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The Benjamin Katana on CO2

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by B.B. Pelletier

Update on Tom/B.B.: Things are really popping at the hospital, as they make their final moves to send Tom home. We still don’t have a discharge date, but it appears to be imminent!

Today, we have a guest blog. Airgunner Paul has written for us before, and I think you’ll enjoy his foray into the world of bulk-fill CO2 with the Benjamin Katana. Summer’s here, and that’s the perfect time for using this gas.

If you’d like to write a guest post for this blog, please email us.

Bloggers must be proficient in the simple html, know how to take clear photos and size them for the internet (if their post requires them), and they must use proper English. We’ll edit each submission, but we won’t work on any submission that contains gross misspellings and/or grammatical errors.

Take it away, Paul!


The Benjamin Katana: Most people will run it on high-pressure air. After reading Paul’s blog, you might want to try your gun on CO2.

The Benjamin Katana is the fourth PCP rifle released by Crosman. It follows the Discovery, Challenger and Marauder. Of the three high-power rifles, the Katana happens to be my favorite: it’s more compact than the Marauder, it’s a single-shot, and it has a nicer trigger and stock than the Discovery.

B.B. has already gone into detail about the development and performance of the Katana in a previous posts. One nice feature of all the Crosman PCPs is that they’re dual-fuel — capable of using CO2 as the power source. There’s a distinct lack of information on how the rifles perform using CO2; most of what you can find is “many more shots using CO2.” Since it’s getting warmer, I thought this would be a good time for some testing.

I was primarily interested in determining three things:

  1. How many shots per fill does CO2 provide?
  2. What’s the performance loss with CO2?
  3. Is there any accuracy difference between using high pressure air and CO2?

Questions one and two are easy to answer. Question three is a mixed bag.

Why use CO2?
The Katana requires only 2,000 psi fill pressure and is easy to fill with a hand pump. Since it operates at a lower fill pressure than most PCP guns, you’ll get more fills from a 3,000 psi scuba tank than many other PCPs. So, why would someone shoot with CO2? Lots of reasons! Not everyone is physically able to use a hand pump. Pumping when the weather is hot and humid isn’t fun, either. Dive shops aren’t readily available in lots of areas, plus scuba tanks can be quite expensive. You could easily pay 2x the price of the Katana to buy a scuba tank along with all the fittings.

On the other hand a 20-oz. CO2 tank is very reasonably priced and can be refilled for five or six dollars. An adapter is required to connect the source tank to the Katana. The equipment to shoot the rifle with CO2 is much cheaper than the most inexpensive scuba tank, and you’ll have money left over for pellets and CO2 refills. For us incurable experimenters, it’s something new to test.

Filling the Katana
Before filling the Katana with CO2, all remaining air pressure must be exhausted. This can quickly be done through dry firing. When the tank is empty, cock the rifle to relieve any tension on the exhaust valve, put the safety on, connect the tank using the adapter and charge the rifle. As the CO2 will generate around 900 psi, you’ll use a different area of the pressure valve.


Since CO2 operates at a lower pressure than air, the Katana’s manometer includes a separate CO2-calibrated area. Here, the gun is full.

Shooting with CO2
With a good fill, the Katana will deliver around 60 shots at a very consistent velocity. A 20-oz. CO2 cylinder should be good for about 600 shots; this gives a nice, low per-shot cost. When the liquid CO2 has been consumed, the pressure gauge will fall to about halfway through the green CO2 area; and the velocity will drop 5-10 fps per shot for several shots and then really start to deteriorate. The Katana is also noticeably quieter using CO2 vs. compressed air. After refilling with a hand pump after every 25 shots, it’s nice to take 50 shots and have the pressure gauge not move at all!

Depending on the pellet, the velocity is anywhere from 18 to 27 percent lower using CO2. This still produces about 14 to 15 ft-lbs of muzzle energy, which is plenty for hunting within the appropriate limits. Heavier pellets tended to produce better muzzle energy than lighter ones.

The following table lists the velocities and extreme spreads (ES) with pellets that were tested with both compressed air and CO2. It’s interesting that the velocity spread for each pellet was very close between air and CO2. Pellets that have a low ES on air generally have a low ES on CO2.

