Broke down the new HW95, stripped the thing and relubed with Krytox.

[nced]

I don't know if this HW95 is the "new norm", but unlike the R9s I've bought this one wasn't slathered internally with tan grease. Matter of fact, if you're going to use "dinosaur grease" to lube then this one was done just about right. Probably why The velocities of the gun straight from the box was so consistent from shot #1!

Disassembled HW95.......



One thing that I've never seen before with my HW springers is the flat washer between the spring end and the piston head as seen in this closeup......


One thing really different with the HW95 was that the larger trigger adjusting screw didn't fit really tight like all the other Rekords I've had. Matter of fact, it was too loose for my liking so I added a nylon screw lock as shown in this pic.....

LOL...after adding the "locking insert" I think it would have been better to use a #4 nylon screw instead of a #6. Anywhoo.....works a treat! Funny thing is that all the other HW springers I've owned had trigger screws that were locked so tight it almost ripped the slot out of the screws to adjust the first time!

The piston fit the receiver really nice this time and the receiver ID was nicely finished so there was no "buttoning" done and the new style HW piston seal is still intact (no oring sealed piston cap so far).

I did replace the factory spring and spring guide with an old spring kit I made up a while back on a Maccari spring from my "parts bin" complete with fitted guide and top hat. After reassembly and the Krytox lube the "95" shoots "really tight fitting" CPLs at 880ish FPS. The accuracy at 18 yards was good shooting the resized CPLs still fit the leade tight. Just for grinns I shot a few looser fitting 4.52mm Air Arms dome pellets and with those pellets it was "pellet holes touching" at 18 yards shooting from "bucket and sticks". With this HW95 the AA domes are actually snug fitting unlike my R9 where they're not very snug at all. LOL....since I have 18 boxes of die "B" CPLs I think I'll make another pellet sizer so they will fit the HW95 leade a bit less tight! Anywhoo.....after the reassembly the HW95 "cocks like butter", has no twang or vibration, but I do think I'll reduce the CPL velocity a bit to the 850-860 level in the future.

[R1]

When I replaced the spring in my R1, I put washers on both ends of the spring.  I think that it helps the spring unwind easier and got rid of a lot of the twang I was hearing. 

[TheBman]

Following your post with a lot of interest nced, I bought one of these too. Haven't been inside it yet. Mine rattles enough to make your teeth hurt, but it dang sure shoots great. I let a few friends shoot it and all three of them ordered one.

[dtdtdtdt]

Ed:

Did you drill through the aluminum screw to put a nylon screw in to interrupt the regular threads and increase side force?

Or what??

I have been known to use a fine punch and upset the threads a bit so make them grab tighter to do the same thing.

Dave

[nced]

Ed:

Did you drill through the aluminum screw to put a nylon screw in to interrupt the regular threads and increase side force?

Or what??

I have been known to use a fine punch and upset the threads a bit so make them grab tighter to do the same thing.

Dave

Yup......I drilled and tapped the screw for a #6-32 nylon screw. The nylon screw was screwed through the "trigger adjusting screw", trimmed flush with the threads, then screwed into the steel Rekord  tab. The Rekord triggers have a deformed tab and this deformation is what binds the aluminum screw keeping it tight. Well....the Rekord "tab" in the HW95 was deformed a lot less than I'm accustomed to see which is why the adjustment screw didn't have much "tightness" after backing the screw off for less than the heavy factory adjustment.

Anywhoo....the mod is similar to the commercial screws you can buy with the embedded nylon like this.........


http://www.mcmaster.com/#socket-head-cap-screws/=y6yq1m

[dtdtdtdt]

Thanks for showing me a neat trick.  I'll keep it in mind for future use.

Reminds me of an old story (urban legend?) about early days of Japanese - US competition in machine tools after WWII. 

US manufacturer sent a sample of their smallest nuts and bolts to a Japanese manufacturer with a challenge "Could they do better and smaller?"   Japanese company sent back the very small US bolt and nut with an even smaller nut and bolt in a hole drilled through the US bolt and a one-word response.  "Yes"

By the way what is Krytox?  I don't dig into my air rifles so haven't tried to learn all the neat stuff there?

