Multiple stroke spring-piston air rifle?

When I was growing up, we had a Benjamin [Franklin] pneumatic pump air rifle. Air pressure stored was dependent upon the number of pump strokes used.

All spring-piston air rifles I have read about - admittedly I do not keep up with spring-piston air rifle technology - use a single stroke to cock its piston. Are there, or have there been, spring-piston air rifles that incorporate the ability to use multiple strokes to increase piston's release pressure. This has always appeared to be a moderate cost method to significantly enhance velocity-power of this technology.

Increasing the power of a Springer makes them progressively harder to shoot accurately.... This puts a practical upper limit on power, and in fact the nicest Springers to shoot are in the 12-16 FPE range....

Bob

Aha!




[he typed]

There are pumpers, and there are spring pistons, and the one can not do what the other does.

My Sheridan will probably do mid 600's fps with 8 pumps but mostly I target shoot in the basement in the winter with just 2.

My Hatsan 135 is a QE (suppressed) Vortex (Nitro gas ram instead of a spring) and it is pushing 1000 fps with 14.3 Crossman Premier Hollow Points. One ragged hole in my short range basement target range.

The Hatsan only takes a single pump, cocking it again does nothing. But it really needs no more.

I actually 6 months after buying it bought its little brother the 95 also in .22 and vortex because it was less work to cock. The big 135 is a beast. Takes real muscle power.

Most nowdays seem to go for the PCP (Pre-charged Pneumatic) and tether to a tank. Lets them shoot lots with no real energy expended.

But I have to wonder if it robs some of the enjoyment of shooting.

With either the pumper or the spring/vortex you earn those shots. To me that means I take just a moment longer, make sure they are on target.

But I don't have a PCP, I have stayed away from the dark side.

Now if someone made a modern pumper like the Sheridan, with a really good two stage pump, capable of pushing a 14.3 grain pellet up to that 1000 fps mark with just 2-3 pumps. I'd spend some money on that.

Seems to me there was a two stage cocking spring piston underlever rifle made decades ago. Don't remember any details. I think it was on the Pyramid air airgun blog site.
One full swing half cocked the piston another full stroke finished the cocking cycle.

IIRC there was also a spring piston rifle or pistol that used an extremely strong spring and the underlever acted like a bumper jack to compress it with multiple strokes.

A very powerful single stroke pneumatic prototype was demonstrated on youtube years ago. This rifle had two very long levers one on each side that were pushed down at the same time to compress the air.
There was no separate valve body with chamber, the bottom of the pump tube served that function.

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Multiple stroke spring-piston air rifle?

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every Spring-Piston air rifle I have ever owned (or read about for that matter), requires only one stroke to compress the spring (fyi you are not compressing air or compressing a piston). When the trigger is pulled, the spring is released, pushing the piston through a chamber and almost simultaneously, compresses air and that air pushes the Pellet through the barrel.

Now there maybe something I've never heard of, as mentioned by Multigunner, but it's surely a exception to what 99.9% of what is out there, that is called Spring-Piston air rifle.

That's my 2¢

The simplest method to reduce cocking effort is an extension of the under lever or barrel to improve leverage.
It would work best with an under lever since that much stress on a barrel might damage it over time.

Beeman imported the Dual Magnum, a 22 cal gas ram single or double stroke air rifle. It was manufactured by Theobin I believe. 1 stroke was like 730 and 2 was 820 fps. I haven't shot mine in ages. I think there was 150-175 units made. Spendy but bueatiful fit, finish and accurracy.

There was also a dual cylinder springer made over across the pond by and ingenious guy. The seals and springs were set 180 degrees so one would cancel the other iut so to speak. Always wanted to try one of them out too.

I have a Beeman P-1 air pistol that has a two-position stop on the cocking mechanism, for low- or high-power. I guess it could be considered a multistroke cocking mechanism for someone without the arm strength to pull the lever all the way the first time. But that isn’t the real intent of the design. Like the pneumatics (and some CO2 guns), the point was variable power for different shooting situations.