Western Airguns Finally quieted down the action of my .22 Western Airguns Sidewinder

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AlanMcD

AlanMcD

Member
Jul 10, 2021
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Michigan, United States
I've been struggling with a decision on my Sidewinder for some time, and it has to do with quieting down the action. I had been thinking that if I put some mastic over the sides of the action it might help quiet down the gun some, or at least improve the sound quality of the gun when shot. But I knew it would not look good, so I had not tried it until today. It turns out it works great, and both quiets the action AND improves the sound quality!

I find the gun to be a great shooter, but the action is so loud and jarring (in terms of sound quality) that it really is not pleasant to shoot without adding hearing protection. I found that I was just not shooting it much anymore, so I decided that I should either go ahead and try the mastic or just sell it to somebody that would shoot it more. I also have a .22 Huben K1, and it has been so much more pleasant to shoot - to the point that it was getting all the use and none was going to the Sidewinder. This despite the fact that I had tamed the muzzle sounds a lot with a Huma 40 moderator on it - but the action noise remained, and it was very loud and unpleasant to shoot (at least to my ears).

So I put some on both sides of the action, cutting it to not cover anything functional, and tried it out. The results are fantastic! It now is in the situation where the impact of the pellet is far louder than the gun, and it was nowhere close to that before. In fact, the impact sound to the shooter was barely louder than the ringing and vibrations coming from the action before.

Sadly, I have to admit that the result is that the gun looks like it was hit with an "ugly stick," but the acoustic results are too good to pass up. For me, the choice is one of having a nice looking gun that I don't really want to shoot, or a gun I can enjoy shooting even if it looks no where near as nice . . . I gotta go with "form following function" in this case.

Here is what the action looks like now - it looks ugly, but sounds great:
P1430563.JPGP1430567.JPG
 
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I got the opportunity to shoot a Sidewinder a while back. While it was was a very accurate gun I didn't care for the overall "feel" & sound of it. Compared to the FX platform I love (Bobcat, Royale, Boss) which are velvety smooth in function, very quiet & easy on the ears, the Sidewinder had such a grinding, metallic, loud sound it put me off. Glad you could quiet yours down. As to the aesthetics of your gun now I'll say this. My Bobcat was gifted to me. Always thought they were one of the fugliest airguns I'd seen but I've come to love its accuracy, repeatability & feel. I don't even notice it's FUGLINESS anymore. After all, I'm not entering it in any beauty pageant!
 
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Sawney Bean said:
What exactly are you using as a mastic? I've tried wrapping the rear of the gun with a gun sock and it did make a slight difference, but nothing worthwhile.
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It is a butyl mastic with a thin aluminum carrier sheet bonded to it. It is typically used to dampen vibrations in sheet metal, and works great in that application - which is why I figured it would work in this case.

This is the stuff I bought: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B09RSZ9L9J/
 
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MrP said:
Wonder how much that would quiet down a rim fire trap!?
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I have put some on the back of spinners, and it reduces the impact noise level quite a bit, so I expect it would help a lot. Not silent or anything, but a good bit quieter. It reduces part of the initial impact noise, but the big thing is that it stops the ringing and other harmonic sounds.
 
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I got my mastic from Amazon today and looking at it I was a little dubious, but I put it on anyway and it genuinely does seem to work. I only fired a couple of shots into a 4x4 in my garage, but the power wheel was turned up 3.5 revolutions from closed and subjectively it did seem quieter than before.

It's been a bit of a task to get it there, but I'd now consider my Sidewinder backyard friendly. In .30 with the power cranked all the way up it now sounds similar to a nail gun. Getting there also involved adding extra vent holes and padding to the shroud and a Huma Mod50 with custom baffles.

When I first got it it the report was similar to a .22 lr with a long barrel.
 
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@Sawney Bean , I'm glad it worked for you, and glad you could corroborate the results. The other day I was shooting with my son nearby and he commented that the gun seemed much quieter as an observer too.

I was thinking about @Dr. Kralenstein 's question about putting it in the stock/chassis, and while there really isn't much of that on the Sidewinder I did realize that there might be some incremental benefit from putting it on the plenum tube, so I took the top skeleton "cover" part off under the scope and put a few strips on the plenum, and then on the underside of the top of that cover part is was just such a "ringy" sounding piece of metal. It turns out the forward pic mount piece is s separate bit of metal, so I put a small section on that too (making sure it did not touch the shroud, so it had to be smallish). I do think these actions helped a bit more, with most of the benefit probably coming from the plenum. Makes me wonder if adding more on the sides of it would help too, but that would be visable (and easily removed if there was no added benefit). Here is what those added bits look like.

P1430568.JPG
 
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