GTA
Gateway To Product Reviews => Air Gun Mods and Tunes => : trekker March 02, 2010, 04:26:42 AM
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Wonderful forum! Been shooting springers for some time but now that I live in close proximity to neighbors, noise is an issue. After some research I purchased a BSA Lightning XL .177 a few years back (when they were made and assembled in the UK).
I wanted a silent smallish rifle to take care of a few pests around the yard but I wanted to make it smoother and quieter. I was a little dismayed that my XL did not possess the "internal baffling" that is touted on BSA’s website. The barrel shroud is just an empty chamber. I resigned to the fact that this just may be the US 'export' model. I got a little creative quieting the rifle in this respect and not purpose the of my post.
I did some tests and surprise (duh), most of the noise was coming from the whack that the spring and piston produced. To verify I just wrap the rifle in a blanket and fired. With the rifle within the tightly wrapped blanket, all you hear is the 'pfffft' that the exiting pellet produces because the blanket muffles the spring action. So I tried to figure out how to quiet the whack.
I tuned, polished, lubed the heck out of it and noise considerably dropped and the action was butter smooth. I wanted to quiet it more so I 'bedded' the chamber into the stock which it made a much more responsive, quieter rifle. I'm most pleased with it.
After looking into the various ways of bedding a rifle from epoxy (Marine Tex), gluing, and other ways, I settled on using high density Home Depot weather stripping foam tape carefully arranged and compressed in every void and along the length where the stock meets the chamber. I squeezed it all together, torqued and loctited all the screws and the change was immediately noticeable. It was quieter and has a much more solid feel.
I was pleased with the results; I did the same to my modified .20 Gamo SHADOW 1000. I filled the butt stock with some expanding foam and filled every void in the stock I could with the high density tape carefully trimmed and fitted. I also laid down a strip along each side of the chamber and squeezed it all together. The difference in quietness and the more solid feel was well worth the effort. The bedding combined with a muzzle break I can now shoot all day in my backyard with out raising eyebrows of the neighbors. The pellet hitting the target is louder that the action of the rifles. Down range for both rifles sounds like a softly shutting screen door. After doing a quick search in the forums for "bedding" I was surprised I did not find ant reference to this so I thought I'd share.