Veteran Short .20

What scope do you on it?

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SWFA 20x 

Great idea for the Shorty! So I know the breech end of the barrel is threaded, but how did you do the transfer port, pellet probe, and magazines? Thanks Cole,

Mike

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That's the coolest part Mike, can go straight back to the CZ .22 barrel if I ever choose to.

Haven't tried to use the magazines yet but I'm betting it's a no-go. It is a single shot now, using the same sst as the .22. I shoot a lot of single shot anyway so this was never a deal-breaker in the plan. 

So, it uses the .22 probe and transfer port. Bobby tapered the leade of the barrel to avoid the lip the pellet would have otherwise needed to bump over (going from a .22 to .20). 

He told me that for whatever reason, some of the 15.89gr pellets were catching a bit so he smoothed up/profiled the front edges of the dual transfer ports, very minimally, in order for that particular pellet to feed better. And now it does.

The gun came back with his test sheet of accuracy results (30 yards) from various pellets and it's got quite a few 5 shot groups that are 1.5 pellets wide, as well as some nearly one-holers (specifically with the 13.73 it seemed at a glance). 

So, stuck on a computer at work again today and did some digging.....

The initial plan for this .20 Vet project was to use the .20 barrel from the JSAR Raptor. We thought we had a plan on getting that 16mm barrel to fit (by either reducing the outer diameter or machining 1/2mm out of where the barrel goes through the scope tower). Machinist buddy didn't feel very good about either of those plans when he had the gun in hand but he did offer me a 15mm .20 barrel he had stashed away some time ago. 

The history is always cool, and this one doesn't disappoint. 

The .20 barrel that ended up on the Vet is a Lothar Walthar, but my machinist friend bought it years ago as part of the fall out of the Sterling Armaments Company (from the UK) airgun division being bought by Benjamin Sheridan. (Sterling was a producer of submachine guns as well).

The main airgun Sterling built (as far as I can find) was the HR-81, an underlever spring piston gun, with a bolt action, a rather unique combination. It was originally built by Sterling, and then made by Benjamin Sheridan here in the US when BS bought the plans and manufacturing rights. This was all in the 80s. 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sterling_HR-81

Davis Schwesinger was the original importer of the Career and other Korean barrels back in the late 80s/early 90s and I believe that is where my friend told me he acquired this barrel. Davis is mentioned in this Pyramyd Air blog in the same context (Sterling guns and barrels), he sold a bunch of these Sterling LW barrels to Quackenbush too. 

https://www.pyramydair.com/blog/2011/02/sterling-hr-81-177-underlever-air-rifle-part-1/

(I bought the last 3 new-old stock Career barrels Davis still had laying around about a year ago and he is a true gentleman).

Machinist friend tells me these Sterling LW barrels are very consistent, traditionally rifled, and this particular .20 has a VERY slight choke. 

What's old is new again I suppose.

I had 30 minutes this morning to shoot one fill over the chrono. I actually shot down below the reg pressure (250-100bar).

Shot quite quickly so not the greatest indicator of accuracy.

Somewhere around ten shots not shown. So, roughly 60-70 shots, which isn't any kind of indicator of shot count as I was adjusting power all over the place. 

Both pellets feed smooth as butter. Only tested with JSB 13.73s and 15.89s. This was not so much an accuracy test as it was an experiment in figuring out power levels and hammer tension adjustments. BUT, both pellets are flying straight and true. While the Short is not the best bench gun, this small testing session seemed to indicate that this gun with it's new barrel is a consistent dime or less shooter out to 53 yards (pulled shots were shooter-induced, not the "what the heck happened to that pellet" kind.) Basically, a MUCH BETTER THAN field target accurate gun.

First figured out where field target legal was with the hammer tension and shot 3, 10 shot groups at 53 yards. (13.73gr @ 795-805fps for 19.5fpe) 

Left column



Next I wanted to see how fast it would do with the 15.89s. 2.5 full revolutions of the hammer tension adjustment got the 15.89s doing 995fps (top group-right column) and that was just a bit less than the heaviest hammer tension possible (and still having the gun cock).. Just a hair under 35fpe-too fast for that pellet and too loud and probably too much air usage, but interesting to know for whenever the .20 NSA slugs come around. 

2 turns from the FT setting made the 15.89s go 990fps. (group marked as 5@ 990 in the pic). 

1.5 turns from FT setting made the 15.89s go 975fps. (also marked on pic).