Pellet Weight Air FPS Air FtLbs Air ES CO2 FPS CO2 FtLbs CO2 ES
Beeman Crow Magnum 18.2 781 24.7 11 625 15.8 8
Beeman FTS 14.6 848 23.3 12 645 13.5 10
Beeman Kodiak 21.1 720 24.3 8 594 16.5 8
Beeman Silver Arrow 17.1 776 22.9 11 646 15.9 4
Crosman Premier 14.3 854 23.2 11 666 14.1 9
Crosman Premier HP 14.3 855 23.2 14 665 14.0 13
Eun Jin Domed 28.4 613 23.7 6 491 15.2 5
Gamo Hunter 15.3 840 24.0 10 660 14.8 11
Gamo Match 13.9 865 23.1 9 638 12.6 10
Gamo Round Ball 15.4 810 22.4 16 602 12.4 10
H&N Match 13.6 870 22.9 10 642 12.5 10
JSB Exact RS 13.4 878 23.0 7 690 14.2 8
JSB Exact 15.9 815 23.5 8 659 15.3 5
JSB Exact Heavy 18.1 767 23.7 5 630 16.0 5
JSB Monster 25.4 655 24.2 6 539 16.4 15
JSB Predator 16.0 808 23.2 4 661 15.5 6
JSB Straton 15.8 821 23.7 17 671 15.8 4
RWS Hobby 11.9 900 21.4 14 680 12.2 17
RWS Meisterkugeln 14.0 878 24.0 16 665 13.8 6
RWS Super Dome 14.5 848 23.2 5 671 14.5 5
RWS Super-H-Point 14.2 845 22.5 2 674 14.3 7
RWS Super Point 14.5 842 22.8 17 670 14.5 12
Skenco Big Boy 26.2 656 25.0 5 539 16.9 6

Accuracy
With the right pellet, the Katana can be very accurate. A number of people have reported groups around a half-inch at 50 yards. I’ve been able to shoot several 5-shot, 0.60-inch groups at 50 yards with the Beeman Kodiak, Beeman FTS and JSB Monster pellets. In general, accuracy with an individual pellet was nearly identical for air and CO2. A few pellets were noticeably more accurate using CO2, and one was worse.


The 11.9-grain RWS Hobby is the only wadcutter that showed improved accuracy using CO2. The group size dropped from 2.19 inches on air (left) to 1.23 inches on the CO2 (right).


The 14.2-grain RWS Super-H-Point improved from 1.10 inches (air) to .75 inches (CO2). In both cases, this pellet tended to string horizontally.


The 15.8-grain JSB Straton pointed pellet produced a 2.00 inch group on the left using air and improved to 1.32 inches on the right using CO2.


The 18.2-grain Crow Magnum is the one pellet that performed markedly worse using CO2. Most of the holes in the CO2 target on the right showed evidence of the pellet tipping (keyholing); this is probably due to the reduced velocity.


Using CO2, the 25.4-grain JSB Monster pellet produces groups like this nice .45 inch sample.


The 21.1-grain Beeman Kodiak (H&N Barracuda) pellets repeated their winning behavior using CO2 and gave nice groups, like this .34 inch group (as long as I did my part).

Final comments on accuracy
At 25 yards, the following pellets all grouped in less than an inch: Beeman FTS, Beeman Kodiak, Eun Jin, Gamo Hunter, JSB Exact, JSB RS, JSB Exact Heavy, JSB Predator, JSB Monster and Skenco Big Boy. All gave nearly identical group sizes on both air and CO2.

At 50 yards, I couldn’t do better than about 1.25 inches with the Kodiaks. I assume this is due to the reduced velocity resulting in a longer flight time and reduced spin stabalization. It looks like CO2 will limit your effective range on small targets. On the other hand, hitting soft drink cans at 50 yards is still easy with the Kodiaks. A couple of other pellets were tried at this range, but all gave groups of 2 inches or more.

author avatar
Tom Gaylord (B.B. Pelletier)
Tom Gaylord, also known as B.B. Pelletier, provides expert insights to airgunners all over the world on Pyramyd AIR. He has earned the title The Godfather of Airguns™ for his contributions to the industry, spending many years with AirForce Airguns and starting magazines dedicated to the sport such as Airgun Illustrated.
See Full Bio

82 thoughts on “The Benjamin Katana on CO2”

  2. It s always good to hear that our host is better!I agree review is nice but more important to me is that i finelly started to read historical archieves and it is veary helpfull! For exemple i found old post about RWS HOBBY pelets and i am eager to shoot with them since i have them right beside me:)and i yust finished with my GAMO MAGNUM pellets (i am talking about 22 cal).Now i need to thank you all becouse you remind me how i love english!I am 25yrs old and i will always regret that i did not study english

  3. Question for you all -here where i live hunting with airguns is ILEGAL! but i noticed that RWS 350 goes like crazy i meant to say every other guy buy one of those these days!I hardly coke my diana 34 after 7 or 8 hits in target(in black 😉 )-what do they do with 350 RWS?I meant to say it is a GREAT GUN TOP OF THE TOPS but can you send 10 hits in black with that coking effort -is this a target shooting gun or not?

