Are some airgun barrels better than others?

by Harley Ayre

I'll answer the title question right off - some airgun barrels ARE better than others. Even among the top brands of barrels (Lothar Walther, Anschütz and Feinwerkbau) some barrels are better.

Barrel grades
What makes a great barrel? Accuracy! That's why the barrel is there to begin with. So, what I'm now telling you is that there are GRADES of barrels from most top makers. Not every barrelmaker has grades, but most airgun barrelmakers certainly do. Before I get into the grades, let's see what's desirable in an airgun barrel.

Rifling methods
For an airgun barrel to be most accurate, it must be as smooth as possible. When a barrel gets rifled, the cutter or button roughens the inside of the bore somewhat. Cut rifling is the worst for this, followed by hammer-forged rifling, with button rifling being the smoothest after the rifling is finished. A cut-rifled barrel does not need as much stress-relieving or straightening as the other types, so the maker has time to work on smoothing the inner surfaces. A hammer-forged barrel is quickest to make but has a lot of stress in the steel that needs to be relieved afterward. Then, it must be straightened. A button-rifled barrel is probably the best combination for making good barrels very quickly, which is why all the top airgun makers use it.

The pellet's path
The best barrels have very uniform bores. You can tell they are uniform by pushing a pellet down the barrel from the breech with a cleaning rod. The pellet won't hit loose spots along the way. Also, all good PCP barrels will be choked with a slight constriction at the muzzle. Usually, it's about half a thousandth, and it's there to make every pellet of uniform size before it leaves the muzzle. This is why a pellet sizer doesn't do any good.

Uniformity is where good barrels differ from better barrels. All the top makers start out with a steel tube of good machinable steel to make a barrel. However, the speed of the rifling button through that tube in part determines its uniformity afterward. Another step is gauging the barrels after manufacture and sorting them into the good and better piles. This is done while they are still blanks, because some gun manufacturers are willing to pay more for premium barrels.

Lothar Walther
Now I'll get specific. Lothar Walther is a barrelmaker with a reputation known around the world. They make some of the finest airgun barrels today. They also make their barrels in grades. A company can choose to buy a good barrel or a better barrel. A better barrel costs more, so you need to know how manufacturing costs drive retail prices. For anything that is made, a multiplier of five is approximately correct to determine the retail price. A barrel that Lothar Walther sells wholesale for $20 should add about $100 to the retail price of a gun. If the barrel costs $30, it adds about $150 to the retail price. These are ballpark estimates, not exact figures.

Market strategy
If a manufacturer wants to be priced on the lower side of the market, the only way he can afford to do so is to use the lowest cost materials and components in his gun that still deliver a product of acceptable quality. If a manufacturer wants to be priced at the premium end of the market, he has to deliver more value and must use components, like barrels, that deliver a little extra - and also cost extra.

Where does that take us?
That takes us to the Talon SS, which groups about an inch or a little less at 50 yards on a good day when shot by a good shooter from a solid rest. Then, there is the Prairie Falcon, which shoots even smaller groups under the same circumstances. However - and this you have to understand - the difference between the accuracy of a Talon SS and a Prairie Falcon is very small, because the Talon SS is already very accurate. It's the difference between either of these rifles and, say, a Gamo 1250 or a Beeman R1 that you get when you buy either one of these. The Prairie Falcon has a premium Lothar Walther barrel - that better barrel mentioned earlier. The Talon SS has a good Lothar Walther barrel that will out-shoot almost all spring-air rifles and right alongside some quality PCPs.

In my next post, I'll discuss what happens to the barrel after it's made and some things YOU can do to make it as good as it can be!

Getting to know Airhog

by Harley Ayre

Knowing your dealer is more important for an airgunner than for a lot of commonly purchased items. Although airguns are simple compared to TV sets and refrigerators, they are among the very few purely mechanical products left on earth. Your car probably has more computer power than Apollo 11 had onboard! But airguns remain mechanical, for the most part. Yes, Daystate has a solenoid-fired PCP and there have been electronic triggers on target airguns since the 1970s, but that's about it. The modern precharged pneumatic is still a product of the Industrial Age, not Silicone Valley.

