FWB 124D Has PCP like accuracy.

A friend of mine had two FWB 124's that would no longer shoot because piston seal's disintegrated in compression tube, I have rebuilt and tuned several HW springers but never a 124 so before taking apart someone else's guns I found a used 124 in the same condition and purchased. Carefully disassembled and found what was left of the piston seal pounded into the end of the compression tube and pellets stuck in the barrel. Ended up using a cleaning rod with a brass jag to scrape out old piston seal. I then ordered a ARH Pro Mac Kit HP version and all the correct lubes along with a new breech seal. Cleaned everything up really good, I noticed that any remaining lubricants had hardened into a thick gooey substance and the safety would not activate when cocking. I also sized new piston seal to compression tube because it seemed a little too tight. The old spring was a mile long but the new ARH spring was shorter and stiffer. I assembled everything and cocked and uncocked gun several times, gave the bore a good cleaning, replaced the breech seal and fired about 100 shots before shooting through chronograph. I don't know what kind of power the 124 is supposed to have but my newly rebuilt gun with 100 rounds down the barrel shot 7.9 JSB Exacts right at 840 fps and seemed pretty consistant. It's been well over a year now since the rebuild and have shot several tins of pellets through the 124 so I checked velocity again and to my surprise with the same 7.9 JSB Exact velocity is now 860and the 8.4 gr is at 820. I never really shot this gun at any distance to check accuracy so today I mounted a better scope on the 124 and sighted in at 35 yards and accuracy blew me away ! I then set a target at 50 yards and was shooting dime sized groups with both 8.4 and 10.5 gr Exacts. Now I know why people like these guns so much, what did Feinwerkbau do to make the 124 so dam accurate ? These guns must have one heck of a barrel on them. I never would have believed it if I hadn't seen it with my own eyes. Think i'll hang onto this gun for a while.
 
Feinwerkbau makes MATCH guns and when they went about manufacturing a spring gun they used the barrels that also go into the precision match guns.

While the cyclic recoil is far from match smooth ... if one works on technique to minimize the shot cycle effects or at best gets gun too recoil similar every shot there accuracy can be truly outstanding !! 

Have a 124D that was new in @ 1982 and in these 35+ years shooting it have made shots that really blew my mind .... more than once. Yep there sweet rifles for a spring piston action having no sled or recoil control devises.
 
that's pretty good power from one of these, bzizzi373 . the 124's that ive rebuilt get anywhere from 800 - 870 fps. that piston seal is usually too tight and makes the velocity vary. but i have never tried the kit from macarri (he loves these older fwb sporters - fwb models 120-127). the 870 fps one i had was tuned by the laser tune guys at beeman with their super special tune (looks like the insides of a laserized beeman r1 - chrome or stainless steel type springs). the guy that bought that one, which had every extra thing one could get from beeman at the time (1980?) , mentioned these shooting as high as 900 fps. sizing that piston seal to where it is too tight, but can move easier - that is almost the most important part for me when i'm fixing one. i'd say the MOST important part is finding a way to get all of that broken, smashed in piston seal out of the end of the air chamber. i usually soak it with wd-40 and come back to it the next day after leaving the tube upside down so that wd-40 can help loosen those white particles. i had one that came with the extra parts for it they offered back then. even the unused white piston seal, still in package, crumbled when i was looking at it. i need to look into that fwb hp kit you mentioned above. ......o....... and i believe that it is the way the guns are so well balanced that helps my accuracy, as well as the world-class barrels they use on fwb's. especially with the deluxe type stocks that are a little heavier and longer and have a palmswell grip. it sure isnt the trigger ! still a very good trigger but it seems like a single sear trigger. not a like a usual 2-stage rekord (hw) trigger, or a t-06 (diana) one. - paul.
 
I believe when FWB produced the 124, being used to making the finest ten-meter rifles on Earth they probably decided to also make the finest sporting air rifle on Earth. They succeeded marvelously, and the 124 was also one of the most powerful airguns of its vintage. I believe the FWB 124 is STILL one of the finest spring-piston sporters ever produced, and have a couple personal 124 anecdotes I think you'll find entertaining.

In the early 1970s I was out hunting with my first (completely stock) 124, equipped with a 4X scope. Testament to its accuracy, I had brained 2 or 3 nice bullfrogs, which is what you have to do with a pointed .177 Silver Jet pellet lest you lose them to a powerful leap into deep water. I love frog-legs! Just whack 'em off and fry 'em up... delicious!