    • C-S,

      I have a .22 cal RWS 350. Cocking Effort is indeed significant but not excessive. It is somewhere between 40 and 44 pounds (20 kilograms max). It smooths out after a while and seems to get a bit lighter. You soon develop a good rhythm and favorite position to cock the rifle, and it is an excellent way to tone your muscles and save the fee at the gym!

      Oh yes, the rifle is very accurate. It likes H&N Baracuda Match pellets and Crosman Premier Heavys.

      -AlanL

  4. Morning Paul,

    Thank you for the time and effort to put this blog together. I’ve wondered about using CO2 in my Discovery. Looks like it will rule for back yard plinking and pest control in the smmer.

    The JSB Monster surprised me! They’ll be on my next order from PA.

    Mr B.

    • Paul,

      I edited your story and got it prepped just before it was time to post! That’s my reason for the error and I’m sticking to it 🙂

      I’ve corrected the typo.

      Edith

  7. BB and Edith:
    Just keep an eye out for fish&chips on the menu.
    That’s when BB will be discharged 🙂

    Croatia-Serbia:
    Your written English is better than a lot of English folk can write.
    All our youngsters seem just to write in Text speak.
    Example,
    Wat U doin tmrz m8?= What are you doing tomorrow mate?
    Worse still,they even carry over spelling mistakes into Text speak.
    I thought I was bad at school 🙁

    Paul:
    Very interesting article on the Co2 V Air question.
    Getting bulk fill Air or Co2 in the UK can be a real hassle.
    Or it certainly used to be when I had a Logun PCP and a Tippman Paintball gun.
    The PCP was not such an issue because I had a stirrup pump for refills.
    The paintball gun was a nightmare to refill though.
    Long trips to a paintballing centre to get gassed up.
    I must add I only wanted the Tippman for home use not full on paintballing.
    Concerning the Tippman I tried the reverse, by trying to get an adaptor to fill the Co2 bottle using compressed air via my Stirrup pump.
    I only succeeded in ruining the thread on the Co2 bottle which in turn ruined the thread on the soft aluminium connector on the Gun itself.
    Luckily the paintball gun I got cheap off a mate,otherwise I would have been mighty angry with myself.
    Cheers,
    DaveUK

  9. Paul,
    Very good article! Lots of good information here. I am very impressed with your collection of pellets. You must have a very handy range to be able to experiment with so many. I envy you that.

    Did you have any warm-up period between shots? That was my greatest concern with my Talon on CO2. I never knew if my bad shots were me or the CO2 cooling the rifle down.

    • Chuck,

      Thanks for the kind comments. I am blessed to have a 35-yard range one block from my home and a 115-yard range less than ten miles away.

      With the Katana being a single shot and writing down the velocities as I was shooting the gun had enough time to give consistent numbers. I did not do any extra waiting.

      Paul

  10. Here are the pics of my shooting results comparing the Crosman Premier 10.5gr with the Beeman Kodiacs Extra Heavy. Soon, I’ll include the Baracuda’s.

    http://picasaweb.google.com/cjrley/SortedPelletsResults#

    Keep in mind my targets are only 10m(33feet) away. I wish I had Paul’s range resources.

    To explain the pics:

    The numbers at he top of each bull is the weight of the pellet used, i.e.; 1 means 10.1, 2 means 10.2, etc. I tried to mix up weights while shooting hoping that would minimize any bias.

    The numbers at the bottom of each bull is the score for that bull. The scoring method required by the bench rest eMatch makes for subjective scoring when it comes to “just touching” the next ring and to be fair I opt on the bad side if in doubt. If I can’t get a clean obvious 10 I don’t deserve it.

    -Chuck

  11. Chuck,

    I just wrote and submitted a question to you that got lost in cyberspace somehow. So I’ll try again. Did your scale come with a calibration weight to be used to check its accuracy. Seems to me that you’re checking its consistancy when you’re saying that the pellets you weighed yesterday weight the same today. It’s like a clock that is five minutes slow. You won’t know that its slow until you check its time against a known standard like a clock controlled by the atomic clock in Colorado. Hence my question about the calibration weight.

