DIY: Webley Senior air pistol care

[trammway]

Guns are a fascination of all boys, it starts from our childhood when we first cried for water guns. There is a saying “When Boy’s grow their toys too”, this is exactly what happens to every men. We have an instinct skill came naturally to hunt our prey, though the human created laws and rules make living easy for some, at times the same laws prevent the human from having the nature given skills e.g. hunting skills.

For me buying and keeping a gun is a dream as many of the 1 billion people in India. About a month back I decided to buy a gun when I first touched a tommy air rifle owned by a friend of mine in Coimbatore. With in a week I had myself equipped with an IHP National 35 .22cal rifle, but I didn’t ready to give up what I had in my mind. Hence hunting started to get better weapons. But why? Ofcourse to participate in target shooting competition and pest control (only varmints)

My search to imported guns through me a bomb in their price tag and decided to settle with what is available with in my budget. There you go; I got myself into a deal to own a Made in England Webley Senior .177 cal of yester years. The seller informed me of some problem in the main spring, I had myself found main spring available from London and next minute I placed to order. The spring from abroad reached me well before the gun arrived from with in the country.

After getting both the gun and spring, at first I tried to shoot the gun with a pellet, but the pellet didn’t even move a millimeter from the barrel mouth. That is expected as the seller told me before, now how to fix the new spring as I don’t wanted to take risk of loosing something out from the pistol with a unknown gunsmith. My friend Thirtha from this forum is a busy person hence, I had little hesitation to ask him if he can help me with fixing the spring.

So called him in the afternoon to get some information about working with a spring gun, and he was encyclopedia for me and I had the confidence after having a brief chat with him over the phone.

Webley Senior that made the biggest impression of hand gun, all-steel air pistol the Webley Senior was described in the internet as a relatively easy air pistol to disassemble and tune.

So I decided to replace the worn-out spring and learn how the air pistol is constructed. Though I have a brand new breech seal I will try that in another day after fixing the spring and try few shots with the gun.

I remembered the safely warning from internet for the Webley Senior as below:

CAUTION: Before beginning this work, ask yourself if you should be doing this. The Webley is a spring gun and can throw its parts with enough force to injure people and damage property. If, after reading the following procedure completely, you do not feel confident that you can do the work safely, DON'T ATTEMPT IT! Have a qualified airgunsmith do the work for you.

First thing first I had checked if THE PISTOL IS UNCOCKED AND THERE IS NOTHING IN THE BARREL!

Pistol disassembly:

I suppose to be removing the left hand side screw in the end cap first ( The left screw is not there but the gun had the screw's leftover in the end cap, the left screw is to anchor the end of the screw on the right.), but I couldn’t find it in my pistol. I think it was lost during its age. So the right hand side screw which is bit lengthier and works like an axle around which the barrel rotates during cocking. When the gun is reassembled, this screw will be specially lubricated to help with the workhorse like load it is going to have.

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With both screws out, the barrel lug was out from the end cap slot. Then I was pulling the cocking linkage backwards and the enlarged hole at the breech end of the cocking slot ejected the barrel assembly from pistol.

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As both screws removed, the barrel lug can be pried out of its slot. Once free, you can move the barrel link to disconnect the cocking linkage.

CAUTION: releasing the mainspring of the pistol. Took every precaution to keep the end cap under control at all times, as it can suddenly fly off the gun with enough force to cause serious injury and damage! If YOU ARE TRYING TO DO THIS WITH YOU WEBLEY TAKE ALL THE PRECAUSION TO PREVENT ANY ACCIDENTAL DAMAGES TO PERSON AND PROPERTY.

After the barrel lug removed, it's possible to unscrew the end cap from the receiver. In fact I could do that with bare hand, just in case if it is tight use a broad screw driver or wrench handle to fix in the canal and rotate to loose the end cap. The screw thread in end cap is normal right-hand twist thread. (I was suggested by my friend to lubricate the end cup with thinner if it was jammed due to prolonged use and I did the same before staring of this disassembly project)

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The end cap unscrews from the frame.

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When the end cap is down to the last few threads holding it in the receiver, it's time to take matters into hand. I used a pile of cloth as energy absorber if incase the end cap fly out due to spring tension. I’m sure that I can handle the power output of the spring as I just decided it with the chocking tension. To my surprise nothing happen when I completed the last thread and the end cup just came out like a cap of a bottle. Wanted to know why ?

to be continued...

