Beeman R1/HW80 Caliber Change

I'll cut to the chase as I'm time crunched today. I have a .22 cal Beeman R1 (HW80) and I wanted to convert it to .25 cal. Long story involving having a .25 cal R1 years ago, the gun was stolen, couldn't replace it with another .25 cal at the time so I bought a .22 cal and...blah..blah..

So, after almost three years of looking, I was finally able to pin down a .25 cal barrel/breech block last week. The replacement Weihrauch barrel assemblies don't come with a cocking lever arm attached. The cocking arm is riveted to the bottom of the breech block. A spare rivet is not provided--but can often be ordered. I opted to not order the rivet.

No pics of rifle disassembly as we've covered it before here. I pounded out the rivet holding the cocking lever to the .22 cal breech block and set the .22 cal assembly aside--maybe for good.



Often, the rivet can be reused, but not this time. The pin has a 5mm shaft diameter.

Lacking a piece of metric drill rod, I turned down a piece of 0.250" W-1 steel to the required 5mm diameter. Actually, it needed to be 4.99mm.

Cut the new pin a few thousandths longer than the width of the breech block.

Used a file to bevel each end into a slight dome.

I've seen a couple one-off replacement cocking lever pins that have used e-clips on each end. That looked like it would require widening the slot in the forend of the stock. Too much work for a guy like me. Figured there was another way.

Center punched the breech block.

Didn't bother to fixture the breech. I lined up and drilled through with a #36. Not shown: Tapped the hole with a #6-32 plug tap.

Filed a small flat on the pin for the set screw to bear against. This will lock the pin in position yet make it easily removable.

Breech block, pin, set screw and cocking lever. What more could a guy ask for?



Blued the pin with Birchwood Casey Permablue paste.



Set screw snugged down. Lucked out on the length of the screw. It's flush with the block. I like this more than the factory's method of assembly.

Done! Reassembled the rifle and now I can work my way through those thousands of .25 cal pellets that have been mocking me on the shelf. Should I ever want to revert to .22 cal, it's now a ten minute swap with the replaceable pin.

Something else soon.

Making a Safety for a Crosman 22XX/13XX

Looked at the safety on the Crosman 22XX guns many times and marveled at their simplicity and ease of use. For all it is and does, it's hard to make a case for something different. Nevertheless, I craved something else--probably because I have too many 22XX guns...

Started with a piece of 0.500" diameter 12L14 cold rolled steel.

Turned the body of the safety to 0.186".

And added two grooves for the ball bearing detent.

Turned down the end for the button head.

And cut off.



Test fit. Note: No trigger yet. Just eyeballing some dimensions, making sure it's reachable, and looking at it for a sense of balance and scale.



Started hand filing the notches.

Compared it to a stock Crosman safety and just filed away until everything matched up.

Uhhhh, done?

Test fit #2--with the trigger and sear installed.

OK, OK, so it's not done. The head was too plain. Clamped with some aluminum to protect the piece.

I didn't have a metal checkering file so I improvised with a thread restoring file. Used the 20 tpi side...

and patiently grooved the head.

Deepened the grooves with a small riffler file.

Test fit #3...

Blued with Van's.





Installed the safety (actually the entire grip frame) on a 2250 project gun.





It's a nice change from the standard safety and I like that it doesn't stand out. It looks just like the magazine release on old Colt series 70 .45 Gold Cups.

More stuff soon.

Crosman 112 needs some new grips

Hot off the Crosman 116, I stripped and resprayed the old longer barreled 112. Didn't see a reason to blog the tear down and rebuild as it was identical in every way.

For some reason, probably too much time between coats of paint, the wrinkle paint didn't wrinkle. Devious. It produced a sort of bumpy, lumpy texture. Since it wasn't what I was after, it got stripped off and re-shot with less time between coats. Worked perfectly the second time around. Maybe even a bit better than on the 116. Definitely some learning curve to the wrinkle finish.

Since I'd sent the original 112 grips off to Nick, I had to do something. (And that was the idea for sending the grips off to Nick.) Anyway, there was a grip party as you can see. Just some spare grips from various guns for "research". Settled on using some rosewood left over from a knife handle project that's still languishing due to chronic laziness. I truly wanted to just make a set of simple grips and use up some of the wood on hand.

The rosewood by itself wasn't quite thick enough for the grips, so I Gorilla glued a thin piece of maple--about 1/8"--to add some thickness.

Fascinating, I know. Glued wood. The rosewood is sandwiched in the vise with a walnut and another maple backer. It was handy and it was flat. And a few clamps. Never too many clamps when gluing.

A day later, an inseparable piece.

Chopped the piece to size.

Traced the grip frame onto the piece.

And did a quick cut out.

Cleaned up the edges.

Wow, this looks bad.

Maybe if I back up. Nope. Still awful.

Started shaping the sides.





Asymmetrical curve to the top.

And notched the trailing edge.

Spotted for the grip screw hole and through drilled. Followed by countersinking for the head of the #6-32 grip screw.

Getting there. Overtones of a 1911 grip shaped to fit the 112 frame. I don't completely hate it.

Sanded more curve into the grips. They're almost completely curved in profile now. Added a relief cut at the bottom for some visual appeal. Made the second grip to match. The grip on the right has been finish sanded and lightly polished.

One coat of Arrow wood finish on the right.

And on both.

Just laid the grip on the frame.

Reassembled the 112 and bolted the grips on.

Still need to add a blind pin or a protrusion to keep the grips from rotating on the frame, but they're good enough for now.

More soon.