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Beeman air rifle ?

Winston BodeWinston Bode Member Posts: 1,628 ✭✭✭✭✭
edited September 2014 in Ask the Experts
Ok so I bought this Beeman air rifle and it came with a .22 barrel and a .177 barrel. I cannot get this thing sighted in with either barrel, scope or iron sights. Is there something wrong with the rifle or am I making some rookie mistake? I'm not that familiar with air rifles above a daisy red rider. I'm stumped. I'd like to squirrel hunt with it this year as its now legal to do so in Texas, but I can't get it to hit with any kind of consistency. Any suggestions?

Comments

  • Winston BodeWinston Bode Member Posts: 1,628 ✭✭✭✭✭
    edited November -1
    So there are no experts on here when it comes to air rifles. I would've thought someone could help. Oh well I guess the next time I have a garage sale I'll dump it cheap.
  • navc130navc130 Member Posts: 1,193 ✭✭✭
    edited November -1
    The higher quality break-barrel air rifles are said to be very sensitive to the type of pellet used. High quality pellets are expensive. A smooth, even trigger release is also important.
  • mrbrucemrbruce Member Posts: 3,374
    edited November -1
    They also seem to take a while to settle down and start to shoot good..
    It's a whole new learning curve to be able to shoot one really good..
  • charliemeyer007charliemeyer007 Member Posts: 6,579 ✭✭✭
    edited November -1
    Back in the old days a pellet sizer was the tool to help them shoot good. I think the new tapered bore stuff doesn't necessarily require the added step.

    Inspect your pellets carefully. The pure lead skirts are easily damaged when loose in a can.

    +1 for some break in before top performance. You might consider some polishing with JB's Bore paste to hurry things along.

    Are you starting with the pellets they recommend for you rifle?
  • thorhammerthorhammer Member Posts: 955 ✭✭✭
    edited November -1
    You have two problems, you purchased a Chinese made air
    rifle. The reviews i saw on your model were not impressive. I can't
    remember the exact problems, but caused me to stay away from it.

    The second problem is the pellets, standard run of the mill pellets
    from the hardware store will never be accurate.

    These are the one's i use.

    RWS Meisterkuglen
    RWS Super-H-Point and Superdome
    H & N Sport Baracuda Magnum
    Beeman Pellets, Kodiak, Silver Arrow & Crow Magnum

    Top of the line pellets are a key to accuracy, and may solve your
    accuracy problems.

    I have gone down that road of buying $100 air rifles with the bargain
    scopes, like Remington, Winchester, Hammerelli, and they're all made
    in China with sloppy triggers and clunky wood stocks. The bargains
    were all a disappointment. I sold them off at my garage sales.

    My favorite air rifle of all time was the German made Feinwerkbau 124
    deluxe. Sadly i sold it years ago and they come up for auction for
    here....4 - 6 hundred dollars.

    I would try new pellets first, google those names to find a source.

    good luck, Thor
  • Winston BodeWinston Bode Member Posts: 1,628 ✭✭✭✭✭
    edited November -1
    Thanks for all the replies. I'm no stranger to center fire and rimfire rifles but new to air rifles. I grew up shooting a daisy BBC gun and that's about my experience level.
  • 45er45er Member Posts: 245 ✭✭
    edited November -1
    Ran in the same problem with a highly touted Turkish $$$ air rifle. Gave up on it. Bought a $50 plastic cheapy Daisy Powerline 880, (Chinese & Wally-Mart to boot!) and right out of the box now ground squirrels shudder with fear.

    Don't know about the bigger tree squirrels, if that's what you are after, but these littler ground squirrles at 75-ft, they are goners with any of 1/2 dozen different types of pellets. And have a $75 Crossman American Classic pistol, (also Chinese?) for occasional coup-de-grace shot. Very happy how accurate both are. Go figure?

    Yeah, the middle/higher-end air gun is a whole different world, as example... is your Beeman a side or under cocker, as barrel cockers are inherently less acurate, are you using the "Artillery Hold", does it shoot over speed of sound, blah blah blah. This is just a wee example of the stuff obsessively yaked about on air rifle forums.

    Hey, I just wanted to rid the squirrels, not shoot Olympics! And they make it sound like it's supposed to be the difference between a bench-rest shooter and a tin-can kerplunker, (me), to get an expensive air gun to shoot straight. Which it seems to be. Most disapointing in the time and moolah wasted on the more expensive rifle. It's the one going in the garage sale.

