VIDEO// Beeman R - 9 in shop for a repair and a tune !

Interesting, you brought up a lot of things that I have noticed tuning guns for myself.

The pellet to barrel fit is the one I really noticed. It seems to me that the later "star nut" barrels are much better. Maybe because of new tooling?

The other is the breech seal, too many people do not understand how that relates to lock up!!

Thank you for your time to record this!!

Good to hear from you Mike.  I have noticed the catches in every detent bore I have seen.  Burrs on the leading edge or down the bore even.  It takes very little to just clean them up, I polish the spring ends on that little detent spring in addition .  It does make a difference in my book.

Interesting on the barrel removal, so even with the nut removal socket, those barrels aren’t coming out without drilling?

Jason

@jim_bentley 

Hi Jim

Yes lock up and point of  impact

@prairie_farmer 

Hi Jason

I would say you would need to drill past  the pivot bolt area  then set up to press  it  out.

This  one was tricky  so I would guess  they  would be  the same

Very interesting vid, thanks for taking the time to share!

I do have a few non-professional comments concerning my Beeman R9s and HW95.

*Bending barrels...........

LOL, I've been bending my barrels for years to get the point of impact within 1" (or less) at 30 yards using an optically centered scope, then the "fine adjustments" are done via the turrets. I made up a "ghetto barrel tweaker" from a 2x4, 5/8" thread eyebolt, a flat washer, flanged nut and Delrin collar to protect the barrel finish and spread out the bending force of the eyebolt like this.........

[img] [/img] [img] [/img] [img] [/img] [img] [/img]

The "barrel tweaker" is positioned against the barrel pivot block so all bending force is applied to the barrel and not where pressed into the barrel pivot block. Also, this makes it easy to "correct an excessive bend" by maintaining the same "bend point" along the barrel.

*Breech seal fit..........

A few years ago I tried a couple different seal brands and found that one brand was "too stiff" and the other was "too soft". I ended up reverting back to the factory HW breech seals that had worked well for years prior. New factory HW95 breech seals..........

[img] [/img]

The aftermarket seal brand that was too hard causing insufficient barrel lockup causing droop that was noticeable at the target .......

[img] [/img]

*Pellet to bore fit............

I do believe that HW tightened their .177 cal bore diameter between my older Beeman R9 and my newer HW95, plus the "spare HW95 barrel" I bought for cheap when a Canadian vendor stopped selling HW parts. My favorite pellet brand for a couple decades was the die lot marked and dated 7.9 grain Crosman Premier. I never had issues with the boxed Premiers with "bore fit" (ignoring the occasional pee-wees) with the R9. After buying my .177 HW95 I found that the CPL fit in the leade was "sore loading finger tight". The spare .177 HW barrel I bought also had a similar tight leade so I assume that HW changed their specs. Here is a pic of a new CPL pushed through the older R9 bore and the newer HW95 bore. Notice the depth of the rifling difference.........

[img] [/img]

I also learned that HW bore diameter isn't real consistent along the length judging by "pellet push pressure" along the length due to a constriction caused when the barrel is pressed into barrel pivot block. The leade is snug, past the breech block the bore is looser, then the choke is the tightest constriction.........

[img] [/img]

I found that the fit of the pellet to the bore is dependent on the consistency of the pellets themselves. As long as the pellet head is a snug fit in the leade is snug enough to be "sized a bit" when pressed in every pellet will start down the bore exactly the same size. The problem for me was that an undersized pellet (too small to be "sized a bit") would most likely be a "flier". The solution for me decades ago was to drop a pellet into the leade of the R9 and if the skirt sat above the breech (visually) it would be pressed home and shot. If the pellet skirt was too low in the leade after dropping it then it would be shaken out and replaced with a "proper size pellet". Here is an example of excessive pellet head size from tins of supposedly 4.52mm JSB Exacts............

[img] [/img] [img] [/img]

A couple years ago I machined a couple "pellet head sizers" lapped to give 4.48mm heads for the tight bore HW95 and 4.52mm heads for the older R9...........

[img] [/img]

Funny thing is that "just for grins" I lapped out the 4.48mm sizer to put out 4.50mm pellet heads and found that the 4.50mm pellet was accurate from both the R9 and HW95 without being "sore finger tight" with the HW95.