    Mr B.

    • Mr B,
      Yes it has calibration weights, but I know the Crosman Premiers have been correctly weighed and match the mfg specs. They are my gold standard for correct weight, therefore, I reweigh some known 10.5 CPs after recalibrating and at spot checks throughout the process to make sure they still show the same weight. That way I know I’m getting correct readings on other pellets, also.

      The CP heavies advertise 10.5. I get 10.5 for them on my scale. The majority of my Kodiacs weigh 10.2, therefore, I’m convinced they weigh 10.2 and not their advertised 10.6. The Baracudas advertise 10.65 yet majority weight is 10.1.

      I heard from Edith that PA backs me up on this issue also.
      -Chuck

  12. Paul,

    Nice job. Bulk fill would be ideal for the deserts of southern California. I’ve been pondering a good quiet air rifle for pests around the house and have not yet bought one due to the high cost of high pressure tank and inconvenience of filling it. I have a friend that fills co2 and said he’d do it for free. this may be the way to go.

  13. KidAgain,

    You’ve got all sorts of possibities for a quiet pest killing CO2 powered air rifle. My Talon SS on CO2 is reasonably quiet as it comes from PA and has 4 one shot, dead with upper body shots before hitting the ground crows at 27 to 29 yards. A Maruader or Discovery with a TKO LDC will fill the bill also. There are also folks that will convert the Crosman CO2 rifles to bulk fill.

    Mr B.

  14. Alan -yes you are wright RWS guns are different from all guns i owned before,but i guess that i ll be better with some exercise (weight lifting 🙂 ).I areally think that RWS 350 is good for destroying stuff -let s face it we all love it 🙂 Dave -thank you man !!!

  15. I was wondering what is considered as “pest” in your countries?Here it is only rat .Now how can squirrel be a pest,man in continental croatia (where i live ) I NEVER SEEN ONE 🙁 No areally they are as rare as they can be,but they are cute 🙂 Is it becouse they destroying trees ….????

    • Croatia-Serbia,

      Squirrels like to go into attics and be generally destructive. They also steal food from vegetable gardens. I was growing watermelons one year, and every time a watermelon got up to the size of a lemon, it would disappear. One day, I was looking out the window and noticed a squirrel chewing through a stalk on my watermelon vine and then running away with my tiny watermelon! That evil squirrel also destroyed some tomatoes by taking a few bites out of them when they were ripe on the vine. Also, squirrels are edible creatures (and supposedly taste quite good), so in some places they’re considered food instead of pests.

      Edith

      • Croatia-Serbia

        I am I an enthusiastic animal lover. My wife is a rabid animal lover. Squirrels chewed through several electrical and cable television lines in my attic. I will be paying close to $300 to have the lines replaced. They are cute yes, but must die. 😉

        The Eastern Gray Squirrels we have here in the northern part of the State of Georgia are as plentiful as sand at the beach, especially in my sub-rural housing development. I have seen easily half a dozen in my yard alone, at one time. The bird feeder is like a beacon to them.

        I will gladly trade you some squirrel meat for a Slavia 631! 😉

        • OK lead i am not from Biafra (Do i like Biafra:) i am not hungry 🙂 give food to a man and he will be hungry after some time ,but give gun to man and he will ,well do something ….i dont know 😉

        • Slinging lead:
          Those Eastern gray squirrels from America are doing just fine in the UK.
          The native Red squirrels complain a bit though.
          “Over paid,over s**ed and over here” they say. 🙂
          DaveUK

  16. Thank you Edith i have nothing against policy “kill to eat” so far i eat snails(in fact they are good)frogs you know legs,pigeons never squirrel but i would try if i could

  17. Edith,

    Thanks for your feedback from Air Force on copper coated balls. I enjoy varied fare and changing frequently. So I doubt I’ll foul the barrels of my springers with the H&N balls. After a few dozen I’ll switch back to regular pellets to keep things interesting and clean inside the barrel. Besides, as Herb mentioned, the balls are lead with only enough copper on them to make them pretty and keep your fingers from smudging.

    Speaking of Air Force, were you able to find out if Capello did or will do Part II on the Condor with HPA?

