What have you done with your airgun today?

Realized the 177 barrel I ordered for my crown is a STX barrel so I decided to ditch the pointlessly tiny shroud and add a little bling and stiffness to it. With carbon liner sleeve and carbon barrel tensioner my barrel is just soooooo STIFF!!! Yes, I teed it up for you guys, you are welcome. LOL 

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Edit: think I can finally tame the wild and crazy 6FPE I’m shooting here. J/K, will see how it does with 177 slugs sometimes soon I hope.
 
Finally showed my impact some attention. Tuned it to shoot .22 hades at 700FPS so it’s on back yard pest duty with the ATN LTV scope. Polished the choke area of the new 500mm .22 heavy liner and so far after settling in with a few shots it’s pellet on pellet. 


if the skunk(s) that dug under my rock wall didn’t die from the road flare I chucked into its den then the impact is ready for night time suburban covert operation!

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WOW! It has been a while I posted any updated, totally forgot. A lot has happened and my FX family of guns all got a make over so to speak, even got another Crown in coming. 



HOWEVER, I just realized today as I was messing around with my dreamtac-compact I am at the bottom of my last tin of Daisy pellets or end of 6,000 pellets I bought from Daisy with discount. I didn't care for them for pesting and some of my guns don't like them so I won't be ordering again and sticking with Crosman pellets. With end of Daisy pellets I've crossed well over 20,000 177 pellets shot in my yard in about a year! Kind of crazy thinking about it, sadly I am still a lousy shot, improved lousy shot but lousy shot still. 
 
FedEx finally delivered my crown this morning, of course I had to quickly reconfigured it during lunch. I love the .177 300mm barrel on the crown, even though it’s no where near light weight with the big scope longer than the barrel itself, it just feels great and well balanced. Outside of a folding stock I just really prefer the crown over the dreamtac compact. 

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Finally got around to modifying the inner block that the saber tactical cheek rest bolts onto so I can finally install the Ernest Rowe/K&L pellet probe clamp block.

it’s a known fact that the beefy pellet probe block is NOT compatible with the ST cheek rest due to the probe blocks taller design due to the addition of the M5 clamp bolt. ST does nice design work and I had to get past the thought of doing a chop chop to get that probe block to work.

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Benefits of that probe block in case you don’t have one? Well, the factory block has one grub screw, a tiny one at that, that holds the pellet probe in place. If you’re not careful and know to look for it, that grub screw can work itself loose over time and cause a floppy pellet probe which in turn will affect accuracy or mag load difficulty’s.

Whats worse yet is if you thought you could fix that by applying locktite, and you go to loosen it for a probe upgrade or a caliber change you round off the allen head socket. Tip on tiny grub screws- use vibra tite instead. If you round off that grub screw good luck trying to use any EZ out tools on it. You might as well invest in a new probe carrier along with a new probe!

I noticed a few times while shooting the other day that my Huma pin probe somehow would miss chambering a pellet. I carefully looked at the probe thru the mag slot as I cycled the bolt and saw too much fluff for my liking. I understand a little bit(I mean a little) bit of slop up/down and side 2 side is acceptable as depending on a magazines manufacture, the spring tension, hole alignment, etc., that tiny bit of slop will help to self center the probe to be concentric with the magazine’s holes and the center of bore. But mine was a bit too much for my liking, so as a plus to this ST cheek rest mod, if I did it right, it would add support to the new probe holder throughout its movement in the cocking cycle.

furst thing I had to do after doing careful measuring(I wanted to add that I took a lot of time with the planning stage as I knew this wasn’t a part I could call on Donny for to just buy the block. I had one shot to get it right, and if I muffed it up I’d have to buy a whole new cheek riser kit) was to drill and tap two new M5 threaded holes for the two adjustment screws that are responsible for adjusting the cheek rest. Once done, out came my craftsman wand connected to my craftsman rotary tool and I chopped off the required material just enough to clear the new probe block-

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As soon as I checked the fit up and saw all was good, I did a wipe down on that chopped block with acetone and after it dried applied some Birchwood Casey Aluminum Black to restore the look of the anodize.

The gap between the bottom of the new probe block to the top of the modified ST block is there but so so very slight, that when I applied some gun grease between the two the cushion of grease makes that slide between the two buttery smooth, and while cycling the bolt back and forth I noticed the probe much more horizontal as it’s now supported throughout the cocking cycle over a thin film of gun grease, and no more excess slop on the pellet probe!!!

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so the mod was a success, and I’ll never have to concern myself with the worry of the pellet probe getting loose on me. And, as icing on the cake, my cheek rest is still fully height adjustable. 



Done deal, and off my list, ha ha!


 
Nice job on the block Augie! What a great feeling to get a difficult project done. Yesterday I shot my Rapid .20 at 130 yards and got several nice 12 shot groups (magazine capacity), nothing under two inches that session. Looking forward to trying more today if it’s not too windy. Also plan to try my first N50 card today. These guns are so much fun and the accuracy is astonishing.
 
Very nice Angie! I got the ST cheek rest also and will have to keep that in mind even though I don’t plan on the beefier probe block yet.

You will be glad you did. I contacted ST awhile back to see if they were willing to make a modified piece that would cater to that larger, beefier probe block but at the time the maverick had just come out and talk of a new impact was in the near future and they were too busy to pull away from the parts production of those two new lines from FX, understandably.

Here are pics of how my probe sits now, in perfect alignment with the center of the TP and no slop-

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it barely nudges in any direction upon entry into the TP, in whereas before the probe hung slightly low up front and you could see it rise up to center as it entered into the TP. 
 
Nice job on the block Augie! What a great feeling to get a difficult project done. Yesterday I shot my Rapid .20 at 130 yards and got several nice 12 shot groups (magazine capacity), nothing under two inches that session. Looking forward to trying more today if it’s not too windy. Also plan to try my first N50 card today. These guns are so much fun and the accuracy is astonishing.

Thank you, Dave! It’s good to hear you’re up and around shooting your guns. That lets me know you’re doing better! Doing better after what you went thru is certainly great news!