RWS Did I damage my gun.

[KWK]

Yeah, bent at the block. Set it up (barrel) on Vee blocks and you'll know when it's straight again by peering through while spinning the barrel on the blocks. Hardwood Vee blocks would work.
Clamp it in the vise with soft jaws. You have enough leverage to bend it back by hand.

 

[Bedrock Bob]

It's honestly no big deal. All you need is a little bending jig and a vice. It's a shame the barrel is bent. But the fix is easy. Anyone can do it. It's not complicated and does not require special tools. Just blocks of wood and a bench vice.

Use a mirror and optically center your scope. Shoot a pattern at a dot at 10 yards. Take the action out of the stock and put it in the jig. Give it a good squeeze. Put it back in the stock and test fire it.

Repeat that until you hit the dot. You aren't going to hurt a darn thing. Just go slow and figure out how much pressure it takes to move the POI a little. Then move it a little at a time until you get it just right.

Do a little research first. Look at a few bending methods. Then just give it some pressure in the right direction and it will bend right back.

 

[Bedrock Bob]

Yeah, bent at the block. Set it up (barrel) on Vee blocks and you'll know when it's straight again by peering through while spinning the barrel on the blocks. Hardwood Vee blocks would work.
Clamp it in the vise with soft jaws. You have enough leverage to bend it back by hand.

You aren't going to clamp the block in a vice and bend it by hand. It takes a bunch more force than that. And the cocking rod is on the bottom of the block. You can't clamp it in a vice unless you remove the barrel and swing the lever out of the way so you can get the flats in the vice. Then you will find there is no way to apply enough pressure unless you use a cheater over the barrel.

A couple wood blocks in that same vice works a whole lot easier and is more controllable.

Like this. Only turned 90 degrees to effect a downward bend.

 

[Mycapt65]

Take the barrel off. Find a table vise that the table is against the wall. Attach two small wood blocks to the vice jaws with rubber bands to protect the barrel. Clamp the breech block horizontally in the vice with the top of the barrel pointing away from the wall. Push barrel towards the wall until barrel is straight. I can't say for Dianas but with Weihrauchs that's aligned with top of the breech block. Reinstall barrel and check alignment against optically centered scope. I've done this many times. It's a pita but it works.

Bending up is so much easier because you don't have to remove the barrel so it's better to go too far than too little .

 

[Hateful McNasty]

Like nced some bend the battles just enough to align it .

I have rolled the barrel on a pain of glass to check straightness. Kinda like you check your pool cue at a local dive bar ..lol.

Then with whatever jig as showed above you prefer to try find the apex of the bend and set it in and bend straight slowly .. check periodically as you go .

Personally I think you'd have to be super careless to botch this bending up

Thing here is your adding to your air gun experience.

 

[kingfisher61]

Check screws and set irons low shoot it maybe 10m or so . If it hits in reason of poi bull or a mile high or just bad off ..lol


( Not me but a example of extreme case in point )

"was very near the end of the cocking stroke when the barrel snapped closed with nearly the full force of the mainspring."
View attachment 504769

No holdover needed there!!

 

[KWK]

I actually bent a "triggered" barrel back by hand by cocking it and kept on pulling a little bit. It wasn't that hard. I did it a few times until it was back on zero. never took the scope off and didn't even removed the stock.
Was an HW95. My hands were very cold when the muzzle brake slipped from my hand about 1/2 way into the cocking stroke. The next shot went very high so I knew.

 

[JDR]

I bent the barrel using just the padded vise as described on this thread. Barrel cant looks a lot better but still a slight bend upward. I shot it this morning and it still shot high at 25 yards but able to adjust scope close to bottom. Have about 1.5 full turns left before it bottoms out. Hope that will not harm the scope as the RWS 350 recoil is brutal. No damage noted on stock or receiver and as stated, velocity up to specs (850 fps) so I should have my gun back working fine. I think I am good to go and lucky I had no major damage or injury from my screw up. Thanks for all the replies.