1 turn from FT setting made the 15.89s go 935fps. I shot two groups at this speed, a 10 shot group and a 5 shot group. 

Even @ 935 it's probably too fast for the 15.89s. The 15.89s will probably end up living at 1/2 turn of the hammer tension from FT setting and I'm guessing that'll put them in the 890-910fps realm.

When I have some more time I'll need to shoot over the chrono more, but I'm working towards something like these screen grabs show that I had for this gun when it was .22.



I used the field target setting as a baseline, with data for various pellets and their speeds with that hammer tension, as well as a different file for increases in the hammer tension and what that did to various pellets. 

The Veteran platform is so incredibly repeatable when adjusting power. That repeatability and the fact that that CZ barrel shot anything "JSB" extremely well, kept me from ever needing to shoot over the chrono (after that initial fps collection) when I wanted to play with a different pellet or power level.

I'll get there with this gun too, although will likely only need data for JSB 13.73, JSB 15.89 and whatever weight slug NSA is working on.

While power was not the intent of this project and depending on what the NSA slugs end up weighing, I suspect this gun/barrel combo will max out around 36-38fpe (assuming the .20 slugs end up weighing something like 16-19grains). 

Random observation: it seems quieter at 19.5fpe as a .20 than it did at 19.5fpe as a .22 (likely that extra length in the new barrel making more efficient use of the air). 

Should be fun.

Had a quick 30 min to shoot it a bit more.

53 yards with winds 6-8mph from right to left. 

Bottom right was sighters. Right above that was a group about two pellet-widths. 

Shot five at each aim point (few clicks between each group).....



Went back through and shot five more at each aim point (mostly- I put two into that really good two pellet width group and then pulled the third shot so gave up on that one (8 in that group).



Backlit by the evening sun. Holding AOA MOA coin. 

Not all of these did, but enough of them were timed correctly for wind gusts to get to watch lots of them drop into the same or a shared edge hole. For 20fpe@ 53 yards in an 8mph crosswind that ain't bad!

Put a Sekhmet digital guage on this right before shooting and after cool down it was at 250bar. Shot it down to 123 bar. Had a couple shots at 30 yards for zero verification so it was something like 80 shots from 250-123bar This little Vet was able to be shot down below reg pressure without huge swings in fps when it was a .22. Will see if it does the same as a 20. It should yield 100+ shots at right under 20fpe, within 25 or so fps. 

Still haven't shot it much but the prelim accuracy testing has me pretty excited. My machinist pal set me up with a very impressive barrel, expertly machined and prepped. Thanks bud, can't wait for things to settle down enough to give this rig the time it deserves. 

Third Shooting Session

First, the goods....





Man it's been a long month. Sold a house, bought a house, moved my family in with my mom, trying to get the new house remodeled, working full-time through all that, just a lot of LIFE going on. I've had the .20 barrel in this gun for at least 4 weeks now and have been so busy that I just got to shoot it for only the third time this evening. I've only put a couple hundred pellets through it but I sure like what I've seen each of the times I've had it out. 

Tonight I realized I had an hour or so before dark so I took advantage of it. It was really nostalgic to be shooting in my mom's backyard again. Before we bought the house we just sold, we'd been renters and the only place I had to do much airgun shooting was here at my mom's. I'd load up my guns and come to her house to do my shooting. It's been four years since those renter/shooting in mom's backyard times, and again, very nostalgic to be back. 

In addition to the trip down memory lane, I really enjoyed my little evening shooting session. Airguns and the process of shooting is very therapeutic for me. It's a huge stress reliever in my life. The simple joy of putting pellets down range always gets me right with the world again. And it usually helps to have a superbly accurate and dependable gun too, cuz chasing airgun problems is the opposite of relaxing. 

The goal tonight...see how the little Vet Short in .20 at 20fpe shoots from a bumbag, full-on field target legal position.