Anywhoo, my non-professional tuning and modifications have been successful with a no twang or vibration and good accuracy........

[img] [/img] [img] [/img] [img] [/img] [img] [/img]

Hi Ed

Its  been a good while, when I was on the forums a lot I  used  to follow  and look for all your post!

 Your findings with years of working with  the R-9 one of my  favorite's  had  wonderful show and tell info, just like above.

I do my own thing and enjoy  what I get  into then do  a  video but I am done  with forums!  But for  the sake  of a  few I decided  to post the video  on two forums.

I seen videos  I posted on this forum  get like  900 plus views  and not get a single comet, which is  a honest tell of forum reality.

I saved your bending  barrel set  up pictures in the past  and have shared them with several air gunners  who wanted to know how  they can adjust their barrels.

Those  groups  are outstanding, more like  amazing lol

If I remember correctly your R-9  set  up was with  a  slight detune with a moderate barrel block  pivot bolt tightness with  your own lathe  turned delrin spring guide.

Yes  back  to  the modern  Weihrauch  breech seals.

On the barrels Ed  I feel  its  just a matter of  the tooling wearing down and when  your  gun came off the line. TOOLING BEING SO EXSPENSIVE  THEY LEAN  ON THE  CHOKE  for the out come  but it should be a good  pellet to  bore  fit first  to hone the pellet in  then the choke and crown.

"Its been a good while"

Yep, I did wonder where ya went and I remember your info concerning making Turkish springers better (or is the term "usable").

Concerning the amount of replies

I really don't care a lot about responses to my posts because there are some that find the info either useful, entertaining, useless, or some simply disagree. No harm/no foul.

"your R-9 set up was with a slight detune"

For the about a decade now I've been using scopes with mil dot or "lined reticles" so there are more "aiming points" than the Bushnell Elite duplex reticles had. With more "holdover aiming points" I don't need to "max out" the velocity of my HW springers. When I bought a HW95 a couple years ago the gun chronied 880fps with a 7.9 grain CPL straight from the box. The first thing I did was to strip all dieseling prone petro based factory lubes and relubed with non-dieseling Dupont Krytox GPL105. Then I cut my own spring kit based on a light wire (.120 wire) Maccari E3650 spring fitted with a tight Delrin guide and top hat, setting the velocity between 850-860 fps  which I found to give a nice shot cycle and an adequate trajectory. When I was using Bushnell scopes with duplex style reticle I normally tuned the R9s to shoot CPLs at 900-910 fps. At this velocity here are the hold points for various distances...........

[img] [/img] [img] [/img]

For scopes with a more detailed reticle like the Optisan Viper I once owned this is the holdover when shooting CPLs at about 850-860fps. Since I'm "simple minded" and don't want to carry a dope sheet on a squirrel hunt I marke my AO or sidewheel referencing the holdover at various "sharp focus points".......

[img] [/img] [img] [/img]

Anywhoo.......over the years I've come to the conclusion that as long as the pellet has a snug fit in the leade (pellet head large enough to be sized when inserting) it doesn't matter enough to affect my "sittin on a bucket restin' the gun on cross sticks" accuracy regardless of the "second metric decimal point". The issue comes when the pellet is a loose fit that allows the pellet to rattle up the bore before getting squished at the choke.

As a "side note".......

You mentioned some HW parts having "burrs & such" that needed some "massaging" to smooth out. Well, the last springer I bought was a .177 HW95 and while accurate after a bore cleaning, when cocking the barrel the barrel latching seemed a bit rougher than normal. I found out that the spring loaded barrel latching detent had "swarf and gunge" in the bore holding the detent like this...........

[img] [/img]

With the "removal of factory lube/Krytox relube" the swarf/gunge was removed and then the barrel latch-up was nice and "snickety" instead of gritty>

Yep  the  flat area  of the  jam with spring removed  would get  caught and not want to go further inside the jam hole opening, I found  that  on four HW barrel blocks

 some had gunge some did  not but after I honed the  finish  off  the inside  area without the spring the jam went in and out past the flat  area just fine.

I  did recently received  a  HW  95  .20 cal barrel that  had a  very snug and consistent pellet to bore fit and it was smooth as glass , I was shocked to see how snug  but  The choke is to much yet still smooth and may  be  a  issue later .  Ordered  thru AOA and took about 6 weeks  for them to  get it in