[tirths]

Great going buddy! Haven't seen such report for a long time. Call me if you need to.

[trammway]

Note the length of the mainspring to answer the question why the spring didn't jump out when I first opened the end cup.

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This is the picture shows after I removed the main spring from the gun, there's still a piston in this gun. The end cap has the spring guide as integral part.

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Removal of the piston from the gun is required for cleaning and lubrication purposes; hence I pushed it with a screw driver through the cocking slot. I have to keep the trigger fully depressed as the sear must be retracted for the piston to fully clear it.

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See a ring of steel just behind the piston head. This is actually the catch on which the sear rests when the pistol is cocked. If I don't have the trigger fully pulled, there's no room for this ring to clear the sear, and the piston simply refuses to come out.

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Here you can see the famous piston ring Webley used to have. The flange behind it is what the sear holds onto. My piston ring seems to have its age marks on it; I will try importing them in my next consignment, for now I’m good to go. (Picture below was taken after degrease the piston)

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the Webley Senior piston ring, which is the piston seal on this gun. It’s just like the piston and rings used in automobile engines. I read it from the internet that this ring is made of beryllium copper, an alloy selected for its longevity in applications where flexing is required.

I’m done with the disassembling task of my Webley Senior now time to clean, this is what I had before me to do my job. (Also check the differences between original spring imported from London with the one came along with the pistol, that explains it all)

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Wanna see the output of my cleaning work ? Yeah, you have already seen the piston after cleaned, how about the barrel and other parts ? hold on to this thread..

to be continued....

[rsuresh]

Siva ,

I have never imagined you could learn about the internals in a short span and you have become the real gunsmith now. Hats off to you pal for your true interest with the guns...


--Suresh.R

[trammway]

A clean thinner bath to the pistol, piston and endcup assemblies removed all the oil/grease and worked well on the metal surfaces. Tip from Tirtha was that the thinner will not harm the blueing in the outer surface (good tip right?)

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I poured some thinner in the barrel and wiped with a soft cotton cloth, at the end of degreasing this is how my thinner bowl looked.

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See the cleaned / decreased items, post your comment how is the spring chamber looks now ?

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This where the .177 is stamped on the barrel, looks neat and clean.

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The spring was earlier cleaned with soft cloth and thinner before applying lubrication on the surface.

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All clean now, what next ? Lubrication of parts to be inserted.

to be continued...

[trammway]

I have applied some moly grease on the brand new spring, piston assembly and spring guide, I know your query, from where I got the moly grease? that is your question right ? That’s right, I got the moly grease from my Toyota Landcruiser’s brand new CV joint pack.

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I fixed all the parts in the same way as I removed them, I hope you noticed that the spring which I removed from the gun was not original Webley Spec and it shows that the previous owner tried to do some R&D with it, and replaced a much smaller spring due to that same reason why the gun was unable to move the pellet for even a millimeter out.


I had tough time in fixing the spring and end cap as the new spring got enough tension and I also didn’t have any special tool to compress and screw and the end cup. The only thing I had with me is the leather hand gloves that is part of my Jeep’s recovery kit. It was handy and worked well to compress and screw with the end cup.

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At last I could complete my Gun smith task and fixed the issue, the first chocking after the spring replaced itself showed me a big difference, as some of you know the chocking of Webley Senior air pistol is done with the barrel going up and outwards (see the pic below)

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Here you see my first two pellets that I shot after fixing the new spring, man I’m really thrilled the way it worked.

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The grips in my pistol (both sides looked damaged, left side bottom corner is cracked and righside got a full middle crack and seems to be attached with some glue. During the first cocking action the right hand side grip parted with two pieces. There you go I had to fix that one with anabond and looks ok now. This is also now added to my next import wishlist.

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With this I'm completing my first ever gun smith work post, Soon expect the hand carved (I'm going to try myself doing it) grips that is getting fixed to the Webley Senior. Of course I didn't forget about the task to fix breech seal, both of these works will follow after a week or two. Stay tuned...

My special thanks to Thirtha, He helped me with lots of guidance during my first ever gun smith job.

For information about power and accuracy of this gun, please watch out my future posts in Air Gun section.