Vigilante Mods

[George Schmermund]

 I've been working on upgrades for the Vigilante. The barrel is 10" in this photo. It's now in the process of becoming a carbine.

[KevinP]

George, now that's a big tease.
What is on the end of the barrel and how does it attach ?
More pic. please.

[George Schmermund]

Thanks for your interest in the project. The photos show how the Vigilante barrel housing was modified to accommodate the new 10" barrel. The housing extension is made from 1" Delrin which slides over the threaded aluminum support. I used a 10" piece from a Crosman 1077 barrel and machined a new muzzle crown and forcing cone. The muzzle was then choked by knurling it. The housing plate has a .015" piece of nickel plated steel spot welded onto it to take up the slack in the latch.

[KevinP]

To cool  ...  how does it shoot ?

[BigErn]

Damn this is sooooo cool    Can't wait to see this in carbine form 

[BigErn]

To cool  ...  how does it shoot ?

It doesn't matter 

[Monkeydad1969]

George,

It looks like a hand held rocket launcher.

Joe

[George Schmermund]

This project has been progressing for a few months now. When things got started I was giving a lot of thought to getting a 2240 and working on it, but I really wanted a repeater of some sort. It also had to be able to shoot pellets.  I hadn't been involved with airguns since I was a kid, so starting from scratch was my only option. The Vigilante was cheap and had very good reviews on Amazon. The first one that I got seemed to work well enough, but on close inspection it was obvious that the machining on the barrel was very rough at both the muzzle and breech.

It was easy enough to remove the straw barrel from the housing and get it into the lathe for a tune up. After reading about the importance of having a proper crown it seemed rational to start the testing, measuring, and general experimenting with a comparison between more than one of the same gun. This lead me to buying two more Vigilantes. The barrels in all three of the guns were pretty much identically horrible. I've kept one of the guns in the original factory state and have had my way with the other two.

After re-machining the first barrel and comparing the accuracy to the factory issued one it was clear that small improvements made big differences. It became quickly evident that I'm a lousy shot and any testing that required accuracy and repeatability wasn't going to happen if I was part of the equation. Therefore, a good ballistics bench need to be set up.

Things have moved along nicely with the new bench and many interesting experiments have evolved in the last 6 months. Most of the testing is done with the guns held firmly in a sturdy bench vise and the garage target range is set to 15 feet. I shoot at paper targets when accuracy tests are done, but a good deal of the shooting is done at very short range into a trap on the benchtop. I really enjoy using instrumentation to determine specific values and sometimes get carried away with measurements. Well, if you've got the equipment it should be use. One of my mantras is "numbers are perfect, there not opinions".

Anyway, after doing a lot of shooting at targets with the guns clamped in a vise and then shooting free hand it was woefully clear that I'm not a pistol shooter. The vise shooting demonstrated that the guns, after simple tuning, were quite accurate. With more practice and using a rest I got better at hitting close to where I was aiming. The problem was that a rest is inconvenient to use for most of my shooting in the backyard. Realizing this fact pushed the project quickly into the carbine phase.

Here are some photos of an early step in the process.

[mudduck48]

That is just plane amazing. Great work. 

[George Schmermund]

One of the things that interferes with getting useful numbers when testing velocity and energy to evaluate CO2 guns is the need for setting and maintaining the temperature of the gas. This problem is overcome when bench testing because the gun is usually fixed in a ridge mount and the experiment can be instrumented close by. I've developed a multi-channel arrangement that gives me a settable temperature that can be read and controlled by using a regulated power supply and micro thermal detectors attached to the gun parts that I'm interested in tracking.

The use of plastic for the barrel housing and pellet clip on the Vigilante is fortuitous. It allows thermal isolation of the barrel from the gun's metal frame. The frame grips are also plastic and give good isolation to the powerlet from ambient temperature. Using only a few watts of adjustable power it is easy to set up experiments where the temperature can be set and remain stable.

The micro thermistors are not shown, but they can be placed anywhere on the powerlet and frame to get a temperature profile during the testing. When the testing is done and the gun is ready for field use the heaters can be powered buy a lithium battery. The energy storage in these batteries is substantial. By using shaped foam insulation in the grips and a small temperature controller the system will be quite efficient.

Here are some pix of the powerlet heaters.

[KevinP]

Awesome stuff  ...   

[BillK]

Looking good & very interesting, George.  Can't wait for more......

[George Schmermund]

The Vigilante carbine is making good progress. Right now I'm fitting a Crosman stock to the pistol by doing some milling and carving. It's crude in the present form, but it snaps into place nicely and with some more work I'll be able to bolt it into place solidly.

I've already put many clips through the new pistol arrangement and the overall improvement in feel and accuracy is remarkable. The black box that is shown in the photo is a lithium ion battery pack that will be used to power the heaters on the powerlet. It fits nicely into the stock cutout. I've got a thermistor temperature controller that will also fit into the stock next to the battery pack. The controller will allow setting and maintaining the powerlet temperature to within 1º F or better.

I'm finally able to hit what I'm aiming at without relying on a bench vise! The next step is to lengthen the barrel to somewhere between 16" and 20". This should make the gun quieter and produce higher muzzle energy.

Thank you for all of the positive comments.

[mudduck48]

That is just amazing. 

[CraigH]

I like the powerlet heaters!