Contrary to the belief of some folks, attention to detail is a very important aspect of working on airguns. This fact has been proven to me repeatedly over the years by the plethora of buggered guns I receive needing repair of an unqualified "repair". The sad reality is that only a very small percentage of people that perceive themselves as "capable airgunsmiths", actually are. The following pics and explanations will detail just a few such cases, where a little extra attention to detail would have saved all concerned a lot of grief.
First point of note, and we've all seen it - buggered screw heads. Some people just don't take the time to use the correct width and thickness of blade, or in some cases, even the correct type of screwdriver.
While on the topic of the correct tool for the job, so many folks use vice-grips, or adjustable pliers, leaving ugly tool marks, as on this Smith & Wesson valve body. Using the correct, non-marring tools takes little if any more time to accomplish the same task
This Crosman SA6 was re-sealed, but "never worked right since". The person that repaired it said that it was "workig fine when it left his shop" and refused to check the gun out further. When I received it, the problem took all of 10 seconds to diagnose - as I have seen so many times, the repair person did not align the pin in the frame half with the locating hole in the valve body - the red and yellow arrows show how little he missed by, but he torqued the screws down anyway, spreading the top of the frame as shown by the amber arrows.
Similar story with this Crosman 38T. Shot very low in power after the rebuild. Another 10 second diagnosis - the follower spring for the loading gate had gotten away from the repair person while assembling the two halves of the gun frame, and instead of checking to ensure that everything was in place before screwing it all together, he just reefed the screws down. Obviously, he didn't even bother to test fire the gun, otherwise he'd have realized that the gun was not shooting to factory specs.
This Crosman 38C was leaking, despite having been resealed. The repair person claimed to have resealed it twice, and that the gun was "not repairable". When I received it, the gun would not fire in single action, and in double action, the trigger pull was off the charts. Upon opening up the gun, it was found that the copper tube that connects the piercing assembly to the valve, was incorrectly oriented, thus allowing the trigger to bear heavily against it, to the point that it had actually worked right through the wall of the tube, leaving a tiny pinhole at the point shown by the arrow.
This Crosman 400 had a couple coils of the magazine detent tensioning spring trapped between the breechblock, and the main tube. This caused a significant bow in the barrel with the breech block as the high point, despite the breech block screw being reefed down far too tight.
Correct disassembly procedure is important, and as can be seen here, if you try to remove parts in the wrong order, you have just broken a virtually unobtainable part, as seen on this Walther LP3 pistol. The tiny, and very fragile, hourglass shaped upsetter has to be removed first, before attempting to remove the valve body, which was obviously not the case here. A punch was used to try to drive the valve body out, after the upsetter had broken, and become jammed into the trigger mechanism, ultimately, damaging the valve body and trigger.
Deburring is so very often overlooked by many "smiths", and this Walther LGR piston seal illustrates the unfortunate consequences of forcing a brand new seal past razor sharp burrs in the main tube of the gun. The "new", but buggered seal could not maintain any compression.
This valve stem from a Crosman 622 shows an attempt by someone to use an ordinary o-ring to reseal a valve stem. There was some teflon tape wrapped around the section of the stem where the o-ring ID seated, presumably, to help the o-ring to fill the void at the OD of the brass head. The stem had also somehow gotten bent in the process. Needless to say, this stem leaked like a seive.
On a Crosman 451, someone went to the trouble of re-sealing it, yet didn't bother to clean any of the parts, in particular the filter screen. The screen is at least 50% or more plugged with debris. While it may not appear serious, it did affect the gun's ability to rapid fire properly, causing jams.
Next comes the "lazy man's reseal" - spraying a solvent into the gun to "soften up" the seals and cause them to seal again - at least temporarily - until they completely turn to mush.
This S&W 77A valve shows just how far the liquified rubber o-ring seal migrated along the valve body as a result of this method of "re-seal".
Even urethane o-ring seals are not immune to turning to mush when exposed to the right solvent, as seen on this S&W 78G valve.
This valve stem seal expanded to well over four times it's original size, due to some unknown solvent being introduced into the gun. It expanded right into the valve exhaust port area. The red line shows how much of the now hardened up seal remained in the valve when the stem was forced away from the valve body. The seal material had to be dug out of the valve body.
This early Benjamin bolt was missing the two ball bearings that are used at opposite ends of a central spring, to maintain some tension on the bolt. Instead, a pair of cut-off finishing nail heads had been substituted. The sharp edges of the nail heads, combined with no apparent lubrication, resulted in a horribly scored up breech ID.
Some enterprising repairman went to the trouble of machining up a whole new piston for a Walther LP3 in need of a new piston seal, but he failed miserably at drilling the wrist pin hole. The combination of the cockeyed piston, and mis-adjustment of the cocking lever pivot eccentric, resulted in the piston becoming solidly jammed into the top of the LP3 compression chamber.
Attention to detail, when performing any sort of trigger work is an absolute must. Apparently whoever did this "trigger job" on an early SAR break barrel rifle didn't think so. The sear hook is less than 0.050 thick, and the gun is completely unsafe.
And last, but certainly not least, the important little detail of lubrication. I have seen it all - too little, too much, or the absolute wrong lubricants entirely. This early BSA underlever piston shows the effect of using the wrong lubricant for the job, and not paying attention to the less than subtle "details" felt and heard during the cocking and firing of the gun.