[TheBman]

By the way what is Krytox?  I don't dig into my air rifles so haven't tried to learn all the neat stuff there?

Krytox is a synthetic lube/grease. Really resistant to dieseling, very good for high pressure applications and really isn't affected by big temperature swings. Good stuff, works real well on springers, but real pricey!

[Technical Ted]

Ed,

You mention making a pellet sizer. Could you please give some info on this? I just purchased a box of CPLs to test in my TX200 and they fit extremely tight and are difficult to load. I'm interested in how you size your pellets and how you make a sizer.

Thanks in advance!

Ted

[dtdtdtdt]

Not Ed but:

Beeman used to make a pellet sizer that is now very rare to find.  I have one that I picked up on-line (Ebay) a few years ago.

[nced]

Ed,

You mention making a pellet sizer. Could you please give some info on this? I just purchased a box of CPLs to test in my TX200 and they fit extremely tight and are difficult to load. I'm interested in how you size your pellets and how you make a sizer.

Thanks in advance!

Ted

Well....kinda long story!  I was using 4.52mm (supposedly) JSB Exact pellets for a couple seasons till I recently got a tin with quite a few really loose fitting pellets and at a FT match I had two dry fires when the Exact flipped out of the leade if my R9 and I caught a third  pellet that had flipped out but I didn't shoot an "air pellet" that time. Getting home I measured several thousand supposedly 4.52mm Exacts and very few were actually 4.52mm (as measured by my iGaging digital caliper supposedly accurate to .001 INCH with a .0005resolution. Knowing that .001inch was a bit over .025mm I really didn't put much faith in the accuracy of a pellet to .01mm I then measured a bunch of 4.52mm Air Arms dome pellets and getting a high percentage 4.52mm readings on my digital caliper I verified to my satisfaction that indeed a large majority of the 4.52mm Exacts were undersized and the sizes were VERY variable.

Anywhoo.....I stopped using CPLs a couple years before due to the need to wash the very dirty pellets of the last cases bought, however they did shoot accurately and they were snug fitting in my R9 leade where the Exacts fit to the leade ranged from "flipping out loose" to lightly snug. I ordered another case of CPLs and receiver die "B"s, however I was pleasantly surprised that they were very clean, uniform fitting, really snug fitting (actually tight) in the R9 leade and very accurate from my R9. I also measured a bunch of the die "B" CPL pellet heads and got a reading of 4.55mm on my digital caliper. I do realize that they probably weren't exactly 4.55mm using a digital calliper but it did verify what I already knew......CPL pellet heads were larger than the Exacts and even the snugger fitting Air Arms domes.

Well......I reasoned that a pellet with a 4.55mm head could be sized down to 4.52mm and if the sizer were made accurately enough, the pellets would also be "round" (not oval as many were)  and all would fit the leade consistently with less tightness. It would do me no good to try sizing the JSBs because they were already too loose fitting, however the CPLs were a different story so I ordered another 4 cases of CPLs and received all die "B"s.

Now on to the sizers made.........I wanted to shrink the CPL pellet head making it round (if oval), plus the "rounded out" skirt seal better in the leade. I've been reading about a "speedy pellet gage" (whatever it's called) however I do wonder about such an approach. Seems that sorting pellets according to size would only work for for pellets with perfectly round pellet heads.......with the oval heads it would seem that they would be sorted by the wide dimension.

Well....my first attempt to make a pellet sizer was to drill a 4mm hole through a short length of 5/8 machine bolt on my metal lathe. The hole was then bored with a tiny home made boring bar by grinding a 2 1/2" long masonry nail to shape and then giving it extra hardening by heating bright red and quenching in oil....worked a treat.   

I first bored the hole till a pushed CPL through the die gave me the 4.52mm pellet as measured with my digital caliper. The next step was to enlarge the bore to 4.55mm except leaving about 1/16" of the 4.52mm bore in the end. This way I could simply drop the CPL in the rear of the die, then pushing only the head of the pellet through the 4.52mm bore. Then the pellet was pushed out of the die by the head which left only the pellet head reduced, however the tapered point of the ram rounded the skirt due to the pressure needed to push a 4.55mm hard lead pellet head through a 4.52mm ring in the die. Here are a few pics..........

