Breakin' Fifty....

I'd like to draw your attention to Noli's latest project gun. Seems after our blood pressure raising export order run, he needed to do something to relax.

This Caiman started out with a standard tank and a 17 inch shrouded barrel. It now sports an extended Mid tank and reworked internals that help propel 21 grain .22 caliber Kodiak pellets at 1,050 ft/sec, giving it more than 50 Ft-Lbs. The 600cc, 3,000psi reservoir supplies enough air for 40 balanced shots. The new 24 inch HW barrel is still wrapped in a T3 aluminum shroud, and the black/pepper laminate stock was redone to take the medium tank. I believe the proud owner will be using it to compete in the local airgun benchrest competitions that are growing in popularity lately.



Here it is compared to a standard length shrouded Tornado.


A closer look at the butt plate...


The Mid tank it uses is 40.5mm in diameter, which puts it squarely between the standard (32mm) and the Bigboy (48.25mm). This new size reservoir looks promising as it offers a compromise between the size of the standard tank and the capacity of the Bigboy.

The local benchresters better watch out, this monster is the one to beat =)

Targets and Tocino...

Ok the title of this post is an inside joke...but here's a Caiman rifle with our new batch of stocks in silhouette style. New owner is Mr. Hizon who test fired a few groups for us at 37 meters.







6 shots at 37 meters.

A quick vid of a cute little shot string...

Wanted to show a 10 shot excerpt of our testing of the Big Boy Caiman...

Shooting 18 grain Hystan Heavies in .22 cal.

25 cal Bigboy Caiman

We have been experimenting on a .25 caliber Big Boy Caiman with a 20
inch HW barrel for the export market. Noli just reported what he's getting so far:



Pellets: Beeman FTS (19.5g approx)

1st Shot: 904.9fps


20th Shot: 908.8fps


30th Shot: 908.22fps


40th Shot: 900.1fps


50th Shot: 896.0fps


60th Shot: 909.1fps


70th Shot: 890.0fps


Shot to shot dev: 4 - 6 fps

Starting fill: 3,100 psi
End Fill: 2,000 psi


Now, to also make a related theory, we expect the new 19 grain .22 cal Hystans to perform similarly, but with more shots of course because of the added pressure created by the smaller volume of the .22 cal barrel.


Updated, pics up.

Doin The Math....(Big Boy performance numbers)

I hate numbers, but Harry Fuller from OZ was kind enough to do give us the Big Boy Caiman's performance numbers in his post at the Yellow Forum:

According to the data:
220 shots between 923 and 944 fps .. say Mean MV 933.5 fps.
3100 to 1700 psi air usage; say 213.8 to 117.2 approx bar.
96.6 bar pressure drop.
11.6 grain pellet for 22.45 fpe.
Tank capacity 430 cc.

22.45 fpe x 220 shots = 4939 total fpe.
96.6 bar drop x 430 cc = 41538 bar-cc / 4939 = 8.4 bar-cc/ fpe.

AND only 21 fps Extreme Spread for 220 shots at 22.45 fpe with a .177 cal ............

I wonder how good the figures would have been if Noli had only shot say 100 shots and then stopped?....... Wonderful stuff happening just north of Australia. I am old enough to remember when Philippine soldiers were training just 12 miles across the mountains from where this little boy was just getting his first shooting lessons from his dad with a Daisy. I remember those soldiers foot slogging across the rain forest clad mountains and past our house, with not 50 yards and a creek separating us, as they made their way south on some exercise. Those were dark days in our lands.

Good on'ya Chris and Noli...... I am saving my pennies ..... Kind regards, Harry.

You want shot count? I give you shot count! Testing the Big Boy Caiman.

It is one of the few times I'm glad I have jetlag, I was chatting with Noli till 4am because they happened to be testing out the .177 barreled Big Boy Caiman.

They were using our locally made 11.6 grain heavy pellets at a fill of 3100 psi.



First 10 shots blew by at 930 fps. This goes on a roll till the 180th shot with a shot to shot dev of 2-3 fps, and ends up at 935 fps.

Noli gets back to me on chat excitedly telling me he'll try for 200 hehe. 200th shot was breached. 944 fps. We're still only looking at an extreme spread of <20 src="http://www.filarms.com/pics/blog/bigboytest2.jpg">



So I urged him to see where the curve will start to head down, going down to 922 fps at shot no. 220 with 1700 psi remaining.





On that note, he said when they were still pumping it up, they tried a few shots at 1200 psi and it was giving 890 fps. Hehe. Before some minor spring tuning it was spitting lead out at over 1000 fps.



Sorry if we're getting a bit excited, this might be common performance stats (I think) for the huge korean guns and some others but we have to admit, these numbers are a first for any of us in the Philippines. Nobody has ever accomplished this and I'm quite proud of the team right now. At 7.3 lbs WITH SCOPE, I think this bad boy is going to be my carry gun in the field now. =)



And a good morning to everyone...

The Pressure is ON (The Saga of the Big Boy Tank)

Well we finally finished assembling our large U.S. T6 Aluminum tank, presently nicknamed "Big Boy".







It is a monster 430cc tank that dwarfs our standard steel and aluminum tank, giving roughly twice the volume, but with the same weight as our standard sized steel tank. Meaning? Well you hunters out there can now hit the field knowing you have 100 - 150 good shots in your tank, all without having more weight to carry. You can leave your pumps at camp.



The true test of this tank is its durability and safety. We couldn't wait to hook it up to our in-house hydrotester to see what it is made of. The standard test is 1.5x of normal operating pressure, so with our projected 2800 - 3,000 psi max rec fill pressure, our target pressure on the hydro was around 4,500 psi. After a couple of false starts caused by forgotten O-rings, we finally got the big boy hooked up to the hydro and started pumping. We were suprised to exceed 4,500 psi quite quickly, and we stopped for expansion check at 6,000 psi. Our big boy was holding strong.





We waited several hours to see if it held pressure without any dimensional changes, then to check for O-ring failure we went on to 7,000 psi.



It is still holding strong. I guess we can consider our testing a success. The first philippine made big tank pcp is ready for market.



(many thanks to Tim M for his advice on the end plugs and for everything else, we wouldn't have this without him