Anyway, I noticed a line of starlings on an electric high-line wire and wondered just how much penetration a pointed .177 pellet at 800 FPS is capable of. So stalking to a position to have several starlings in a row, I concentrated completely on hitting the first one in the neck; which would take the next high in the chest, and others progressively lower in the chest. The 30 yard offhand shot was perfect, and the light just right to see the pellet arch right into the very sweet-spot I was going for. 

The first bird dropped instantly, the second hung upside down from the wire for a couple seconds before dropping, while the third did a diagonal crash-dive to the ground! What a memorable hunt.

My second FWB 124 story- After a couple stiff margaritas one night, I opened my back door, rested the 124 over a couple pillows on the back of the sofa, and proceeded to shoot a 1/4" center-to-center ten-shot group at 30 yards! Nope; I couldn't come close to repeating it, so quit trying after two more attempts. But the fact it was a TEN-shot group is proof-positive the gun was capable; no matter who the shooter... or what state of inebriation! Here's a photo of my current Corcoran-stocked 124.

1560398623_20179158375d01cb2000ea98.23425769_124 FL RS.JPG

 
Paul

That one I bought sight unseen a few years back. Opened the box and my knees went weak! Lol

Had it totally refurbished because it was a wreck when I got it. Only thing that was good was the bluing. Never dreamed it would turn out that nice.

The one you are speaking of has been restored, but the stock remains original. Too nice to mess with IMO.
1560605509_7933774785d04f345860b83.23379485_20190328_160232.jpg

 
I bought one from a forum member here who also lives in my area. Unfortunately I’ve only been able to shoot it a few dozen times before it stopped working. I plan on posting a separate thread when I get it back but it’s currently with John in PA being fixed and tuned. I will say that those few shots impressed me, with peep sights I was able to put ten shots into a quarter at 30 yards. I’m sure those weren’t very consistent velocity since the breech seal was original and slowly dying.

For those who may not know, this is what happens to 90’s era fwb seals, the second picture shows the piston was rubbing on the inside of the tube:

1561725249_20831705495d1609417f92d3.67088653_9493F992-6A56-452B-A136-45B54F7904E7.jpeg
1561725250_5199761415d1609421689b4.69291281_83E1F1D2-75D4-4084-B96D-9CFCC76C4FF3.jpeg

 
Thanks everyone for your personal experience about the FWB124, this is a special gun indeed worthy of all the accolades. I own several springers, mostly break barrel and none shoot like the 124 does at fifty yards. My story started only by acquiring a 124 only for the sole purpose of learning how to disassemble and tune before I worked on someone else’s 124. After getting serous about shooting I found out why the 124 is so coveted. Wish my stock was as beautiful as some of yours but I’ll take what I have.
 
I'm just copying and pasting this here...enjoy from another forum from the past.

Hi All,

We often see comparisons of similar types of airguns, so I thought it would be interesting to take a look at two very different air rifles. Both are classics, manufactured by Feinwerkbau, but one is a sporter and the other a 10m match rifle. I bought my FWB 124 Standard new in the mid 1980’s and made a target-style stock for it a few years later. I’ve been doing Beeman-style tune-ups on it since then and recently put in a Maccari tune kit. The Maccari spring made the rifle’s shots snappier. The original spring, which broke last year, was very long and had a lot more preload, which kept the spring force more constant and a bit lower than the fully-cocked spring force with the Maccari. Although the muzzle velocity went down a bit (especially if the pellet was seated with a Beeman Pellseat, which reduced the MV by 50 fps compared to finger-seated pellets), the rifle shoots great with the Maccari kit. The cocking is super easy and smooth. The rifle gives a short jolt on firing, but there’s no vibration. 

Last year, I finally got a FWB 300S, after dreaming of owning one since I was a kid. The rifle was manufactured in 1975. What a beautiful piece of engineering and machining! The trigger and firing behavior are amazing. The barreled action slides back a few mm after each shot, leaving the sight picture virtually unchanged. The cocking handle anti-bear-trap clicks like a Swiss watch. When I carved the target-style stock for my FWB 124, I used photos of the 300S as a guide. It’s fun to compare my homemade FWB 124 stock now to a real 300S. 