    Wish had some sound advice, WinstonB, but other than addressing and experimenting with others advice here or on an air gun forum, maybe you got a lemon and return it to Beeman?

    45er
  • TriumphGuyTriumphGuy Member Posts: 37 ✭✭
    edited November -1
    Keep on reading the advice on the airgun forums and distributors' websites. There is a lot of good advice on there about how to shoot airguns. I don't know what your standard of accuracy is, but you can't expect a $98 Chinese air rifle to shoot dime size groups at 25 yds. Many things can happen to make them shoot much worse, and you should work your way through the usual suspects before declaring failure. Start with tight fasteners. Every airgun I have hammers its fasteners, and the newer models with heavy springs are especially bad. Loose and moving scope mounts are a near constant source of trouble. Barrel droop is a niggling problem that only scope shimming or a special mount will solve. I wouldn't vex too much about pellet quality. Almost anything you stuff in it will shoot to the quality level of the gun. I always go back to RWS Meisterkugeln. Don't worry too much about the "inherent inaccuracy" of barrel cocker guns. Anything made in the last 40 years that copies the RWS 34 locking mechanism will do O.K., again to the quality level of the gun. Hold discipline and trigger control are critical. Airgun triggers are necessarily awful. They creep on cheap guns and cannot safely reset if released halfway through the creep. You just have to develop your technique. Last but not least is scope quality. No $98 airgun/scope package has a very high quality piece of glass. I believe yours has a 4X fixed power, but there is no guarantee that its innards are not re-arranging themselves on every shot. All this is just the nature of these springers. And when you get things sorted out to get the accuracy you want, stuff can go wrong. Springs break, grease gets old, fasteners get loose, reticles break, on and on, but it's all part of the fun.
  • beantownshootahbeantownshootah Member Posts: 12,776 ✭✭✭
    edited November -1
    quote:Originally posted by Winston Bode
    Ok so I bought this Beeman air rifle and it came with a .22 barrel and a .177 barrel. I cannot get this thing sighted in with either barrel, scope or iron sights. Is there something wrong with the rifle or am I making some rookie mistake? I'm not that familiar with air rifles above a daisy red rider. I'm stumped. I'd like to squirrel hunt with it this year as its now legal to do so in Texas, but I can't get it to hit with any kind of consistency. Any suggestions?


    What exactly is the problem?

    Are you unable to get the sights to align with your group, or are you unable to get any kind of group worth aligning to? Its absolutely possible you have a bad individual gun that makes accuracy impossible.

    You really don't need to clean air guns much or even at all (relatively low velocities, minimal bore/pellet contact, and lack of powder means no fouling) BUT its entirely possible you have a dirty bore out of the box, and ONE initial cleaning (CAREFUL!) might not be a bad ideal. Also check the muzzle crowns to make sure they are OK.

    Yes, type of pellet matters, and match pellets are the best, though even relatively low end pellets should still give you SOME kind of grouping (if not necessarily a super-small match quality one).

    How you SEAT the pellet matters. You have to have it pushed all the way into the barrel and to a consistent depth. Match shooters will using a seating tool, though I think just being aware of this and trying to be consistent with your fingers will probably get you 80% of the way there.

    Most air rifle triggers suck. There are things you can do to improve them (a little), but your most realistic option is probably to "deal with it" or buy a match quality rifle (which will come from Germany and run several times the cost of the one you got). Try to work on a consistent trigger pull with what you have.

    Scope? If you aren't using a dedicated airgun scope, you need to get one. Back-and-forth double recoil snap of a spring piston airgun quickly ruins many "ordinary" scopes not built to handle this.
  • tsr1965tsr1965 Member Posts: 8,682 ✭✭
    edited November -1
    For your best results, the big SPRING PISTON guns, favor heavier pellets. I use the 11.4 grain pointed ones in my RWS 48. Also, you cannot just slap a regular scope on these. They have to be a gigh quality air gun rated scope, or otherwise the big piston guns will destroy a$500.00 Leupold scope in 10-20 shots.

    My suggestion is to try it with open sights, and if you cannot get it to group with them, then there is something wrong with the gun...otherwise get an air gun scope.

    If you go to www.pyramidair.com, they can help you.

    Best
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