Monday, May 31, 2010

Sounds of Silence - part three

Obsessive–compulsive personality disorder (OCPD) is a personality disorder which involves an obsession with perfection – I would guess it may be hereditary. Volvo with one of his older brothers, but more important the plastic on the furniture is perhaps foreshadowing. Will poor Volvo be destined to chase airgun nirvana forever?

As Orin suggested in his comment, this post is a little soap opera like. Please forgive the indulgence. Just try to keep in mind this experiment involved researching and buying the sound meter, purchasing rifles, and hours of testing for the results. This is nothing like grabbing the R7 and spending 10 minutes shooting at a target and then blogging the outcome.

My testing scenario was to place the meter at rifle height and about 3 ½ feet to the side. The muzzle was about a foot behind the meter. The meter had a setting where it would capture and hold the highest level noise until reset. All this was done indoors.

For the purpose of this report, I am only considering unaltered factory rifles. PA has a link about add ons and the possible complications.

http://www.pyramydair.com/site/articles/silencers/


Slinging Lead,
Yes we have a pet, meet Petey the fierce Cockapoo


My bench marks were a .22 rimfire on the high side and an R7 on the low side. I want to find out if a straight barreled PCP is as loud as firearm and what if anything makes less noise than a Paul Watts tuned HW30 \ R7.

It's getting late, I guess I will finish this tomorrow.
Stop back to find out how this one does, Beeman R1 .22 cal carbine

6 comments:

  1. I have actually been granted access into Volvo's secret lair. I can attest--under oath--that there is no plastic covered furniture, nor was I asked to don "clean room" shoe covers.

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  2. derrick38

    Wow! The inner sanctum? I envy you your security clearance.

    Volvo

    Petey is excruciatingly adorable. He does have the steely look of a cold-blooded killer though. You must have a steam cleaner as well.

    Finally gonna wrap this one up eh? What's the rush? I'm sure you could milk it for another few blogs (without any sound pressure results.)

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  3. Hey, I've been reading the new (old) blog for a while now. I'm enjoying what you've been writing, keep it up.
    A little while ago you all were bantering about the most useless accessories and mentioned the pel-seat as one. I recently have found one (actually the mic plug variant) to be very useful and wanted to pass by my observations to you and see if you all have seen anything similar. I recently rebuilt a used RS2 to give to my father. When I loaded it, the pellets would not seat well into the breech. I tried several types of pellets, and some were better than others, but all stood proud of the loading port and past the breech seal so the pellet would get dis-formed when the barrel was closed! Strange, but I found that using the idea of the mic plug pellet seat very useful. It pushes the pellet just in with a click of the skirt. My question is - Is there any such thing as putting a choke at the loading port of a barrel? And why in the world would anyone do this? Once the pellet is inside the barrel, is pushes through the rest of the way without obstruction. Weird, huh?

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  4. Fused,

    My Trail XL-1100 barrel is tighter in the breech block area (first 3-4 inches) than anywhere else in the barrel. Probably because the hole in the breech block was undersized and pressing the barrel in squeezed it too much. Consequently, it shoots like crap, although the problem is exacerbated by burrs on the rifling. Pellets are very difficult to load, as you mentioned. I literally get a sore thumb plinking with CP's. Thanks to some advice that derrick38 gave me, I've requested a new barrel from Crosman.

    If you're handy with tools and want to try modifying the breech/inleade, here's a pretty simple home remedy that doesn't require a machine shop. First, get a quality HSS countersink bit (5 or 6 cutting edges, not one of those cheap single edge jobbies). Don’t worry if it sets you back $30, you will find hundreds of uses for it down the road. Chuck it up in a hand drill and, on low-medium speed, very slightly (and evenly) countersink/chamfer the breech. You want just enough recess for the pellet skirts to seat flush. Then you can take some 400-grit sandpaper rolled into a small tube/cone and give the inleade a few turns in each direction. Follow up with 600-grit (you can go higher, but it's not really necessary IMO). This will help knock down any sharp edges on the rifling and allow for an easier pellet insertion.

    - Orin

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  5. Volvo,

    You're not fooling anyone. We all know that adorable Cockapoo isn't real (albeit, it looks much more lifelike than the Amazon link portrays). Even cute dogs have accidents, and that carpet of yours has obviously never been defiled by dog vomit or scooting tracks, not to mention bare feet. Nice try, though. If you need to rent any more canines for photo shoots, I've got 3 Maltese that clean up rather well.

    - Orin

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  6. Fused,
    I used a conical grit bit on my .25 BSA; I will post a picture of it. Just go very easy! By the way, glad you are following along.

    Orin,
    It seems Slinging is correct, I have a Hoover Steam Cleaner.

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