SPA still doesn't get it - Diana Chaser rifling damage

[Pelletjunkie]

The stock barrel on my PP700 has 2 tight spots. They are exactly the same distance from each end of the barrel. Ironically that barrel shoots just fine after crowning it. I say it’s double choked. I believe it’s where they clamped it when they used their drill bit to do the crown and where they flipped it around and clamped it to use their router bit for the leade. They are soft barrels because it’s obvious when cutting a crown on the lathe.

[anti-squirrel]

The stock barrel on my PP700 has 2 tight spots. They are exactly the same distance from each end of the barrel. Ironically that barrel shoots just fine after crowning it. I say it’s double choked. I believe it’s where they clamped it when they used their drill bit to do the crown and where they flipped it around and clamped it to use their router bit for the leade. They are soft barrels because it’s obvious when cutting a crown on the lathe.

This further lends credence what I suspect: the barrels are flexing or deflecting under the process during final stage.  Those faint touches Jason pointed out are present in both my .22 PR900 barrels.  Hah, Maybe Wes can provide some feedback as a vendor? 

I haven't ever checked my PP700 since it just shoots darn near everything quite well

[avator]

Not for nothing but, if I'm going to buy a Chinese gun I'm certainly not going to pay for the Diana brand to be put on it. On the other hand.. if I'm going to pay for German quality it's not going to be made in China.
I get it though.. it's all about the money. Diana used it's buying power to import low end guns much cheaper than what they could produce them.
SPA guns, at least the ones I own, are a great value for the money.... providing you are able to do a bit of fine tuning yourself.
The thing that gets me is that Diana left us with the impression that they would do this fine tuning for us.... I'm not seeing it.
Here is a question I have.. How is Diana handling customer support on these guns with quality issues? Are they repairing or replacing them? Has anyone seen any refurbs?

[CraigH]

The stock barrel on my PP700 has 2 tight spots. They are exactly the same distance from each end of the barrel. Ironically that barrel shoots just fine after crowning it. I say it’s double choked. I believe it’s where they clamped it when they used their drill bit to do the crown and where they flipped it around and clamped it to use their router bit for the leade. They are soft barrels because it’s obvious when cutting a crown on the lathe.

Interesting.   The clamping for mere turning machine work must be quite excessive or the steel quite soft (relative to quality steel).

Regarding vendor "demands" for more quality, that does not seem to happen, or as avator states, "it's all about the money".   I think we all held hopes for changes when Diana made this move, but most probably knew the hopes would come to naught.

The situation is quite like that regarding mini-lathes, all the same, and no vendor demands for improvement - and of equal importance no similar demands from buyers.   By not sending back poor quality merchandise, the manufacturer and vendor is able to believe all is well.

JMO

[anti-squirrel]

Not for nothing but, if I'm going to buy a Chinese gun I'm certainly not going to pay for the Diana brand to be put on it. On the other hand.. if I'm going to pay for German quality it's not going to be made in China.
I get it though.. it's all about the money. Diana used it's buying power to import low end guns much cheaper than what they could produce them.
SPA guns, at least the ones I own, are a great value for the money.... providing you are able to do a bit of fine tuning yourself.
The thing that gets me is that Diana left us with the impression that they would do this fine tuning for us.... I'm not seeing it.
Here is a question I have.. How is Diana handling customer support on these guns with quality issues? Are they repairing or replacing them? Has anyone seen any refurbs?

From everything I'm seeing on various forums, Diana is putting a nicer stock on certain models and that's it.

They will never get my money; in fact I think their rep is getting tarnished by the lack of QA.  Serves them right - there's too many new entries at the various pricepoints that deliver what was once the sole purview of SPA. 

[nervoustrigger]

Hi Scott, if you don’t mind, did you work with it enough to comment on how much it improved and if you identified any other trouble spots?  Your standards are high and I don’t expect that it would ever rival a well-prepped LW but I’m curious if removing the bad portion made a substantial improvement.

[nervoustrigger]

Walther, thanks for pointing out the 2-stage trigger on the Trailscout.  I haven’t yet tinkered with the one on the Chaser and that may well be a good improvement over the single stage.  I had cleaned up the trigger on the CR600W (Plinkster) a long time ago and added a ball plunger to the trigger guard to give a wall just before the sear breaks and that made it really nice to use.  I’ll be delighted if the new design comes anywhere close to that without having to rework it.

