eight, each stroke added 100 fps to a BB. Yep, right at 800 FPS at eight strokes. That was unexpected!
You got an exceptional gun. I've owned a number of air guns over the years, and 800 FPS even with that piddling light weight copper clad ball is screaming for a Daisy pump gun. I've got two of them, and I don't think either of my Daisy rifles shoot BBs that fast. Now my spring piston gun on the other hand requires heavy weight pellets to shoot right. If I use light alloys they break the sound barrier on about every third shot or so. Sounds like a small bore rifle shot when that happens.
Wow. I'll say.
I couldn't find the original data. I guess I tossed it once the real work started.
Waiting for my bride to get home, I grabbed the chrono and set up to try it again.
Ol' Daisy is a couple of years old now, and has been shot quite a bit.
Best I could get today was 622 fps. And the linearity of strokes to velocity wasn't there any more. Starting at five strokes gave 522, 536, 596, and 622.
But the 800 fps number was for real - brand new...
Not saying it didn't happen. It would have been exceptional though. The fastest multi pump Daisy I could find listed at Pyramid Air is rated at 750 with BBs. I never felt mine shot as fast as they claim, but if you had a little oil in the chamber you might have gotten some dieseling. Usually though if you get dieseling they fly out much faster than 800 and target poorly as they fly through the turbulence around the speed of sound.
Oil the chamber?
Didn't think of that! Might give it a try and see if the speed comes back up some.
NO. Dieseling is very bad for your gun. If you do get detonation it can severally damage the release valve.
You may need to clean and oil the pump, seal, and wiper. Usually just a couple drops will last for a very very long time.
On 9/18/2014 4:43 PM, Richard wrote: ...
1500 strokes!! Well, OK, that's 50 strokes per shot. Oh, my aching arm.I wonder what the pressure was.
Use pellet gun oil. Its designed to not detonate if a little gets into the gas reservoir and/or the chamber.
Lots of modern PCP guns run at pressures upto 3000PSI, but the pneumatic cannons on the USS Vesuvius only ran at about 1000PSI. It would depend on the exact design of the gun and the adjustments of the dump valve and dump valve "hammer". There are guys tuning their PCP rifles today to get nearly the same velocity out of 1800 to 1300 that out of the box guns are getting at 3000.
A quick check of references indicates that Girandoni rifle may have only been pressurized to about 800 PSI. They also claim it had an effective range of about 150 yards. I think one of those numbers must be off a little or they had a dump valve mechanism more efficient than most modern PCPs. A modern large bore PCP can easily meet the claimed specs and even surpass them, but with a couple hundred years advancement in technology and operating at much higher pressure.
Here is a nice summary of the gun.
Didn't have any of that. I have some CLP in a pin oiler, so I put (exactly!) 1/3 of a drop on a couple of BBs as they went into the breach. (single shot, of course)
When I shot it I saw a puff of "smoke", and the shot didn't register on the chrono. The next two rounds didn't register either(!)
But then it started showing numbers again. Got it up to 657. I think that's as high as the old girl is going to go now.
Funny. I was just saying the same thing!
Dieseling is very bad for your gun. It will damage the dump valve.
You problem may be a week hammer spring is not dumping the dump valve fast enough, but its more likely that your pump seal is dry and your gun is not pumping efficiently.
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