Slide 1 shows the rifles side-by-side, along with a homemade hamster for the 124. I’m going to try field target shooting with the FWB 124 this spring. I also took a picture of the accessory hand rail that I inletted in the 124 stock. On both rifles’ accessory rails, I made rulings with distances marked in cm from the front of the pistol gripped so that I can consistently place the handstop when I switch from my air, to smallbore, to high power target rifles. Both rifles wear a Nikon Prostaff EFR 3-9x40m. This is a fantastic scope, but I wish they made it with higher magnifications (and had ¼ MOA clicks instead of ½ MOA).







Slide 2 shows the 124 on a collapsible bench that I recently made along with my home-made chronograph http://www.network54.com/Forum/79537/message/1452739305). Although I’ve read a lot about sporter springers not being very accurate off sandbags, my 124 does pretty well, especially if a wool knit cap is placed under the forend to dampen motion during the shot release. I think the beefier and heavier match stock may be helping here as well. 






Slides 3-5 show groups at 10m. Note that although some wadcutters (like the RWS R10) do very well at 10m, they don’t do as well at 20 yards. The round headed pellets definitely do better than the wadcutters at longer ranges. In the FWB 300S, the QYS Training pellets are the best deal and almost as good as the RWS R10, but the RWS Meisterkugeln were a real disappointment. I thought the RWS MK and R10 would be closer in performance.










Both rifles did well at 20 yards and it was surprising to see how close their accuracy was at this range. I agree with many people that a 5-shot group doesn’t mean much, so I shot six 5-shot groups with both rifles. After testing dozens of brands/types of pellets, I found that the 124 does best with Air Arms Diabolo Field 4.52mm domed pellets (average muzzle velocity 828 fps, and typical standard deviation of 4 fps for 30 shots) and the 300S likes JSB Match Diabolo Exact RS domed pellets (average muzzle velocity 626 fps, and typical standard deviation of 4 fps for 30 shots). Unfortunately these pellets don’t cut very clean holes in paper, and the groups may therefore appear a bit smaller since pellets could be bending the edges of the hole rather than cutting them bigger. The 20-yard groups are shown in Slide 6. At the bottom, I traced out the groups and overlayed them to show how the 30 shots line up. Thanks to the chronograph, I found that lower velocity shots tended to impact higher than higher velocity shots!? This is opposite of what one would expect from pellets falling during their travel and needs to be checked more systematically. Anyway, small differences in velocity cannot account for such a vertical spread due to differences in time of flight. A 10 fps decrease from 830 fps would result in roughly a 1 millisecond longer flight time to 20 yards and an additional drop of around 0.5mm. Could it be that the lower velocity pellets stay in the barrel longer and therefore leave the barrel when it’s risen more after the shot is initiated? Have you seen this in your springer?








The 300S doesn’t have this problem and is really consistent. The 124 is also more hold sensitive. When I shoot it in the sitting position with the hamster on my knee, it shoots about 1” low compared to bench-rested at 20 yards. Are other people getting similar results with their springers? Is it just a difference in muzzle jump upon firing or is the barrel/receiver moving/vibrating? Here's a nice high-speed video showing how much the barrel moves in a springer:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NR6AW3rQrTY




I also tested the rifles at an indoor range using the same bench. This allowed me to test the accuracy and trajectories out to 50 yards. I never shot these rifles out to such distances and was very pleasantly surprised. One major factor limiting accuracy was that the targets were dimly lit and with my Nikon at 9x it was very hard to see the aiming marks (they were faint and slightly fuzzy). Slide 7 shows 5-shot groups at 10yds, 20yds, 30yds, 40yds and 50yds, with the scopes' elevation unchanged. You can see that the FWB124 shoots much flatter than the FWB 300S, but the 4” drop for the 300S at 50 yards is still pretty good. 






Slide 8 compares the trajectories calculated by Chairgun with the measured drops from Slide 7. Either the ballistic coefficients that I used in Chairgun or my measured velocities were too low, as both rifles shot flatter than Chairgun predicted. Still, I think Chairgun is a great program and really enjoyed comparing predicted and actual trajectories. I wish there was a way to export the trajectories calculated in Chairgun. I had to digitize the Chairgun trajectories by hand using Grafula.




