My Crosman 101: The rest of the Story

[Ole Coyote]

In an earlier thread I was looking for info on this gun and trying to clear up some problems I was having. Thanks guys, for all the help. I got the issues squared away, and she is shooting fine. More on that later. First what I found out about dating this rifle. It is definitely a 1st Period gun. The logo, with patent dates, sans pellet emblem confirms that as well as the octagonal cross-section of the receiver. On closer examination and on comparison with my brother's 101, I find it does have the tapered forearm, and something that's dates it even older is the trigger guard. The trigger guard is a steel ring, brazed onto a brass plate, not steel, spot welded to steel. This all indicates an early gun. It does have a brass barrel (nicely rifled, too), so it is probably not a 1925 gun, but probably not later than 1927.

When I first got this gun, it was a pretty weak shooter, and I compounded this problem when I reassembled it. Even after proper reassembly, it was still bouncing pellets off of cardboard at 10 yards. I was not impressed. After firing my wimpy shot, it was still taking 3 trigger pulls to exhaust the air. I was lucky that my brother also bought a 101, which he is in the process of restoring. Actually, the one he bought turns out to be more of a "parts gun", but he has all that is necessary to build a good one on the way. Anyway, he bought a seal kit, so I was able to do some comparisons, and even had spare parts to work with. I compared my hammer spring with his. The spring that came in his seal kit is longer than the one that came in his gun. The one that came in my gun is the same length as the one that came in his gun, but is at least 1 gauge finer than that spring. I took the old spring from his gun, and put it in mine. The difference was immediately noticeable. It was now a beast to cock. I gave it 8 pumps and took aim at he cardboard target 10 yards away. It made a nice clean hole.

Just for grins, I ran it over the chrony for a couple of strings, using .22, CPHP's. The first string was with 8 pumps for a high of 578FPS, a low of 526FPS, for an average of 540FPS. The second string was 10 pumps with the same pellets. It returned a high of 612FPS, a low of 550FPS, for an average of 578FPS. There is now no air exhausted if I cock and fire again. All in all, not too shabby for a 90 year old airgun.

[Geoff]

nice save on an oldie

[45flint]

It's fun and it means more to ba a part of the process to restore the gun to shooting condition.  Very nice