So what?
Here's what - unless you're an airgunsmith, it's nice to have someone you can count on to be on the other end of the phone when you need them. Falcon makes wonderful air rifles, but an O-ring is an item they buy from a supplier, same as everyone else. When a pinhole appears on the outside of one of your O-rings and opens the tiniest passage for air to escape, who you gonna call? You don't know what's wrong - just that your rifle used to hold a charge for months and now it bleeds down in seven days. If you own an inexpensive Chinese PCP you are about to discover what it REALLY cost you, cause there ain't nobody out there who cares that you have a slow leak! Yeah, you saved a bundle when you bought that little sweetie - now you can buy another one. Oh, yes, there are secondary repair shops all over the internet who say they can help you. Some of them can, some of them can't and some of them will go out of business while they are "fixing" your airgun. You'll be the one who gets fixed!

On the other hand, if you bought your rifle from Airhog, they will be there when you have a problem - not that problems are that common with good airguns. But things do happen. And, isn't it nice to know the guys on the other end of the phone know what durometer rating your breech seal should be? It goes even farther than that.

They actually know YOUR GUN!
Before your gun left New Mexico (or Texas before that), it was THEIR gun! When the original buyer placed the order, he or she was asked a few questions.

1. How do you like your trigger? Long or short first stage? Heavy pull or light?

2. What pellet do you want to shoot?

3. Within the possible power range (velocity with your pellet), where do you want your rifle to be? Want more power or more shots?

Then they set up the rifle and shot targets with it. If it didn't group to their satisfaction, and believe it or not some don't, then you didn't get that rifle. They may have just had to clean the bore and retest the gun, or in a very few cases they may have had to replace the barrel. The point is - you weren't the one to find out! In fact, you never found out anything. As far as you know, your rifle was a sweet shooter from day one! Think it happens that way with every dealer? Think again. Some "dealers" ship out packages they've never even opened! Just ask around, and you'll hear stories about the wrong guns coming out of boxes when they arrive at the customer's address. Think it was a mixup at the dealer's? That he's so busy that one of his many shipments was swapped on the loading dock? Then why does it say one thing on the outside of the box, but there's a different model inside?

Your rifle arrived with a test target inside. The group was so small it made your heart beat faster, but what really turned you on was the group YOU shot! Back at Airhog, they have your rifle's serial number and they know what it was doing when it left them. They know they can do business this way, or they can just ship boxes and handle the problems when they arise. It's cheaper to just ship boxes...BUT IS IT REALLY? Airhog doesn't think so.

Discount city
When you just ship boxes and let the customers sort them out, there will be a percentage of people who have problems that they'll never tell you about. For whatever reason, they live with their problems, but they'll never do business with YOU again! And they are only too happy to tell the world how they feel! With the internet, that means you'll get plastered far and wide. The only thing left when enough of these people tell on you is to become "The cheapest guy in town." Like cockroaches after a nuclear holocaust, that guy will always be around, and he'll get the customers who run their lives by dollar signs. Each party - dealer and customer - distrusts the other and does the scorpion death dance every time they transact business. Airhog wants no part of that life.

What Airhog wants
They want you to call and tell them how wonderful your new air rifle is. Whether it's a $460 Talon or an $1,100 Prairie Falcon 25, they expect to hear from you. If you bought a used Falcon somewhere else, Airhog wants to be your safety net. No, they didn't sell you the gun, but if they can convince you they care about your airgunning, maybe they'll sell you the next one. If you just can't make your FN19-SB group at 50 yards with Beeman Crow Magnums, call Airhog and they'll tell you they can't do it, either! If you care to take a look, they don't even SELL Crow Magnums! In fact, the list of pellets they DO sell is pretty darn small. Wonder why, or is it becoming obvious?

None of these business practices is guaranteed anymore. You buy a TV that goes bad in three years instead of eleven, and you wince to discover that Sanyo doesn't support that model any longer. Apparently, you bought it just as it was becoming obsolete. Wal-Mart doesn't care and the guy who used to fix TVs in that little store in the strip mall passed away five years ago - it's a video arcade now. But if you own an air rifle that says Falcon on the side, you're in luck! There's a company out in Albuquerque that cares as much about your gun as you do. Give 'em, a call.