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Maintenance Tips Maintenance Barrel maintenance is the key to accuracy and proper lubrication is the key to longevity. Maintain your gun to get the most from your airgun dollar. When you keep your bore clean you'll get the best possible accuracy. Lubricants will affect how often barrel cleaning is required. Many shooters use FP10, Ballistol, Mac1 Pellet Wax (KryTech) or Slick 50 Lube 1 on their pellets. This reduces the dreaded leading of the barrel and increases the intervals between cleaning. Springers do not tolerate most lubes on their pellets, but the KryTech wax works great. Barrel Cleaning To clean your barrel, feed the Crown Saver through from the muzzle to the breech and if needed get a paper clip to make a little hook out of to fish the loop out of breech. The patches we sell are the 30 caliber variety in quantities of 100, but you can use your old tee shirt fabric or fine cloth. The Crown Saver is able to clean any barrel you have. You only need to figure out a way of folding the patches so they pull through firmly, but not over tight. The .22 caliber uses two of the patches and the .177 one. Fold them in thirds and then slip through the loop in the Crown Saver and double over to pull through. The best method is to pull half a dozen dry patches to remove the crud. If the barrel is still dirty after a half dozen pulls, then wet a patch with your pellet lube and pull another five dry after the wet one. Repeat till last patch is clean. If you use hard projectiles like Premiers, you will likely need to clean your barrel far more often than if you use softer pellets. To decrease the leading of your gun barrels and increase the intervals between cleaning, we recommend you use pellets treated with the Mac1 Pellet Wax (KryTech). Use Larry Durham's easy method to coat pellets to avoid the dreaded leading of your barrel: Applying Pellet Wax Use an old pellet tin, like a .22 cal screw-on Crosman type, shake the KryTech well, put a thin coating all over the inside of the lid. Pour about 75-100 pellets into the bottom of the tin, screw the lid on, then roll the tin around on its edges and flop it around in the manner of turning a coin over and over. Alternate directions and rotations so the pellets get a good chance at rubbing each other and contacting the underside of the lid. Open the lid, pour another hundred in with the first batch, close up and do the rolling and flopping again for another 15 seconds or more. Let dry with the lid off for at least 10 minutes. A Little Does a Lot The pellet wax is thick, and if sprayed directly into the back of a pellet cavity, it can dry and make the pellet heavier, which will hurt long range accuracy and promote dieseling in Springers. Mac1supplies the dripper bottle for use in pellet guns. It doesn't need to be applied in great volumes, according to LD who did extensive testing of KryTech in spring guns. Even if it is applied lightly every fourth pellet it still has the desired effect of eliminating lead fouling and extending barrel cleaning intervals. Mac1 Pellet Wax in a 4oz dripper bottle in concert with Jack Lewis' Crown Saver and patches has been field-proven by top shooters. We offer these three in a kit for $16 plus shipping. Shoot More/Clean Less A thin layer of the KryTech product extends barrel cleaning intervals by reducing the amount of friction between pellet and bore. The wax gets burnished into the pores of the steel and leaves a shiny finish like a waxed car with all the irregularities of the surface smoothed over. Like a waxed car, the cleaning chore is much easier. You never have to pull more than 5 patches through a conditioned barrel to have it spotless and ready to kick butt again. Lubes will not only condition the bore, but protect it from corrosion, and the wax will let your gun shoot a few FPS more as well. The KryTech dries on the pellet leaving only a waxy film that will not attract dirt and won't attack your breech seals or leave a mess on your shirt or pants from wiping your wet fingers. Makes Guns More Accurate If you treat your equipment with care its performance will reflect it. LD did exhaustive research to find this lube that will work in Springers without dieseling excessively. Since he owns hundreds of airguns he wanted to use a single lube on all of the pellets used in them. Since I'm his bud, he came to me to market it and it has taken some top guys to another level. Shake well before use and keep in a cool dark place. Lubrication For customers with Springers, contact the importer or manufacturer for lubrication requirements for your gun. Some leather sealed guns need chamber oil in the chamber every 500-1000 shots. This should be done at the end of a shooting session and the excess be allowed to soak in for a day or so before the gun is used again. On all Springers, lube the cocking arm and lever pivots to fight friction at these high stress points. The Mac1 Secret Sauce works great for this. Apply spring lube directly to the spring coil. This keeps the area around the piston bearing moist and working freely. Many tunes, such as Venom Power kits, will not benefit from any lubricant besides pivot oil because they have been lubed in assembly and no further internal lube is required. Don't over lube! The most consistent Springers are fairly dry, but they are metering a small amount of lubricant past the main seal each time it is drawn back to cock. Again, always familiarize yourself with the recommended procedure for lubricating your gun to avoid dieseling. If your springer was tuned by a pro it is likely that you will only need to lube the barrel and cocking lever pivots. Consult your tuner. Don't Overdo It - But Do It CO2 guns and PCP's have very few moving parts and virtually no high stress moving pump links etc. so the required lubrication will be minimal. The inner tube of a PCP and CO2 gun should always have a film of light grease or oil to keep corrosion to a minimum. This should be applied during assembly and it is better to let this type gun stay relatively dry to keep lubricants from building up and attracting debris. It is a good idea if you have a steel charging tank on a CO2 gun, to put a few drops of secret sauce in the valve prior to filling to keep a film of oil on the inner tank and help check corrosion. A little grease on the charge adapter fittings and o-rings will insure that the system operates smoothly. Lube It Right or Lose It Lubricate a pump pneumatic in such a way that a film of lubricant can keep the piston cool but it is detrimental to the guns performance and longevity if you lube in front of the piston or in the intake port. That is an air intake hole. Don't confuse that with oil intake. It'll kill a valve to get lubed excessively. The lever pivots are the points that require the most diligence to make the gun last the long haul. If an adequate amount of lubricant is applied to the three or more lever hinge/friction points the gun's piston will have received a residual flow and the system stays happy. I like it when people hydro their valve. It is very good for business. Guns that have virtually no real wear get hydroed all the time. The newer checks can take very little of this abuse and in a lot of cases the older ones can't take it either. So if you don't want to go to the airgun doctor, apply your medicine in the correct place. A well-maintained gun always works better, lasts longer and retains its value. Proper maintenance, barrel cleaning and lubrication is a game of shaving hairs and when someone can put all the elements together at once, and their equipment is in top shape, they can shoot as accurately as humanly possible. Of course you need talent, not that many guys can tell an accurate gun from a really accurate gun. That will always be the case. Sometimes you just have to do what the winners do on blind faith that it must be the right direction.
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