Rifle Care Guide

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 Rifle inner workings comprise of many o-rings (seals), the primary cause of a PCP air rifle leaking is these o-rings becoming hard and brittle. This can be avoided with two simple methods that can be applied to all PCP air rifles;

Method 1 - If you are not going to use your PCP air rifle for two weeks or more then dry fire 4 or 5 shots, once a week. This will help keep the o-rings inside the action moving and stop them going hard and deforming. This slow change in pressure keeps the o-rings from settling in the same position over time. Dry firing your PCP rifle will not cause any damage to its components 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 and you come to put the rifle away. Vary the pressure that you leave the rifle stored. Any pressure between the rifles maximum fill pressure and 100 bar will be safe. Doing this will keep the o-rings inside the action moving and stop them going hard and deformed.

Please 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 have worked 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 every time you come to fill the rifle. You can very easily cause your PCP air rifle to leak if even a small piece of dirt/dust/fibre gets into your fill port, it is good practice to also make a quick visual inspection of the fill port before inserting the fill probe and charging (filling) your rifle.

Following these methods will mean you have increased the service interval of the rifle, users following these simple tips typically only require their rifle to be serviced after 5-10 years. A regularly used PCP rifle is a happy rifle!

Leaks caused by lack of use, quick fill leaks from contamination or general poor care of your PCP air rifle are not be covered by our warranty. It is easy to see when a rifle has been stood unused for extended periods, the condition of the internal o-rings is a clear indicator of this.

Spring rifles

Spring rifle care is pretty straight forward, the one rule we have is just use it! the more you use a spring rifle 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 components, so never dry fire your spring rifle under any circumstances!

Barrel Cleaning & Care

Prior to cleaning your barrel make sure any 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 or in the manufacturer's documentation. Removing a RAT Works shroud will not affect your your lifetime warranty.

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 instances 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.

When using 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, some lead may be present from final testing of the rifle, this is typically with JSB pellets.

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, almost all 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! More so than with any other brand of rifle we work on.

For anything else please contact us for more details.

Pellet Choice

The pellets shown on your air rifle report are what we have used to set the power on your rifle. At sub12 we use JSB 10.34gr 'Heavies' in .177 and JSB Jumbo exacts 15.9gr in .22, these pellets are the most power efficient pellet for that calibre and power, meaning if you choose to use another type or weight of pellet your rifle will not 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.

Warranty

Our Warranty on all air rifle we have work on or sold as new is as follows: 
- A lifetime warranty on all parts fitted by us such as our Tench regulator, quick fill end or other tuning parts we supply and fit. 

- Up to 12 months warranty is given on o rings that we have supplied and fitted to an air rifle. O rings are a part that degrades over time, but by following the rifle care guide the user can get upto 5 years out of an air rifle before it will require servicing again.

For full warranty details please click here to see our terms & conditions