Should I be tickled pink or royally frustrated...?

[Abyssdncr]

So, I finally got the *last* parts (that I recently ordered) in for my 1322 project(s) and was able to do some testing at around 25 feet in the basement this afternoon.  I have 2 1322s, one I got for the boy a few years ago and a new one so we can both have our "own" gun to shoot.  Mine has to be built up "cooler" than his though, so I start ordering parts.  Build list is as follows:

Boy's 1322 - Crosman steel breech, somebody's pumper pin with the two panhead allen screw keepers, 1399 stock, Tasco ProPoint I had gathering dust in the safe.

New 1322 (I ain't claiming it as mine yet...) - Alchemy ambi steel breech w/ 2 grub screws, 1399 stock, Maverick Custom front sight/plug w/ 1/2UNF threads, Alchemy extended magnetic bolt probe, Pete Nolla high flow transfer port (but I took it back out to see if it affected anything yesterday), was supposed to get the Arizona Airguns 2-stage sear in today, but they sent me the wrong thing so still the stock trigger with a squished-a-little spring, and a Sig branded red dot that came on a 556R many years ago...and a DonnyFL Koi dust collector.

Love the quality of the Maverick Custom front sight/plug.  Pumper slop is non-existent, front sight is great, and was really looking forward to putting the UNF threads into play.  But...fail number one...check out the pic.  Not sure what my options are as that front plug fits the pumper tube like a glove.  But pellets weren't even finding their way to the paper.  Then I saw why...

Next, my pellets arrived from Pyramid.  Got some RWS Sport 11 gr. wadcutters, some RWS Professional 14 gr. wadcutters, and some JSB Jumbo Diablos to test.  So I set up a scrap piece of 3/4 particle board that roughly had the outline of a shooting bench on my saw horses and got my Caldwell front rest and ear bag out for some "serious" testing.

The new gun shoots like crap...or is the older gun just a diamond in the rough and I got lucky?  I don't know what to think.  Old gun on the left, new gun on the right.  Both certainly preferred the new pellets to the Crosman Premier 14.3 gr HPs, but I've got about 3500 of those now cause I found them on sale on Amazon for $6.53/500 delivered and stocked up.  Certainly good enough to teach a young lad shooting discipline, but I might not shoot them in a monthly competition.

The old gun was ignored in the garage for several months and has had at least a hundred steel darts sent down the barrel at 2 pumps per shot, but other than that...  Thoughts?  Other than claim the boy's gun as my own and act clueless as to why he can't shoot as good as me...

Thanks,
Brian

[RetatCDude]

8 yards off of a rest.
Typical

[Garmic]

Check the crown, clean the barrel

[crossliner]

The Donny FL "pickle" looks severely tilted downwards 

Do you have any other airguns to mount that LDC on?

[crossliner]

Did your LDC cap and internals get hit by the pellets?

I would be furious if that threaded Maverick barrel band had an off-center LDC adapter section.

[Abyssdncr]

Well, mildly productive afternoon.  Couple wins, one snafu.  The Maverick front block didn't come with instructions, and I only drilled out the right side of the main tube as the screw threads still went through the original hole.  This afternoon, I went ahead and drilled the other side through and that gave me just enough wiggle room to line things up.  To be fair, I have far more faith in Tom's CNC machine than I do Crosman's tube cuts, so not throwing any shade Maverick's way at all.  With that done, I aligned the front block with the LDC attached, tightened the grub screw to the barrel, and then tightened the pump axis screw.  All aligned nicely, and shot great(?).  Still a crappy barrel, so the same crappy groups but everything hit the paper where it was supposed to just fine.  I did find those first 2 pellets about 8" below my pellet trap stuck in the concrete bricks it sits on, but I couldn't see an internal issues with the Donny unit from the two shots.  I got the .25-.30 cal version, so there was a bit of internal wiggle room. 

Experiment two, replace the original barrel with the 14.5" Crosman 2240 barrel I bought with the gun.  Chucked up my 7/16" bit in the drill and ran it in reverse to punch through the original front sight block, and again w/ 13/64" to fit the pumper axis screw and installed the new barrel.  Repeated the same tests with the same pellets, shot as good or even a little better than the good short barrel.  Only down side was when doing these tests, the slotted nut on the pump axis screw kept getting unscrewed by the forward grip.  I think running the screw through the undrilled hole goobered the threads a little. Gonna have to do something to sort that out now that the tube was drilled out for the larger screw.  I may swap the threaded block over to the short gun and pick up another Maverick pass through block and thread adapter for the 14.5" barrel to run the LDC on both guns.  However, at the price of those, a short Lothar barrel might be a better solution.

This is almost promising enough to justify a Hawke 2-7 AO scope.  About time to start focusing some love on the new 2240...   

Pretty happy now.  Even the Crosman Premier 14.3 HP printed a one hole group with the new barrel.

As a last test for the day, I put the 3D printed LDC on the good short barrel and didn't see much of a detrimental effect if any at all.  Can't say the same for the 3D printed 2240 LDC on the 14.5" barrel though.  That came right back off...