    Thanks,
    AlanL

    • AlanL,

      Regarding the Airgun Reporter page, Pyramyd AIR has removed the email link that you said didn’t work. They also told me that Paul would not be doing another video of the Condor on high-pressure air.

      Edith

  18. A little off topic but… reading some reviews on the PA site this morning and ran across this new owner’s summary on the Benjamin Trail.. “I know I complained about the staining job and the trigger but I still gave the rifle a good rating because it performed so well for me. Besides, the trigger is easy to replace and the stock easy to re stain if I choose to. Overall the rifle is well built and of good quality and I am thrilled with the performance, accuracy and power of the rifle. It’s a great addition to my hunting arsenal. If you’re looking for a great .22 cal hunting rifle I would definitely recommend this rifle. Just make sure you clean all the funky oil out of the rifle and replace the stock trigger.”

    Anyway, it occurs to me more and more that we airgunners sure have a lot of work to do on “New” airguns that (for the money we pay) we should not be doing!

    I realize that some poor (literally) Chinese fellow in Nanjing making the Trail rifle in a factory with two light bulbs and a bench-grinder has no clue, nor is he allowed to have a clue, about cosmetics and equipment cleanliness; let alone the necessity of de-burring and polishing a trigger assembly! But… HELLO! Crosman QA and marketing people here in the U.S. do know better!

    Just my 3.5 cents worth

    Brian in Idaho

  19. Edith,

    I believe nobody has commented on your implementation of our oft-repeated suggestion to change the headers to “So&So Says“. So let me be the first to say, THANKS! I like it!

    AlanL

    • AlanL,

      I think rikib thanked me the other day. Anyway, it’s always nice when somebody notices these changes. Reader ideas and suggestions are important and appreciated.

      The one thing I haven’t gotten a handle on is the size of the font. Apparently, the font is pretty good size (it was enlarged right after someone mentioned the small size), but it’s still much smaller than what we had on blogger. I still use the zoom feature in Safari to read/write comments.

      Edith

  22. Speaking of off topic, I have a few questions. Is the barrel length on the Bronco really 9″ (even shorter than the 1377’s)? It seems to be longer even excluding the muzzle break. Also, does the shorter barrel mean less accuracy and yet the Bronco seems to be quite accurate based on reviews? Thanks.

    • tdung,

      The Bronco barrel really is only 9″ long. Tom measured it. Stacey in Pyramyd Air’s tech department measured it. Tom measured it again while standing in my office when an airgunner wrote to Pyramdy Air that we had the wrong barrel length recorded. I’m a detail-oriented person, so Tom knows that just telling me something won’t fly, hence he stood in my office for a hands-on demo so I could see the procedure and read the actual length myself 🙂

      Edith

  23. tdung,

    With a spring piston air rifle, shortness of the barrel is not a bad thing. Consider that the launching power is provided by the compression of the air by the piston in the compression chamber. This pressure is transferred to the pellet through the transfer port and the pellet begins moving, reaching maximum velocity almost instantaneously. As it moves down the barrel the pressure behind it rapidly declines within the increasing space of the barrel, so no advantage is gained from a longer barrel. In fact, the opposite is true- you are subjecting the pellet to unnecessary friction in a barrel that is too long. So the length of the barrel becomes more of an exercise in compromise between accuracy, enough length for the rifling to properly impart spin to the pellet, balance of the rifle, and the ability to separate the front and rear sights far enough to be accurate. In theory, for maximum velocity alone, the barrel of a spring piston rifle wouldn’t have to be more than an inch or two long!

    As for PCP rifles, that’s a different story. There the driving force is provided by expanding gases or air acting on the pellet, and the longer these can act on the pellet the faster it’ll fly, so a longer barrel is better.

    I’ll measure the barrel on my Bronco tonight and let you know. I think from breech to muzzle is greater than 9 inches but not all that much.

    -AlanL

  24. That’s an interesting rifle. Clearly, at that power with only a 9.5″ barrel it could not possibly be a break-barrel, since it would take Hercules (or me, Slinging Lead!) to cock it, so I wasn’t surprised to see it is an underlever. Too bad the pictures don’t show this though. Is the lever buried in the forearm?
    -AlanL

    • Thanks Edith and AlanL.

      Oh boy, it is sure an interesting gun. Look at the cocking effort almost 40 lbs. It looks like all the accuracy is there, too, with that 9.5″ barrel (based on reviews/feedback).

