A little over a month ago I bought this Bavaria BSF S60 from Baker Airguns. It was rusty, smelly, barely cocked and if it did it would not stay that way for long if at all.
This rifle challenged me every step of the way and there were 3-4 times that I almost threw in the towel and leave it as a parts gun because I just could not figure out the early discharge issue after and during breech lockup. The good news is once I figured out how to fix this problem everything fell into place.
This is an iron sights only version as there are no grooves for a scope. Good thing the front and rear sights were still with this rifle.
During the early phase I tore it down and found it was not rusted in the compression tube, leather piston seal was still pliable as well. The bore was in great shape, cleaning the barrel out really made it shine inside. The spring seemed like it was almost new as well as the breech seal. I also found that the numbers on the breech block and compression tube matched.
I cleaned the rust off the outside surfaces and gave it a nice cold blue and silicon cloth wipe down.
Put it all back together and the lockup/early firing still existed. Decided the problem was in the trigger. Not being a person who works on triggers and feeling I had just a pile of parts instead of a rifle I disassembled the trigger. Nothing was broken and the sear and piston catch were not worn. Put it all back together same problem. Tore it down again, looked at pictures I could find online and that’s when I discovered a few problems. First being the trigger sear catch alignment had to be in the cocked position when being reassembled. Second was the rear trigger sear tension spring was weak not allowing enough force on the piston catch to keep it locked up when cocked.
Having figured this out I put it back together and it has worked flawlessly since. So far I like the trigger pull it came with so I have not used the adjustment screw yet.
The last part of the project was refinishing the Sile stock. It had some sort of colored finish that hid the wood. While not the greatest of grains the refinished Beech stock looks better in my opinion. The stock had 4 coats of Tru-Oil applied. I decided to put the sling hardware back on, but will be looking for a nice leather one to replace the old canvas strap.
Overall, I am happy with the end result which saved another classic from the recycling bin.
This rifle challenged me every step of the way and there were 3-4 times that I almost threw in the towel and leave it as a parts gun because I just could not figure out the early discharge issue after and during breech lockup. The good news is once I figured out how to fix this problem everything fell into place.
This is an iron sights only version as there are no grooves for a scope. Good thing the front and rear sights were still with this rifle.
During the early phase I tore it down and found it was not rusted in the compression tube, leather piston seal was still pliable as well. The bore was in great shape, cleaning the barrel out really made it shine inside. The spring seemed like it was almost new as well as the breech seal. I also found that the numbers on the breech block and compression tube matched.
I cleaned the rust off the outside surfaces and gave it a nice cold blue and silicon cloth wipe down.
Put it all back together and the lockup/early firing still existed. Decided the problem was in the trigger. Not being a person who works on triggers and feeling I had just a pile of parts instead of a rifle I disassembled the trigger. Nothing was broken and the sear and piston catch were not worn. Put it all back together same problem. Tore it down again, looked at pictures I could find online and that’s when I discovered a few problems. First being the trigger sear catch alignment had to be in the cocked position when being reassembled. Second was the rear trigger sear tension spring was weak not allowing enough force on the piston catch to keep it locked up when cocked.
Having figured this out I put it back together and it has worked flawlessly since. So far I like the trigger pull it came with so I have not used the adjustment screw yet.
The last part of the project was refinishing the Sile stock. It had some sort of colored finish that hid the wood. While not the greatest of grains the refinished Beech stock looks better in my opinion. The stock had 4 coats of Tru-Oil applied. I decided to put the sling hardware back on, but will be looking for a nice leather one to replace the old canvas strap.
Overall, I am happy with the end result which saved another classic from the recycling bin.