There is not a single one of the above botch-ups that could not have been avoided by taking a few extra moments to ensure that the repair-person's next action would not result in a fiasco. Instead, they chose to use a bigger screwdriver, or a larger hammer.
First point of note, and we've all seen it - buggered screw heads. Some people just don't take the time to use the correct width and thickness of blade, or in some cases, even the correct type of screwdriver.
While on the topic of the correct tool for the job, so many folks use vice-grips, or adjustable pliers, leaving ugly tool marks, as on this Smith & Wesson valve body. Using the correct, non-marring tools takes little if any more time to accomplish the same task
This Crosman SA6 was re-sealed, but "never worked right since". The person that repaired it said that it was "workig fine when it left his shop" and refused to check the gun out further. When I received it, the problem took all of 10 seconds to diagnose - as I have seen so many times, the repair person did not align the pin in the frame half with the locating hole in the valve body - the red and yellow arrows show how little he missed by, but he torqued the screws down anyway, spreading the top of the frame as shown by the amber arrows.
Similar story with this Crosman 38T. Shot very low in power after the rebuild. Another 10 second diagnosis - the follower spring for the loading gate had gotten away from the repair person while assembling the two halves of the gun frame, and instead of checking to ensure that everything was in place before screwing it all together, he just reefed the screws down. Obviously, he didn't even bother to test fire the gun, otherwise he'd have realized that the gun was not shooting to factory specs.
This Crosman 38C was leaking, despite having been resealed. The repair person claimed to have resealed it twice, and that the gun was "not repairable". When I received it, the gun would not fire in single action, and in double action, the trigger pull was off the charts. Upon opening up the gun, it was found that the copper tube that connects the piercing assembly to the valve, was incorrectly oriented, thus allowing the trigger to bear heavily against it, to the point that it had actually worked right through the wall of the tube, leaving a tiny pinhole at the point shown by the arrow.
This Crosman 400 had a couple coils of the magazine detent tensioning spring trapped between the breechblock, and the main tube. This caused a significant bow in the barrel with the breech block as the high point, despite the breech block screw being reefed down far too tight.
Correct disassembly procedure is important, and as can be seen here, if you try to remove parts in the wrong order, you have just broken a virtually unobtainable part, as seen on this Walther LP3 pistol. The tiny, and very fragile, hourglass shaped upsetter has to be removed first, before attempting to remove the valve body, which was obviously not the case here. A punch was used to try to drive the valve body out, after the upsetter had broken, and become jammed into the trigger mechanism, ultimately, damaging the valve body and trigger.
Deburring is so very often overlooked by many "smiths", and this Walther LGR piston seal illustrates the unfortunate consequences of forcing a brand new seal past razor sharp burrs in the main tube of the gun. The "new", but buggered seal could not maintain any compression.
This valve stem from a Crosman 622 shows an attempt by someone to use an ordinary o-ring to reseal a valve stem. There was some teflon tape wrapped around the section of the stem where the o-ring ID seated, presumably, to help the o-ring to fill the void at the OD of the brass head. The stem had also somehow gotten bent in the process. Needless to say, this stem leaked like a seive.
On a Crosman 451, someone went to the trouble of re-sealing it, yet didn't bother to clean any of the parts, in particular the filter screen. The screen is at least 50% or more plugged with debris. While it may not appear serious, it did affect the gun's ability to rapid fire properly, causing jams.
Next comes the "lazy man's reseal" - spraying a solvent into the gun to "soften up" the seals and cause them to seal again - at least temporarily - until they completely turn to mush.
This S&W 77A valve shows just how far the liquified rubber o-ring seal migrated along the valve body as a result of this method of "re-seal".
Even urethane o-ring seals are not immune to turning to mush when exposed to the right solvent, as seen on this S&W 78G valve.
This valve stem seal expanded to well over four times it's original size, due to some unknown solvent being introduced into the gun. It expanded right into the valve exhaust port area. The red line shows how much of the now hardened up seal remained in the valve when the stem was forced away from the valve body. The seal material had to be dug out of the valve body.
This early Benjamin bolt was missing the two ball bearings that are used at opposite ends of a central spring, to maintain some tension on the bolt. Instead, a pair of cut-off finishing nail heads had been substituted. The sharp edges of the nail heads, combined with no apparent lubrication, resulted in a horribly scored up breech ID.
Some enterprising repairman went to the trouble of machining up a whole new piston for a Walther LP3 in need of a new piston seal, but he failed miserably at drilling the wrist pin hole. The combination of the cockeyed piston, and mis-adjustment of the cocking lever pivot eccentric, resulted in the piston becoming solidly jammed into the top of the LP3 compression chamber.
Attention to detail, when performing any sort of trigger work is an absolute must. Apparently whoever did this "trigger job" on an early SAR break barrel rifle didn't think so. The sear hook is less than 0.050 thick, and the gun is completely unsafe.
And last, but certainly not least, the important little detail of lubrication. I have seen it all - too little, too much, or the absolute wrong lubricants entirely. This early BSA underlever piston shows the effect of using the wrong lubricant for the job, and not paying attention to the less than subtle "details" felt and heard during the cocking and firing of the gun.
There is not a single one of the above botch-ups that could not have been avoided by taking a few extra moments to ensure that the repair-person's next action would not result in a fiasco. Instead, they chose to use a bigger screwdriver, or a larger hammer.