But before I get to that, a few Sekhmet digital gauge observations......the Sekhmet gauge is just plain awesome. These things show EXACT fps, they even show the cool-down after a fill like the Red Wolf screens. For example, I tapped on the button that wakes it up to see what the pressure was-showed 122bar, which is about what I remember leaving it at the last time I had the gun out. Gauge went back to sleep while I was getting the fill probe out of my other Veteran (reminds me that I need to procure another one-piece fill probe to simplify life). That time-to-sleep is a settable feature, by the way. I've got mine set pretty short, actually shorter than I would like it to be and I'll probably increase it now that I'm analyzing this. So, get it hooked up to the tank and the gauge comes back alive as it senses the pressure is moving. I watch it tick up to 250 and close the valve, leaving it hooked up. I let it count down a bit as the air cooled and then topped it off again to 250. These gauges also have amazing battery life. Gun has been sitting for at least a month and gauge still shows 66%, that's about what it was the last time I put it away. When beta testing one of the earlier versions of the gauge I went for over four months without a charge, shooting it quite often throughout, and I still had over 60%. Battery life is simply phenomenal on these. I know they're using much less energy, but I'd kill for this kind of efficiency out of my cell phone battery. One small complaint with the gauge is that it can't seem to tell the difference between that cool-off after a hot fill, and air being used during a shot, so it starts the shot counter when the warm air is cooling and ticking down quickly. The way around that is it to top it off twice. Not as much air goes in when going from 242 to 250 (the second time it's getting topped off) so it doesn't cool down and throw off the shot counter in the gauge.

After getting the gun ready to go, I got the mulch buckets set at 30 and the max distance (without hopping and having to shoot through the fence that separates yard from pasture), which worked out to 53 yards, which is kinda ironic since that was the exact distance that was most convenient to shoot from at the house we just sold. Plopped down on my bum bag and took a quick glance at the gauge, it was now down to 246 bar, I'm attributing that decrease from 250 to 246bar to the temp difference (70 inside where I filled the gun to probably 45 outside). 

I took about 15 shots at paper at 30 yards to get the turrets zeroed. Seriously busy these days as I hadn't even taken the time to do that in either of the first two sessions. All of my holes were touching at 30 yards, after scope adjusting. 

Move on out to the 53 yard target. I'm not very creative and continue to use my dime target. 8 true to life-size dimes, so 8, 0.7 inch aim points. I took the first shot in the open spot in the middle of the dimes to verify drop and then took 9 more at that first pellet hole. Then I moved up to the top left dime, then the top right, then worked my way down the left column and then back up the right column. You can see on the seventh group (bottom right) that my average point of impact rose a bit and then came back down slightly on the 8th and 9th groups (right column, second from bottom and second from top). I was following the gauge and that 7th group was taken when the pressure in the gun was at 95 bar, so 7th, 8th, and 9th groups were taken off the regulator and seem to have had slightly increased fps. When done the gauge read 77 bar, and I think I was just getting into shots that were starting to really slow down as you can see the 10th shot of the 9th group was back down in the dime. I suspect I would have had low impacting shots really quickly had I kept shooting. So, worked out to 105 shots from 246 to 77 bar. If my math is right, looks like a good solid 80ish shots on the reg and another 25-30 "hunting" accurate shots. This is with JSB 13.73 averaging 800fps for just under 20fpe. Not too bad. 

I took this pic when still outside, holding it up to the western sky....



While I was shooting these 90 consecutive shots, I didn't feel like I was doing too good, I was pulling a shot here and there. But when I walked downrange and took a look at these up close I felt much better about myself. I was just going to leave it at that and do this short write-up if time permitted but got to thinking and decided I might try to put some sort of measuring device on these groups. This is how that went.....



DANG, that sure measures out better than I felt about myself during the shooting. Out of 9, ten shot groups, only two are bigger than an inch. I hold myself to a higher standard when shooting from a bench, but from a bum bag, this puts a big grin on my face!!! Especially with that wobbly make-shift tactical front grip as a knee-riser. And also the fact that the gun is so short, and also the fact that it doesn't have a big butt hook wrapped under my armpit. It is shooting better than good for a non-ft specific gun. I plan on using this configuration at some field target matches after seeing how well it went this evening. VERY accurate barrel and I'm ecstatic to have the pleasure of getting to shoot with it from a super enjoyable platform/gun. (Thanks again Bobby, you are an absolute barrel wizard).

Also, all the old-wives tales/urban airgun legends about how the .20 is magic in the wind might actually have some substance, as I don't think the wind got me once. I just checked National Weather Service history for my location and they recorded 14-26mph winds during all this shooting. I wrote 4-8mph on the target as an estimate and I'm betting that's closer to what I was actually seeing as this backyard is somewhat protected from the wind. Still, the air wasn't calm, and this woulda been 90 knocked down field targets at 53 yards, assuming match director didn't set a really hard 53 Troyer factor target of 1 and 1/8 inch at 53 yards. 