    • AlanL,

      Yes, the Pro Sport is an underlever, and It IS difficult to cock. In fact, when Tom wrote about it in “The Airgun Letter” and mentioned how difficult it was to cock, we got some hate mail. Some people actually cancelled their subscriptions because they just couldn’t listen to that kind of talk. The Pro Sport has never been as popular as the TX200, and it’s likely that the difficult cocking effort is the cause.

      Let me see if we can get a better image that shows the underlever.

      Edith

  25. Paul, thanks for the report. I’m jealous of you being able to bust pop cans at 50 yards. Sounds ideal.

    Croatia-Serbia, I understand that the RWS 350 is very accurate. I saw a video of people shooting a coffee can 100 yards away offhand with open sights.

    Chuck, tell us about the Savage! I know that the standard Mauser-based bolt design is cock on opening, so there should be some resistance opening the bolt but less so on closing it. My Savage centerfire has a very slick action, and I could not ask for better. I’ve heard that dry firing is bad for rimfires and centerfires. Rotating spent casings for each shot seems like a hassle. I would instead look for .22 LR snap caps but have not been able to find any. There are .22 LR action proving dummy rounds but there are a lot of warnings that they are not the same. They are only for cycling the action and not for dry-firing. Strange.

  27. Brian in Idaho…I don’t know how valid your point is. If you took all the good things that the Trail has (power, gas piston, etc) and put it in a beautiful well finished Walnut stock…you’d have a $600 gun (not the $229 that Pyramyd quotes on the Trail).
    It’s like anything…the fit and finish on a Kia is not in the same league as a Lexus…but it’s 1/2 the price and gets you where you want to go.
    I have some expensive American and European guns…and a couple of Chinese cheapies. They pretty much all put the pellets in the same place on the target 20yds out…and whereas I can afford to give both my young sons a Chinese rifle…no way they’d be getting a $400+ display piece.

  28. On another note I am finding out how weak willed I am 😉
    The two Bam B3 (AK lookalikes) that my boys are supposed to get for ‘graduating’ next month (well…if passing grades 1 and 3 with good marks constitutes ‘graduating’) arrived last week. I’ve put through about 50 pellets through each to make sure they are working properly, and both will put 5 pellets in a dime sized area offhand at 10m…good enough for jazz, as they say.
    The problem?
    I know they are going to flip when they see them. The weather is great here lately and I am having a hard time not breaking them out and giving the guns to them now…meaning I’d have to come up with something else next month for ‘grad’.
    But I can see the ecstatic looks on their faces in my mind.
    I am so weak!!!

  30. AlanL

    Paul Capello reviewed the Condor on HPA in the Talon SS review (Episode #9)
    I believe Paul got 60 foot pounds out of the Condor in .22 on HPA. This sounds right up your alley, if only it had a 60 pound cocking effort. 🙁

    Please don’t come up here and beat me up.

    • Ahh Slinging Lead… you are way to much fun to ever want to do that to! And I wouldn’t have to– if you ever saw my spindly, puny arms you’d cackle yourself to death! 😀
      -AlanL

  31. cowboystar dad Says:
    May 19, 2010 at 1:54 pm

    “Brian in Idaho…I don’t know how valid your point is.”

    Kia vs. Lexus is a bad analogy for the topic of poor quality.

    A Kia may have thinner upholstery material and thinner paint with less gloss than the Lexus but… would you still buy it in new condition with grease and dirt all over the interior and scratches in the paint? Whether $50k Lexus or $15k Kia, you don’t buy it new and expect to paint it and clean the upholstery right? (same as having to re-finish stocks and add triggers to new airguns)

    That was the valid, point I was making.

    Brian in Idaho

  32. Actually Brian, I’ve just gone through that exact scenario.
    I have, amongst other guns an Avanti ($400+ with AirForce sights), a Weihrauch ($500 plus and assorted others). I recently purchased two Bam air rifles for my young sons…total for both under $200. Took me about an hours work on both to strip them down, clean off all that shipping goop they put on them and properly lube them.
    They shoot everybit as well as my other rifles now.
    Personally, I feel the two hour work was well worth the $200-$300 savings.
    I guess my point is this. If it was no more cost/effort to put out a Weihrauch quality gun at $200…wouldn’t they?
    Conversely…if a company (okay…say Chinese) could put out a Weihrauch quality gun for $200 AND MAKE MONEY…wouldn’t they?
    And who would buy all those Weihrauch’s, RWS, Air Force?
    Again, I don’t understand your point. One buys a gun that is 1/3 the price of the European stuff, with the understanding that the quality is going to be less.
    If everthing quality wise was the same…it wouldn’t be 1/3 the price.