Slide 9 shows three 5-shot groups at 50 yards for the FWB 300S and FWB 124. If we throw out the second FWB 300S group and the first FWB 124 group, we get 10-shot groupings well inside 0.75 inches. Of course, I cannot justify throwing out any groups, but I wouldn’t be surprised if much of the spread was due to operator error, especially since the aiming marks were pretty faint/fuzzy at 50 yards. In fact, I sent the target back to 50 yards after my first two groups with the 300S, after noticing how much better the first group was. I ended up shooting a pretty nice third group. The FWB 124 groups just got better, so that could just be me settling down.




I’m curious to hear what experiences other folks have had with these rifles. I hope that you enjoyed reading this post as much as I enjoyed putting it together!




 
I tried the Maccari power+ upgrade kit and it is now silky smooth and accurate but i don't get over 780 fps with 7.87 gr JSB or HN lites. The 8.4 gr JSBs shoot about 730fps. I think the piston seal might be too tight. How do you know it's the correct OD and when to stop sanding it down? Should it slide with very little resistance just so it seals? Or is it normal to require a lot of force to move it ? thanks in advance for any advice...
 
I believe when FWB produced the 124, being used to making the finest ten-meter rifles on Earth they probably decided to also make the finest sporting air rifle on Earth. They succeeded marvelously, and the 124 was also one of the most powerful airguns of its vintage. I believe the FWB 124 is STILL one of the finest spring-piston sporters ever produced, and have a couple personal 124 anecdotes I think you'll find entertaining.

In the early 1970s I was out hunting with my first (completely stock) 124, equipped with a 4X scope. Testament to its accuracy, I had brained 2 or 3 nice bullfrogs, which is what you have to do with a pointed .177 Silver Jet pellet lest you lose them to a powerful leap into deep water. I love frog-legs! Just whack 'em off and fry 'em up... delicious!

Anyway, I noticed a line of starlings on an electric high-line wire and wondered just how much penetration a pointed .177 pellet at 800 FPS is capable of. So stalking to a position to have several starlings in a row, I concentrated completely on hitting the first one in the neck; which would take the next high in the chest, and others progressively lower in the chest. The 30 yard offhand shot was perfect, and the light just right to see the pellet arch right into the very sweet-spot I was going for. 

The first bird dropped instantly, the second hung upside down from the wire for a couple seconds before dropping, while the third did a diagonal crash-dive to the ground! What a memorable hunt.

My second FWB 124 story- After a couple stiff margaritas one night, I opened my back door, rested the 124 over a couple pillows on the back of the sofa, and proceeded to shoot a 1/4" center-to-center ten-shot group at 30 yards! Nope; I couldn't come close to repeating it, so quit trying after two more attempts. But the fact it was a TEN-shot group is proof-positive the gun was capable; no matter who the shooter... or what state of inebriation! Here's a photo of my current Corcoran-stocked 124.

1560398623_20179158375d01cb2000ea98.23425769_124 FL RS.JPG

You guys are all making me want one bad ! I'm going have to get my wallet out as the ones I've seen on Ebay are $$$ ! There's one now on Ebay that is a San Anselmo stamped gun. Missing front sight and broken rear sight. $649 !
 
Love my FWB-124D... was fortunate and persistent enough to buy it from a local pawn shop, after many repeated visits buying other airguns (Sheridan Blues Streak, Sheridan Silver Streak, Crosman Model 140, Crosman Model 1400, RWS old Model 45) over a period of a couple years... I got to know the owner, who on one of my visits told me that a customer was making payments on a FWB-124, and asked if I wanted to see it... and of course I did.

He brought it out from the back room, and I got to check it out... great condition, had a cheap Tasco scope on it, with a broken reticle, missing the front sight, but still had the rear sight... I told him if it comes up for sale, to give me a call.

Not sure how much time passed since I saw it, but one day, he calls me at work, and said the guy stopped making payments, and asked if I was interested... I took a half day vacation day, left early and stopped by on my way home with my $200 in hand... got a front sight replacement from Beeman's.

I brought it home shot it a few times... seemed to shoot pretty good... the seal must not have crumbled yet.

I sent it off to Jim Maccari for one of his kit replacements and installs (back when he did them), and loved how much better it shot.

Soon after I got one of JM's DIY custom tyrolean myrtle wood grade 4 stocks... fun project too.

That was about 20 years ago, and recently installed one of JM's Pro-Mac kits in it (love my B-Square spring compressor).

Here's what it looks like...
1592233730_12158481725ee78f02804f47.95523285.jpg
1592233730_1780248415ee78f02b95839.96714721.jpg