[bear air]

I had to open the leade on my gen 1 stormrider to be able to use the mags. It was way too tight and could probably be worked just a little more to be honest. Loading pellets is still pretty rough.

[nervoustrigger]

Hi Craig, I think you bring up a good point about a lack of customer feedback and returns.
 
For my particular situation, I have 3 reasons that I did not want to do an RMA:
1.       I wanted to know if the rifling damage was the cause of the poor accuracy.
2.       Now that I have a lathe, the amount of time to make the repair is probably less than I would spend on the phone to arrange the return, package it up, and take it to the UPS drop-off.
3.       Since it’s my son’s Christmas gift, I didn’t want him to be without it for 2 weeks or whatever it takes to process the return.
 
However I do hope threads like this one will raise awareness and help get word back to Diana and SPA.  I will be drafting a review for Pyramyd as well.

[nervoustrigger]

On the theory that the barrels are made of a particularly soft steel, it could be my lack of experience but I have not noticed any particular difference in how this one cut compared to the last 2 LW barrels I turned.  Similar depth of cut and feed rate produced similar curls, load on the motor, and sound, and produced a similar quality of finish.  Again it could be that I don’t know what I’m looking for, it’s just that nothing jumped out at me.
 
Regarding the possibility of constricting the bore via the clamping forces seen in manufacturing, this is all very speculative but I cannot fathom how they would develop sufficient compressive forces in a lathe chuck to do that.  There are also a couple of drilling operations for the barrel port and dimple for a grub screw.  It has to be held in a vise or some sort of fixture for that so I suppose it’s possible if they’re using hydraulics to do the clamping.  I just tend to think that’s a low probability and it would not explain a constriction anywhere else besides the breech end.
 
Meanwhile I’ve seen a few barrels with substantially larger OD have these varying tight spots and loose spots along their length so that gives me the impression these symptoms are due to some other aspect of manufacturing.

[Pelletjunkie]

Take a look at the crown on every SPA gun, that mess is not being done on a lathe. It’s being clamped and drilled. On the topic of getting Diana’s attention? Seems like more people buy them to fix them than people who send them back. I can sorta understand with a sub $200 gun. But when guys start buying $500+ Chinese parts guns, my hat is off to SPA and Diana. I definitely chose the wrong path for income in life. Maybe someone can name another hobby where guys buy brand new under warranty junk, don’t send it back and dump money into it just to get it to function properly. It might help justify what we do and how we aren’t helping the guy who wants a buy it and shoot it affordable PCP.

[Ribbonstone]

No comfort here...just think you are unlucky with that brand (and reguardless of who's logo is embazened on the side, they all come from the same place).

Do realize that every maker's barrels are a lottery...some have the odds way in your favor....some have them  more like even.

I "won" the SPA (or whatever logo you care to have printed oin the side if the airgun) 5 out of 5 times. MAy not have been pure match grade but have no intention of changing them/modding them.

LOST the R-7 lottery 2 out of 3 (those were suppost to be "sure sthings"). Lost the Crosman lottery about 2 out of 7.  Lost the QB lottery about  2 out of 9.


From the looks of that barrel (and other SPA barrels posted) does look like they screwed it up with a loose piloted crwoning tool.  Could be that their standard diameter piolting tool was too big for a non-standard sized bore...or the piot section was AFU....but pretty well a case of mass production/spot QC/time limits.  (Don't we all tend to screw up stuff we do in a hurry?).

PERSONALLY:

1. Shoot it to see how bad it really is. Have sometimes been surpirsed by how well areally bad looking barrel actually shot (but will agree,that most times it shot about as screwed up as you'd expect).

2. I'd send it back if that is still a vialbe option and take another ticket to the lottery.

DIY verions (for folks who can't or just won't send it back but had some skills):

1.  Fix it.  If you need.want the trheads, then counter bore it (lets say a 1/4"drill"past the bad spot,the carefully work a decnt/smooth crown down into that counter bore.

2. Cut it/recrown it.Would end up with a slightly shorter,no thread barrel, but it could shoot well and there are set-screw LDC's that will work.

3. Buy the longest barrel they have that will fit, cut that to whatever length looks like full length "clean" barrel.  HAve all the problems of #2, but might end up with some longer (although not factory length) barrel that is "clean".

