Rifle Care Guide

Whether you have had a Regulator and Tune, a full service or you have bought a RAT works edition rifle, looking after your rifle is an important part of its ownership.

PCP Air Rifles

PCP Air Rifles have many o-rings inside their inner workings, the primary cause of PCP air rifle leaks is these o rings becoming hard and brittle. This can be avoided by two simple methods that can be applied to all PCP air rifles.

Method 1 - If you are not going to use your PCP air rifles for two weeks or more then dry fire 4-5 shots, once a week. This will help keep the o-rings inside the action moving and stop them going hard and deforming. The slow change in pressure keeps the o-rings from settling in the same position. Dry firing your rifle won't cause any damage to its workings and is perfectly safe to do so. (PCP ONLY - NEVER DRY FIRE A SPRING POWERED RIFLE)

Method 2 - Each time you have used the rifle an you come to put the rifle away. Vary the pressure that you leave the rifle stored at each time you have used it. Any pressure between the rifles maximum fill pressure and 100 bar will be safe. Doing this will again keep the o-rings inside the action moving and stop them going hard and deformed.

On top of this you will need to regularly check the seal on your fill probe/filling adaptor. If the seals on the fill probe are hard, cracked, have chunks out of them or are missing they will need to be replaced. For the air rifles we work on we can supply replacement o-rings. Fill probes and fill ports should be kept clean and dust free and should also be inspected before use. You can easily cause your PCP air rifle to leak if a piece of dirt/dust/fibre gets into your fill port, so also check the fill port before charging the rifle.

Doing one or both of these methods will mean you should not need a service for 5-10 years. A regularly used PCP rifle is a happy rifle!

Leaks caused by lack of use, quick fill leaks from contamination or poor care of your PCP air rifle will not be covered by our warranty.

Spring rifles

Spring rifle care is pretty straight forward, the one rule we have is just use it! the more use a spring rifle gets the better it gets. The only thing not to do with a spring rifle is NEVER DRY FIRE IT. Dry firing it will result in damaged or broken internal parts so never dry fire your spring rifle under any circumstances!

Barrel Cleaning & Care

Before cleaning your barrel make sure all shrouds/moderators/air strippers are removed before you attempt the process. Instructions on how to remove any of these should have been given when you purchased them. Removing a RAT Works shroud will not affect your your lifetime warranty unless something is damaged.

When it comes to cleaning your barrel, we recommend using a pull through kit with dry patches. We DO NOT recommend using any oils, lubricants or barrel cleaning products in your barrel. We have had many incidents over the years where these have actually caused an issue with the rifle. If you feel the need to give your barrel a deep clean we recommend that you use a few drops of 'brake cleaner' or a similar Tetrachloroethylene liquid as this flashes off quickly leaving minimal residue. Always follow up your cleaning by pulling through 2-3 dry patches afterwards to ensure a dry and clean finish to the barrel.

With the pull through kits you should continue pulling patches through until the patches come out clean with no lead dust, grease or solvent on them. 

All rifles sold by or worked on at The RAT Works have their barrels cleaned and checked before they are signed off for return to the customer.

Anschutz 9015 & 9015 HP Models

As well as the the points mentioned previously in this article, there are a couple of other things you will need to do to keep your rifle performing after the Tench conversion.

1) We recommend filling your rifle to 180 bar and shooting down to 100, we have found this is area that the rifle will perform best at after having the conversion work done.

2) Barrels should be cleaned after 100-150 shots, Anschutz barrels prefer to be clean to perform well.

3) Check your breech seal regularly, if this is contaminated or has chunks missing out of it this will cause rifle performance issues.

For anything else please contact us for more details.

Pellet Choice

The pellets shown on your air rifle report are what we use, to set the power on your air rifle. At sub 12 we use JSB 10.34 gr Heavies .177 and JSB Jumbo exacts 15.9 gr .22, these pellets are used as they are the most power efficient pellet for that calibre and power, meaning if you choose to use another type or weight of pellet you won't go over 12 ft/lbs.

Each air rifle prefers different types/weights of pellets, pellet testing will have to be done by the user to find what pellet the air rifle prefers. 

If you have recently had a different regulator fitted by us or a service and set up, we recommend putting 2-4 magazines through your air rifle to re-lead the barrel back in. Once this has been done try the pellets you were using before you sent the air rifle to us for work. 

By us fitting a different regulator or under taking a service and set up, the air delivered to your pellet when fired, is delivered differently than before. This can mean the air rifles pellet preference is different and hence why retesting with different pellets as well as the pellets you were using before is important.

If your pellet groups at say 30yards are larger or wilder than before, then we would recommend trying different pellets. This could be a different brand, type of of pellet, pellet weight or even die number.

 
Below you will find the fill pressure and expected shot count after work has been completed.