The ups and downs of the B-3

[Skip]

Up/         I got a B-3 for doing a favor, price was right.
Down/    It had a cracked stock, obstructed barrel.
Up/         I epoxy stock together , had to cut barrel and re crown it.
Down /   It couldn’t shoot a group, made some ungodly noise when cocking
               it and made a slamming sound like a hammer on metal. It had no power at all      
               from 25 feet. A 7.9 gn  pellet would just penetrate the length of the pellet into a  
               soft pine board.
Up/         I got a lot of good information from this forum and decided to to try to tune it.
               I would like to get into the tune in a later post, so (short story) I did the tune and
               After aprox. 30 shots it began shooting good groups about 3/8 of an inch at
               25 feet and pushed a pellet nearly thru the same ¾ in piece of pine. Very big  
                improvement in smoothness.
Down/    The next day I was trying different pellets and after about 50-60 shots the  
               groups opened up and I found the problem. One of the forend stock screws
              striped out of the metal rail. Now I need some ideas as how to fix it.
      Any up sides to this out there??
 
           
Two ideas I had where :
   First to run a 10-32 tap thru the hole and use new screws but I don’t know if there
                     is enough materal there to hold.
                     Second to tack weld nuts over the holes then cut the stock to fit.

I would appreciate any and all suggestions.


Skip

[ronbeaux]

I've been on that roller coaster and I'm sure others  have as well. I like the cut the stock and tack a nut on there idea. Seems like it would work pretty easy if you have the means. If you tap it you might end up doing it anyway after a while.

Another problem I had after spending countless hours having fun smoothing stuff out was that the pin that holds the cocking lever kept falling out. I got a big azz hammer and smashed it into place and the problem went away.

Re-crown the barrel!!! Also take the front sight completely off and drill out the plastic opening for the barrel way larger than what it is now. Then take a Dremel with a cone shaped tool and cut a new crown, then re-blue it so it won't rust. I made my crown way bigger than needed and didn't see a problem with it. I can see the rifling ending at the crown and I got a tiny file and made sure there weren't any burrs on the rifling where it ended. Then replace the front shroud with a little blue Lock Tight and it will stay in place and not twist.

There are 4 places on the trigger assembly to polish and I used a 'Pink' Lansky sharpening stone to polish these places to a mirror. Un-believable difference it made in trigger pull! I was able to finally test different pellets to see which ones it liked. Fortunately it like the cheap Gamop Hunters and not JSBs or CPLs.

B3's are fun to tinker with. I've got mine to where I can ding a Copenhagen lid with snap shots at 12,14,16, 20, and 25 yards.

[Skip]

I did the crown because Icut the barrel

[shadow]

The B's can be a headache sometimes but if you get one that you can work with "out of the box" it can be a fine little shooter. Look's like your sorting out some issues with your B, keep us updated on your progress with her. Ed

[Skip]

Ed, this gun was really shooting well. I don't want to give up on it at this point. I guess I will put it to the side for now until I figure out what to do. I was just wondering if this happened to any ony else, and get some idea how to overcome it. Skip

[shadow]

Might want to just tap the hole for a larger screw, might have to inlarge the stock hole as well to allow for the larger screw. Also check the length of the screw, if it's to long it might interfere with the cocking of the shooter. Ed

[derekmcminn]

Nice crown on that barrel. What did you use to make it?

[Skip]

Hack sawed the barrel then used a small square and a file to get it true. I used a wet stone to finish it. Then I used a brass round head screw with vlave grinding compound to finish the crown.

[Skip]

The scews were scraping the cocking rod so I used washers and locktight. I guess I used too thick of a washer and didn't catch enough thread. I don't know if larger would work, the hole is drilled pretty closed the the edge of the rail. What do you think about drilling new holes about 1 inch further back the filling the old holes in the stock?  Skip

[zartoon]

I had the same problem, so I just used my Dremel to cut off the screws about 1 mm.
Seems to be working fine now.

-Z