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................Air Arms
S310/410c/410h/English version
..............................I am sure
everyone recognize this particular air rifle by
now.
It is an Air Arms S310/410c/410h/English
version with a barrel shroud as installed by T.G.A.G.
Maybe I should go into more detail to help
straighten out the numbers. When the S 300
series were still being made I had a very nice S
310 with a walnut thumb hole stock that shot just
amazingly well. For some unknown reason I
sold off the top and kept the stock. When
the new S 400 series came out I tried the new
thumb hole stock, that did not fit my ham like
hands. The new thumbhole wood is also
walnut but from a different region of the world,
it is lighter then the one I have. I know
my stock came from Italy at that time. I
love a thumbhole stock but only if it fits, with
the thumbhole configurations there is no in-between.
With some stocks a person can mount the
scope forward or further back or what is called
crawl the stock to make it fit. But not so
with a thumb hole stock, your hand fits only one
way as does the cheek piece in relation to the
scope. So here was the dilemma, do I sell
the stock knowing I may never have another
thumbhole stock in my collection. Or do I
modify it to except the S 410 series? All
that would require is to do some minor inletting
and drill a hole for the pressure gage.
Inletting does not bother me since I have
done it on a number of firearms. But
drilling a hole in such a nice piece of wood
bothered me, but I could not come up with an
alternative. At least until I made my
weekly visit to T.G.A.G. Sitting at a table
discussing how we were going to start with the
wood alterations when Boris (owner of TGAG),
asked how badly do I want the pressure gage.
Having only some hunting in mind with the
rifle where I don't use the gage anyway I
basically don't need it at all. I just make
sure the rifle is pumped up when I go hunting and
I am good to go for the whole day in most cases.
In that case I was told just use the parts
that cannot be sold for a variety of reasons.
Some have slight blemishes on them or light
scratches but the parts are functional or can be
made to be. So I started, not feeling the
need for more then 12 foot pounds I used the
trigger mechanism from an English version S 300.
There was an air cylinder from a carbine
but that was too short and the E version seemed
too long. AHA, a slightly scratched
cylinder from an H proved to be aesthetically the
ticket, so I installed it. Top section with
the breech is a S 410 carbine to which a barrel
shroud is attached just like in all other
versions. The shroud is attached to these
carbines by TGAG since the factory does not do it.
All this put together makes what you see in
the picture. The caliber I chose is the .22,
since I think the .177 in 12 foot pound
configuration for hunting is sadly lacking for
killing power. Before anyone gets too upset
at the last sentence please keep in mind the
"I think." Simply put, I like the
. 22 caliber for airguns no matter what the topic.
The rifle shoots superbly as expected, but
an added bonus is it will shoot a wide assortment
of pellets very well. This no doubt being
due to the power setting. One more thing I
also needed to know is how many shots do I expect
from this set up. So I started to shoot,
and I shot, and shot, finally I called it quits
after 100 shots. All shots were shot for
group to see at what point the groups were going
to start hitting low. Up to that none did
that mattered. For bench rest accuracy I am
sure a shooter would have filled up around 80
shots. A good guess for that total shots
would be 120 per fill to 200 bar. So now I
have a unique Air Arms rifle in my collection and
I have no need to search for a thumbhole that
fits my anatomy.
Thank you TGAG.
Thanks
Rada
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