Maintenance of air rilfe

Odysseus

Hi all, just collected my Gamo .22 today, I was hoping to get some advice around cleaning and maintenance. I have fired a fair few guns but never had to look after one, so I'm a tad lost here.

I got some VFG-quick cleaning pellets and some Phillips barrel cleaner, soak the pellet in that and fire through.

I also got some Brunox Turbo Spray which I under stand is for the external parts and barrel, quick spray and wipe off was what I was told.

It's a synthetic stock do I need anything for that or will a good wipe down do?

I was wondering is there and thing else I should be looking at, for example do I need some type of cleaning rod to push through the barrel or are the pellets enough.

Any advise welcome.

Cheers

Sparks

There's two kinds of VFG pellets. Solid ones, designed to be fired through the airgun, and ones with a central hole which mount on a cleaning rod.
I've never heard of anyone soaking one of the solid ones in anything before firing through. I wouldn't do it myself - you're stuffed if it deforms and jams up the barrel on you.
The ones with holes come in two types - ordinary and "intensive" (ie. abrasive, for deeper cleaning).

For my .177, I'd fire one cleaning pellet through it after every match or proper training session, which means roughly once every 75 to 100 pellets. That's
probably excessive

Once every six months to a year, I'll take the cleaning rod to it (only that infrequently because I'm lazy and because it's fiddly). There's a blue cleaning paste we use made by VFG. I'd normally use one intensive felt pellet for a good scrub of the barrel, then a normal pellet coated in the blue paste, then another intensive, and then ordinary felt pellets till you don't see blue paste and dirt on the pellet when it comes out. Then once more with the intensive pellets until they don't have dirt on them when they come out. And that's that. (edit: Erk, not completely that, you put a little light oil on a pellet, run it through the barrel, then one more dry pellet to get rid of excess. Otherwise you get rust. And for pete's sake, don't use regular oil, the air pressure does bad things to it. Like setting it on fire or worse. There are specific oils for airguns, including one made by Gamo - use that instead).

Mostly though, your most important cleaning bit is to get a cloth and wipe down the rifle after every time you touch it. And linseed oil or beeswax on the stock every few months (you've got a synthetic stock, so you don't do that, just wipe it down).

Odysseus

Sparks wrote: »

There's two kinds of VFG pellets. Solid ones, designed to be fired through the airgun, and ones with a central hole which mount on a cleaning rod.
I've never heard of anyone soaking one of the solid ones in anything before firing through. I wouldn't do it myself - you're stuffed if it deforms and jams up the barrel on you.
The ones with holes come in two types - ordinary and "intensive" (ie. abrasive, for deeper cleaning).

For my .177, I'd fire one cleaning pellet through it after every match or proper training session, which means roughly once every 75 to 100 pellets. That's
probably excessive


Once every six months to a year, I'll take the cleaning rod to it (only that infrequently because I'm lazy and because it's fiddly). There's a blue cleaning paste we use made by VFG. I'd normally use one intensive felt pellet for a good scrub of the barrel, then a normal pellet coated in the blue paste, then another intensive, and then ordinary felt pellets till you don't see blue paste and dirt on the pellet when it comes out. Then once more with the intensive pellets until they don't have dirt on them when they come out. And that's that.

Mostly though, your most important cleaning bit is to get a cloth and wipe down the rifle after every time you touch it. And linseed oil or beeswax on the stock every few months (you've got a synthetic stock, so you don't do that, just wipe it down).

Cheers Sparks,

That's what the guy I got it off said around the pellets, it just says on the box Quick Cleaning pellets. It doesn't say intensive or anything.

The instructions are fire 2 dry ones through for normal cleaning.

Then for thorough cleaning soak 2 in oil and shoot through one after the other. Then fire dry pellets throughuntil the come out clean

I guess a cleaning rod would be easy enough to pick up?

I was wondering should I have gotton a manuel or anything with it? Though I noticed I can down load the for the Gamo website.

Thanks I will try to find out anout those intensive pellets.

Sparks

They're the fire-through ones allright, but like I said, I wouldn't fire them through covered in oil (and please, please, please don't use regular oil). I just use them as a quick clean after use rather than as a proper deep clean (with airguns you don't need to worry about cleaning so much, you just want to ensure you don't get a buildup of that oil/grease/dust gunk mixture in the barrel - in fact, wiping it down every time you pick it up is the biggest contributor to long life for them).

And a cleaning rod and pellets are easy to pick up, if you can't get them in the local dealers, you can order them online (no licence or anything silly like that to worry about) and have them posted to you, along with the cleaning paste. They're not terribly expensive. If you've room to store it, get the one-piece rod rather than the multi-segment one. But you won't use them more than once every six months, if even that.

Odysseus

Sparks wrote: »

They're the fire-through ones allright, but like I said, I wouldn't fire them through covered in oil (and please, please, please don't use regular oil). I just use them as a quick clean after use rather than as a proper deep clean (with airguns you don't need to worry about cleaning so much, you just want to ensure you don't get a buildup of that oil/grease/dust gunk mixture in the barrel - in fact, wiping it down every time you pick it up is the biggest contributor to long life for them).

And a cleaning rod and pellets are easy to pick up, if you can't get them in the local dealers, you can order them online (no licence or anything silly like that to worry about) and have them posted to you, along with the cleaning paste. They're not terribly expensive. If you've room to store it, get the one-piece rod rather than the multi-segment one. But you won't use them more than once every six months, if even that.

Cheers, I pick them up, there is a shop quick near my work in Dublin I'll try there. I fired a soaked one through before I posted, it went through ok but I'll go with advise from now.

I was a bit catious about firing a fry one through a it was difficult to push into the barrel, I was afaird it would get stuck. However, it was barrel oil I soaked it in as that was the advise I got in the shop.

Regrading the general clean after use what would you suggest, spray some oil [the one I got for this was Brunox turbo spray] on to a cloth and just wipe the metal parts over with it? Would that do the job?

Sparks

Odysseus wrote: »

Regrading the general clean after use what would you suggest, spray some oil [the one I got for this was Brunox turbo spray] on to a cloth and just wipe the metal parts over with it? Would that do the job?

Yup, that'd do fine. Put the cloth in the safe with the rifle (if you can tie it in there with a yard or so of cord it'll always be handy) and don't use it for anything else, and after a few uses, you can stop spraying it every time and just spray it with the oil once every few times.

fish slapped

Nice one Sparks , nice honest helpful info that's what this place is all about.

FS

Tom Donnavan

fish slapped wrote: »

Nice one Sparks , nice honest helpful info that's what this place is all about.

FS

+1