  33. tdung,

    My thoughts exactly–a shrouded Discovery. Single shot around 6.5 pounds. Discovery stock. For sure no ambi stock with cheek pieces on each side please! No more than the price of the Katana.

    I thought about building one starting with my Discovery and adding a riser breech at $100.00 and a TKO full shroud for around $120.00, but that puts me at the price of the Marauder without its adjustability. I guess I need to decide if a light, quiet, accurate carbine is worth that price. Help!

    Mr B.

    • I would like the Marauder with a thinner and lighter stock. That doesn’t sound to hard, right? Although, there may be some balance issue.

      BTW, I was searching around and found that airguns of arizona website lists the Marauder for $399. Very tempting! I wonder if Pyramyd AIR would match the price…

  34. Our “guns of choice” here are chinese ,and also turkish HATSAN-about chinese marks well you know…,Hatsan is “raw power” literaly no finesse there accuracy poor…so we say -whant to shoot through 10 cm wood -by Hatsan but dont expect accuracy

  35. I have a Benjamin Discovery in .177 with TKO muzzle break and a three-screw trigger mod. It is light, svelte, almost as quiet as my Marauder, has a nicely figured stock (if not for the finish), and it is deadly accurate. I have 2 SCBA tanks, but choose to charge it with my pump most of the time because it is so easy to get to 2000 psi.

    I had some issues with my Discovery initially but they have been ironed out. If push came to shove, I would sell my Marauder before the Discovery. (The Discovery technically belongs to the wife, full disclosure.)

    The Discovery is an excellent rifle. If you want to get into PCPs, you may never need or want anything more than a Benjamin Discovery.

  36. CSD

    You must hold out! It sounds like anything after the BAM rifles would be a disappointment. I admire your instilling the shooting arts into your progeny. I only wish my parents had been so open to such endeavors.

  37. Slinglead…yeah, I must be strong!!
    As you say, I really don’t think I could top the air-rifles. As a friend of mine said…give them to them now and they will be taken (somewhat) for granted. Let them wait and stew a bit and they will remember their school-year end gifts forever.
    But as my dealer quipped…what do I get them for high-school grad…Uzi’s?

  38. tdung,

    This is TKO’s web sight. http://www.tko22.com/ They have some neat Discovery stuff. I’ve got and recomend the 3 screw trigger mod and their LDC. You’ll have to make the judgment call on using LDC’s. Here are 4 links about them /blog/2007/1/the-silencer-issue/

    Mr B.

  39. Cowboy Star Dad

    Last post on this, No, you are missing the point… would you buy the “lower quality” Kia with grease on the seats and re-paint the car due to scratches? I guess you would, since you did not answer that query? Obviously, you believe cheap price is equated to dirt, grease, oil and a bad finish on a new product being ok.

    Chinese or Euro gun has nothing to do with this.

    Brian in Idaho

  40. Yes Brian, we will have to leave it at agreeing to disagree.
    I’ve worked in the auto industry (years ago at Saab/Mercedes dealer).
    I can tell you first hand…the dealer prep on the Mercedes far exceeds anything at a Kia dealer.
    Where I feel your argument fails (and it is only an opinion) is that with the Kia you are getting, as you say, clean, but lesser quality materials…justifying the lower cost.
    The steel on the boys new BAMS (or my friends QB78) is every bit as good as that on my Weihrauch (the Chinese are actually quite respected for their gun/knife steel)…and there is far less plastic (actually none that I can find) than on my Avanti.
    So where the Chinese save you money is that final quality control step…you’re going to have to do some cleanup…but once you do, and perhaps do a home tune (if you know what you’re doing) you can end up with a gun that is everybit as good as the 3x costy European.
    No amount of cleanup is going to make that Kia into a Lexus.

    • CBSDad,
      I side with you on this one, but I’ll go one further. If the Kia with the greasy seats and scratched paint was in good driving condition and the price was right, yes I would buy it and fix what I couldn’t live with if I needed something like that to drive.

      But that analogy is facetious, in my opinion. I don’t know what the big deal is about shipping protectant (the grease) and stock finishes that don’t always agree with us. Perhaps we should demand they ship the rifles without grease and be happy to get them rusted up after sitting in shipping containers for months:). The stock finishes are either OK (a lot of recent BAM and Shanghai stuff) or fairly awful but protective (older B3’s for example). The bluing also ranges from bad (non-branded older Shanghai) to decent (some recent ones) to pretty nice (guns produced for OEM re-branding).

