One little
head's up here folks about the Colibri powderless ammo:
One day we (kids, wife and I) were shooting Colibris out of a Marlin 39 carbine, a Henry H001, and a couple of NEF Sportsters. As the day progressed, we discovered that a bullet could get stuck in the barrel of a Sportster. The first time it happened was while my son was plinking swingers, silhouettes and Pepsi cans at about 25 yards with one of the Sportsters. The report of each shot was so quiet that it was actually the sound of the hammer strike and the impact with the metal target or Pepsi can that told us when he fired. On this occasion he was on Pepsi cans and when he fired, I heard the hammer strike, but did not hear the "thwak" of a Pepsi can kill-shot.
With this rifle he had shot two or three complete boxes, and was starting on the next. He hadn't missed any targets for a very long time. When the can didn't fall, he turned to me with a puzzled look and said, "I was right on the can dad. I don't see how I missed." He ejected the empty and was about to put another in when I told him to have a look down the barrel. Sure enough, he couldn't see light, and when I blew down I could tell it was plugged. We poked it out with a cleaning rod. As we were doing this, one stuck in the barrel of the other Sportster, being shot by my wife.
It seems there was a build up of some kind (primer residue?) in the barrel after awhile, so we cleaned the bores on both and resumed our play. However we did become much more conscious of what happened when the hammer fell, and we'd clean the bore of each rifle after we'd finished a full box. We had no probs with the lever guns with shorter barrels.
So, my
heads up suggestion: if yer gonna shoot these low powered Colibris out of a full length barrel, keep an eye (and ear) on the shots... and even though we never had a single stuck bullet with either of the shorter barreled lever guns... we did stay conscious of the sounds of the shots with the shorter barrels.
That all being said: I'd guess gendoc's 16.75 barrel shouldn't have a problem.
By the way, I just tried an experiment for yard varmints. I pulled the lead and emptied the powder out of half a dozen Federal bulk 22LR, took one of my Versa Pak rigs, dropped a .22 cal Daisy flat nose (wadcutter type) pellet in the chamber, inserted the primed 22 case behind it, and squeezed it off in my indoor airgun range (the garage) it went "pop-thwak" and I smiled.
I then did the same thing aiming all the rounds at a target pinned to a cardboard box stuffed with phone books just to see and hear what would happen, and how accurate it would be. Well, it was acceptably accurate, but the pellets all bounced off the phone book stuffed box!
When I tried some of the same pellets out of a CO2 pistol they penetrated the box and went just in to the phone book. Seems the air pistol has more power than the primed 22 case.
I tried it again from the Versa Pak with the target on a box with three layers of cloth (from an old sweatshirt) hanging inside - the pellet went through the cardboard, was stopped by the cloth, and fell to the bottom of the box. Cool!
These primer launched flat points should do the (quiet, non lethal) deed should I require yard varmint discouraging in my quiet suburban environment... which so far I've been happy to leave to my dog. She gets the exercise, and the varmints learn which yard to avoid!
Cheers
Kerry
