what excactly does a heavier hammer do for a condor

[wyocaddis]

just wondering if one should change?

[rsterne]

Some aftermarket valve designs are harder to open than the stock Condor valve.... In addition, some are designed to run at higher pressure, which makes them harder to open as well.... To determine if you need a heavier hammer, start at "zero" on the power wheel, fill to your normal fill pressure, and shoot a shot and record the velocity.... Top the gun back up, increase the power wheel to "2" and repeat.... Do this until you no longer see an increase in velocity.... If this occurs before you run out of PW adjustment, then you don't need a heavier hammer.... If you can tether your gun at the fill pressure, you won't need to top up between shots....

I recently built a .257 Condor, and initially it used the stock valve.... I tested it as above, and then fitted a 1mm CS O-ring under the top hat and did it again.... Here is a chart of the results.... My gun was tethered at 3000 psi....



The red line is without the O-ring, the decrease in velocity above PW = 8 was due to the hammer strike being so heavy that the top-hat was bouncing off the valve.... With the stock setup, any PW setting over 6 just wasted air, without any increase in velocity.... Therefore a heavier hammer would have been a waste of money (and air).... Here are shot strings at the various PW settings, starting from 3000 psi for each string....



You can see that PW = 6 gave a declining shot string, while PW = 5 gave a bell-curve, along with a peak velocity on the 3rd shot as fast as the 2nd shot with any higher setting.... Either PW = 4 or PW = 5 would be the best tune, depending on the balance of FPE and shot count I wanted.... A .25 cal (or .22 cal) Condor can be tested in the same way....

Bob

[wyocaddis]

Thank you very informative.

[Mr.P]

That was awesome. The visuals are very helpful.

[Back_Roads]

That was awesome. The visuals are very helpful.

 I see it too :O

[wyocaddis]

next question, Have a top hat set will that effectively do the same thing?