      Of course the wood and blue are better on a rifle that costs 2-3X as much, as that is a large part of what you are paying for. I’ve not seen one scratch or dent on any of my Chinese guns when new, although to a one the finish has been a bit on the reddish side for my tastes. One of them I re-finished in the course of adapting the stock to my needs, but I would have been happy to live with it otherwise. I would be much angrier at some of the stupid,clunky, post-modern stocks some European and now American manufacturers put on their rifles and charge extra for.

      Anyway, the correct analogy is more whether you would buy the KIA with the stamped wheels and vinyl interior and poor dealer prep for 1/3 the cost of the Lexus. If you need something to drive to the Country Club, it might not be your choice. If you need something for your kid to use to deliver newspapers and pizza, the Lexus would be ridiculous.

    • Mike,

      For many dive shops, you either need a diving certificate or a release from liability form.
      Pyramyd AIR has such a liability form on their website.
      Click here to go to an article that
      Tom wrote years ago. At the bottom is a liability form. Print it out and take it to your dive shop.
      Many other people have used this form to get their scuba tanks filled. The dive shop will keep this
      form in their store and reference it whenever you come in to get your tank filled.
      I’ve heard of only 1 dive shop that did not fill a person’s tank, and that’s because
      the man took his PCP gun into the store to show them. That was the first time he’d been there,
      and they didn’t like him walking in with a gun!

      You can also get a scuba tank filled at many paintball stores.
      Paintballers use high-pressure air, too.
      We found a local paintball store that pressurizes our 4500 psi carbon fiber tank. Check around.
      You may find the paintball store route to be a better/easier option.

      Edith

  43. Thanks for the fine article Paul. I was surprised to see how well the Katana did on C02. I had compared the expected C02 results of the Marauder with my two Talon SS’s with long barrels frame extenders (18″ barrel 656 fps, 24″ barrel 735 fps with CP’s – both 600 shots on a 12 oz tank) and decided it wasn’t worth it to run the Marauder on C02. This report caused me to question why I made that decision. I looked up the Katana compared to the Marauder. The Katana has a 24″ barrel and the Marauder has a 20″ barrel. The longer barrel gives it the additional speed to make it an OK hunter. The C02 quietness makes up for that lack of a noise suppressor; kind of an ideal approach for the Katana!

  44. Way off topic – Slinging Lead, I thought you volunteered to be my bicycle mechanic? I just destroyed my Craftsman 15mm combo wrench trying to get off my left pedal. I resorted to heat, liquid wrench and finally, pulled the pedal bracket, put it in my vise and used a big pipe wrench on it. And YES, I know it’s a left handed thread. Derrick38, how tight does a typical bicycle mechanic torque these things down? This was a sonuva!#@$%.

    I’m too tired to shoot, now. Paul, a real service – I was surprised how consistent the speed of the pellets were on CO2 vs. HPA.

    Fred PRoNJ

    PS – We want BB home!

  45. cyclealleyriders,

    The way they thread in the pedals, they tighten when you pedal. So if you are an altitude challenged rider like me, every time you stand on the pedals going up a hill, you are jamming those pedals even tighter. Quality pedals give you both an allen wrench and a pedal wrench (thin wrench) option. I typically use the long Craftsman 6mm wrench option with a piece of pipe on it for leverage. If it is really bad, I can always go with my impact wrench and a socket allen wrench (but get the thread direction right, or its on forever!)

  46. Hey BB,I’m a little off topic but I just have to ask how to remove the front sight on my 34 Panther so I can install a muzzle brake where I’ll alway’s have it scoped.I thought the set screw was all it took,,but unlike my 350 magnum the panther seems to be epoxied or something.
    Thanks In Advance,Troy

    • I’ve never had a Panther sight off, but more than likely the glue they use will probably loosen if you get the thing nice and warm. You don’t want to melt it, obviously, but definitely get it to where it’s too hot to comfortably touch. You’ll still have to tap it off with something, but I think you’ll find it’s a lot more cooperative that way.

  47. Bandit_46,

    I cann’t answer your question and I’m going to ask you to repost it on today’s blog, written Mon to Fri, cause only a handful of us aare checking the old blogs for new comments. /blog//

    Maybe Vince or Derrick can answer your question.

    Me B.

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