OR...and this is what I did with R-7's....AVOID THEM....it just isnt my fate to get a good R-7...maybe it is just not your fate to get a good SPA barrel.

[nervoustrigger]

Oh I agree the crowning isn’t being done on a lathe.  Clearly they are shoving a piloted crowning tool into the bore and there’s no need to do that in a lathe, and the chatter marks on the crown bevel suggest a hand operation.

[Pelletjunkie]

Sorry about my rant but what I would like to see is when a guy buys a Diana SPA, leave an honest review through whoever you bought it from. Even if you bought it will all intentions of fixing their flaws. I have several buddies who have PCP’s. They have never visited one of these forums. They base all their purchases off the reviews on the vendors site as their finger is quivering over the “add to cart” button.

[nervoustrigger]

FWIW, my review is submitted to Pyramyd.  Their page says it may take up to 2 weeks to publish.   

[Scotchmo]

Hi Scott, if you don’t mind, did you work with it enough to comment on how much it improved and if you identified any other trouble spots?  Your standards are high and I don’t expect that it would ever rival a well-prepped LW but I’m curious if removing the bad portion made a substantial improvement.

I posted about it some last April:
https://www.gatewaytoairguns.org/GTA/index.php?topic=157187.msg155741573#msg155741573

The recrown and releadin helped some, but not substantially. I did not think it was worth spending much time trying to lap out the two extra tight spots. I had a LW poly barrel on hand and I wanted to try it.

If you get a SPA product, just assume that you will need to rebarrel it if you want it to shoot with extreme accuracy. And maybe replace some o-rings. There are some other issues too, but I like their designs and pricing enough that I would not hesitate to buy/fix them.

In the case of the Diana Skyhawk, I would have bought a SPA P15 if they had been available at the time. I spent the extra $$$ for the nice laminated Minelli stock. Except for the too-long LOP, I like it.

The nicer/heavier stock is probably the only advantage over the SPA P15.

[CraigH]

Sorry about my rant but what I would like to see is when a guy buys a Diana SPA, leave an honest review through whoever you bought it from. Even if you bought it will all intentions of fixing their flaws. I have several buddies who have PCP’s. They have never visited one of these forums. They base all their purchases off the reviews on the vendors site as their finger is quivering over the “add to cart” button.

Rants can be valuable.   

My quivering beginning at delivery - is this one going to be the empty leaker, the one with the bad barrel, some gross cosmetic flaw?   

[anti-squirrel]

My entire point is where seeing the problems with the rifle barrels, but pistol barrels seem to be much better.  And regarding assuming a need to rebarrel, I don't think any barrel is going to shoot notable better than the one on my PP700.  When I can grab 14 different pellets at 20+ yards and shoot all of them dime-size or smaller- in a pistol resting on a simple bag, I think we can assume it's a good barrel.

Perhaps they have different people hand-cutting the crowns and whomever is working the rifle barrels is literally working them over. 

Either way, Diana perma-lost a customer.  I'll stick with just buying SPA.



Interesting note: long before Diana started this entire thing, one of the trade names for SPA was Artemis; goddess of the hunt.  Guess who Diana is?  Er, uh, Goddess of the hunt.  The former is Greek; the latter is Roman.  Like I said, these brands pre-existed Diana ever selling SPA products.

[Wayne52]

I'll be getting me another SPA soon myself, it will be my first 25 cal SPA, it's an M11MKII, I need to get in gear and cast up some more .25's cause I'll be needing them for sure.  I'll need to take a hike back to the deep woods on the state land to sight it in, I'll start out at 50 yards.  The new stocks on these guns look much better than what the M10's came with I think.

[canadian_shooter]

I'll be getting me another SPA soon myself, it will be my first 25 cal SPA, it's an M11MKII, I need to get in gear and cast up some more .25's cause I'll be needing them for sure.  I'll need to take a hike back to the deep woods on the state land to sight it in, I'll start out at 50 yards.  The new stocks on these guns look much better than what the M10's came with I think.

If the stock on yours is like the one on mine it is very nice. Clean, though a bit light, checkering. Nice even stain and satin finish. I was and am very impressed with it. It isn't American  Black Walnut or Turkish Walnut but it is a very nice hunk of beech. Also it is meaty enough for effortless installation of a bipod.