American Air Arms Oops I did it again

I had to do some testing of my cast BBT’s and went through the usual process. The barrel was removed, slugged the barrel then proceeded to size a magazines worth to test. Fail right from the first attempt to load. It seems like the magazines do not like short boat tail slugs. As they are leaving the magazine once past the inner drum , the drum rotates and catches on the probe and jams up. Oh well it was worth a try. I bought it to shoot pellets from and this would have been seldomly used to shoot cast. I use the BBT’s primarily as a hunting projectile from one of my other rifles.

As per my usual MO . I just can’t leave well enough alone. Why have a powerful rifle like this and tune it down to the same level as an HW100? Out comes the regulator, turn it up to 2100 psi. Adjusted hammer to get 4% below max. I did notice a few things.
Seems like it’s just like any other rifle with an SSG or SSS . Consistency suffers with too much free flight. This is my opinion and have seen this numerous times. So this is what I did. With the rifle upside down where I can see the hammer, turned in the HS until just barely touching. Then backed it out two notches. Now has only about a 1/16” free flight. Now it’s shooting at 940, no slow first shot , es of 3 for for an entire magazine. I was having swings of 20 fps per magazine before.

The hammer in these rifles has free flight before it contacts the valve stem. Similar to how an SSG works. Meaning there’s a gap between the hammer and valve stem when the rifle isn’t cocked. The bigger the gap the more inconsistent they can be. Again that’s just my observation.

This is done mainly for efficiency as it greatly reduces chances of hammer bounce and secondary valve openings.

Got back from shooting about an hour ago. Gusting wind right to left at about 10 mph. Shooting from a tripod in knee deep snow at 50 yards. The MRD shallows show some promise at 940 fps , I hope to get out to the range with a proper rest.

I’m left asking myself why Tom would choose pink for the magazine covers, blue and purple for some of the other anodized bits? Inquiring minds want to know.

A few finishing touches. The rifle was received with sling studs but no spacers or the white trim rings. I don’t like the white rings so I made a couple out of delrin with a slightly bigger diameter and profiled to match the stock. Then moved onto fitting a picatinny rail on the section of m lock. I spun up an extension for the shroud thread cap from delrin, the stock end cap ends just shy from the end of the tube and looked like it had a severe underbite , just couldn’t leave that be. Last but not least a cover for the fill fitting. I borrowed this idea from something I saw here. Tire valve stem covers with magnets . I had to punch out the threads for the 8mm magnets but fit perfectly . Made a batch of them as they ship in packs of 8.