(One last Sekhmet observation. The shot counter is in the upper right of the screen and only shows two digits. So, for a gun tuned like this one is, it'll count up to 99 and then start over at 1. Also, taking shots when the pressure in the gun is below regulator pressure really throws off the digital gauge. I'm guessing that the programming of the gauge counts a similar air usage/shot as a true shot taken. Non-regulated shots are using the "wrong" amount of air and it seems to mess up the shot counter function of the gauge. For example, I took 105 shots, but the gauge showed 12, when all was said and done, which would really be 99 + 12 = 111. Yet another reason to stop shooting when still above the regulator pressure). 

This is what the gauge looked like after all of the above fun. 





(And danged if I know what the 5 on the left side of the gauge screen means. I don't think that was on the earlier versions I was testing. I think I've probably filled the gun 5 times since I put this particular gauge on it, so maybe it is counting how many times the gauge has seen a massive pressure swing like when the gun is shot from 250 down to 100ish bar?)

http://www.sekhmet-us.com/digital-pressure-gauge.html

.20 Shorty got some recent (today) upgrades and so figured it was time for an update. 

It's been scoped with a 20x SWFA it's whole life and I finally pulled the trigger on the Midas Tac that I've been eyeing for the last 2 years. So, Shorty got a new scope. 

Also wanted a side wheel for some field target use so spoke with Eric @ Scopewerks and he got a "mega-nautilus" headed my way last week. I believe he said an 8 inch effective diameter on this particular comma-shaped sidewheel. He emailed me a pdf and had me print and cut it out in a mock up to make sure clearance would be good with scope rings, gun, etc. Wheel arrived today while I was at work. 

I sent the stock home with a woodworker buddy around a week ago. I had him do some inletting under the forearm for a Anschutz/UIT rail so that I could use my MAC1 Hamster if I want. I also had the thought that the riser will work extremely well with how my mobile pesting blind is configured. The stock got dropped off at my house today also, and yes, while I was at work. So, long day at work anticipating coming home and getting all the new goodies sorted. 

Raw aluminum where the rail had to be cut down to length...



I would have preferred some anodizing on that raw aluminum but I settled for touching it up with some of Birchwood Casey's Aluminum Black. I've had this bottle hanging around for a couple years. It gives aluminum a nice black finish, not nearly as durable as anodizing, but works well to cover up a scratch in aluminum or for minor gunsmithing needs like this one. 





Woodworker did a pretty good job, matching angles well.



And here it is with all the new goodies. 



Yes it is balanced on the foot of the hamster in that picture. 

Initial impressions are that it is going to be sweet to shoot offhand. Being able to lock the elbow into my hip seems to help when I'm shooting offhand. 



So, current plans for the .20 Vet are to use it in one of two tunes. 800fps with the JSB 13.73s for sub 20fpe field target/silhouettes and 915fps with the JSB 15.89s (around 30fpe) for long range pesting. One revolution of the hammer spring tension is all it takes to go from both of those power outputs, easily repeatable. Gets about 90-100 regulated shots @ 20fpe and around 45 at 30fpe. So quiet @ 20fpe that it sounds broken, has a bit more bark at 30fpe though. The 20fpe tune has proven itself to be quite accurate, as I shot a 39/40 with it during our chicken little silhouette comp in May (40,50,60,70 yards). As for the 30fpe tune with the .20 Heavies, well I had a very promising shooting session about two weeks ago-EBR practice targets @ 109 yards. It was doing surprisingly well in the wind at that distance (much better than 18.13 .22s do at the same fpe output). Plenty accurate for long range pdog shooting. 

As for the scope on here, I've not had a Hunter class eligible scope since the rule changed from 12x to 16x a few years ago. I'm thinking I'll make 16x and 24x yardage marks so that the option to shoot it in either Hunter or Open exists. My son has been using this gun in field target but shooting with a tripod, which puts him in the Unlimited class. I think we're going to take that third leg/training wheel off at the next match and have him shoot in Hunter class now that the scope is appropriate. We have a match next weekend, not sure I'll have time to work up yardage marks on the new wheel before then but I hope to find the time. 

Sweet little gun and I'm just as excited to own it now as I was the day I first received it a couple years ago. I knew in the very first shooting session that Vet's are just special, and that impression is strengthened every time I get the privilege to shoot them. This little .20 Vet is my favorite general use airgun, it can do it all, and well at that.