I machined old bolts to make the die and an old 1/4" brass screw to make the ram for pushing the pellet through the die.

I also tested to see if a CPL with an oval skirt could be made round again when sizing and sure enough, it was possible as these pics show........



My next revision was to make the die from a length of O1 tool steel that was drilled, bored as described above, and then hardened. This Die was then pressed into a holder made from the head of a bolt. The ram was made from a length of O1 tool steel shaped on the lathe and pressed into holder made from an old bolt. The ram was positioned so only the pellet head would be  reduced which made the sizing of a pellet rather foolproof requiring only about 5 seconds to load a pellet, press the head through the die with the ram, then push the pellet out of the die backward and load another pellet..



This sizer works great for my R9, however the leade in the new HW95 is a bit smaller so even the CPLs with heads sized to 4.52mm require a rather hard push to seat in the leade. The solution was to make another sizer to size the CPL head to 4.49mm plus round the skirt if a bit oval........
4.52mm sizer on the left and 4.49mm sizer on the right......


Here is the 4.49mm sizer with a sized pellet on the top........

The pellet skirt got reduced a tad as well as rounded so a small adjustment to reduce the "ram projection" from the holder was needed to only size the pellet head without also reducing the skirt a tad.

Anywhoo.....I've had a lot of failures trying to make my own pellet sizer but I've finally succeed! One thing that simplified the making of a "sizer die" was to fabricate a "D" bit reamer from O1 tool steel and then harden it. To make a die I just need to drill through a 4mm hole in some 10mm O1 tool steel, then use the "D" reamer to make a slightly undersized stepped bore, then use the hokey little masonry nail boring bar to sneak up to the final size, then use some rolled and oiled 800 grit wet or dry to open up the bore the last .01mm after hardening the die. My latest "D" reamer for making the 4.49mm pellet head sizing die.........
   

[Tater]

Very cool Ed and great pics. Those closeups came out very sharp.

[nced]

Very cool Ed and great pics. Those closeups came out very sharp.

The pics were taken with a relatively cheap small Nikon Coolpix digital camera.......






Anywhoo.......I just verified that the leade of my Beeman R9 is larger than the leade of my new HW95. I just determined this by loading and shooting the CPLs sized with the 4.49mm die. In the HW95 the 4.49ish mm (whatever it actually is) sized pellet fits real snug, however, in the R9 the same 4.49ish mm sized pellets are loose fitting, just like the supposedly 4.52mm JSB Exacts. Now the CPLs sized with the 4.52ish mm die fit the R9 leads real nice and snug. If the accuracy of the sized CPLs is still good, the fact that every pellet loads easier and the fit is consistent......that's good enough for me to push pellets through the sizers while surfing the web! 

[Technical Ted]

Ed,

Thanks a million for such a detailed answer! That was great! I too have a machine shop in my basement and I can see this project on the horizon... I have some small pieces of A2 and D2 which I think will work very nicely for this after a prototype.

Thanks again,
Ted

[Jetmd]

That right their is about the most informative and accurate post I have seen on
any forum in quite some time!  Very nice job.  Thank-you for the time and effort
it takes to insert quality pictures and text.

[Technical Ted]

I'm thinking it would be nice to see Ed's post become a sticky on how to make your own sizing die. It would be a waste to have his info get buried in hopes that it could be found in the future by searching only...

Just my 2 cents,

Thanks again Ed!
Ted

[TheBman]

Yeah, Ed's got a lot of good posts on here. When I am digging for something and I see Ed posted on it...I dang sure read it, then bookmark!

[Yogi]

Nice post Ed, thanks.
But the important question is how does the HW95 shoot?  What prompted the "minor tune"?  What was the stock shot cycle like?
I'm thinking about ordering one for a friend as a present and do not want to send the wrong present...

-Yogi