My collection of airguns

Here is the Red Ryder inscription on the gun stock.

Here is the inscription on the receiver of the Red Ryder BB gun.

As I grew up I wanted an air gun with more power as the Red Ryder BB was only rated at 350 FPS. When I became old enough to purchase my own air gun I bought a Crosman .357 replica pellet gun that used a CO2 (Carbon Dioxide) "Powerlet" to propel the pellet down its rifled barrel. It was and still is a good pellet gun, propelling a pellet down the barrel at about 450FPS. The problem was it looked too much like a .357 Magnum firearm that I was afraid that while target shooting the police might think that I had the real thing. I only shoot it indoors. Here is a picture of my .357 pellet gun. It was manufactured in the mid 1980's by Crosman. As I said, it is truly a good replica of a Smith and Wesson .357 Magnum handgun and is made of cast metal which gives it good weight.

Notice the metal cylinder where the grip is removed, this is where the CO2 "Powerlet" is mounted.

The Crosman .357 pellet gun uses .177 caliper pellets that are mounted in a clip. The clip rotates like in a real revolver hand gun.

Crosman inscription on the receiver of the .357 pellet gun.

Here is picture of a vintage CO2 powered Series 166 BB gun repeater manufactured by P.Y. Hahn Manufacturing company of Fairport New York. It was my uncle's before he past away.

Here is the inscription in the Series 166 reciever

Through some research I have determined that it was manufactured between 1958 and 1971. The interesting thing is that it came with a Crosman manual. Apparently a gentleman named Frank Hahn purchased Crosman from the Crosman Brothers in 1924 and renamed the company as the "Crosman Rifle Company" I am not sure why Crosman was still branding their BB guns under the P.Y. Hahn Manufacturing well into the 1960's.

Actually, I think I narrowed down the date of manufacture of my vintage Series 166 BB gun to the early 1960s, if you look closely at the bottom of the instruction manual that came with it there is an indication that it was printed in 12/63 The BB gun was probably manufactured around this date plus of minus a year. So it was probably manufactured between 1962 and 1964.

Here is exploded view plus parts list for the Series 166 BB Gun.

Wow, here are some vintage carbon dioxide "Powerlets" and a vintage box of BBs that came with the Series 166 BB gun, they are probably about 40 years old. I am afraid to use the vintage CO2 cartridges.

I purchased this Birchwood Casey Airgun Target from Amazon, it works great! Hitting the lower targets causes them to swing up so that they are no longer visible. Once you hit all four lower targets you plink the top target and it resets the four lower targets. This prevents you from having to do a lot of walking to reset your targets. You must have a pretty powerful airgun, between 500 FPS to 1000 FPS for this target to work correctly and they recommend only uses pellets and not BBs. Actually if you don't have a powerful enough pellet gun you can still use this target as you will hear the plink of the pellet hitting the target and will see the target swing slightly when it is hit.

My next purchase will most likely be a Crosman Model 760B Pumpmaster air rifle. It retails for 39.99 at Amazon, and has the ability to be a 18 shot BB repeater or single shot .177 pellet. At 10 pumps it will propel a BB or Pellet at 600 FPS which is high enough to be used with the Birchwood Casey Airgun Target. The barrel is rifled to increase accuracy. Crosman has been producing this air rifle since 1966 so you know that all of the bugs have been worked out of the design. Since all of the research and development of this design has been paid for years ago, Crosman can produce this precision airgun at a low cost passing the savings on to customers. In 1972 Crosman produced their one millionth Model 760. Click here to view the history of Crosman and how the Model 760 fits into Crosman's history.

I haven't changed much; I am still a boy at heart. Maybe my wife will give me a Model 760B for Christmas ;-)