pelletcaster

You're right. I was perfectly aware of the risk when I did it the first time and another three times after. So far I was lucky but looking for better less risky ways anyway. So thanks for for your advice.

It's just 6mm of soft steel (not hardened). Don't have a lathe so I just take a nice electrical hand drill, new qualitiy drill bit, high speed and little pressure. Unbure (chamfer) the edges in and out little bit just to get rid of burs. Easy peasy. Got a nice pillar drill recently. Will try it out next time.

My pleasure. The German "F"-version comes with 2,6 mm TP. I somewhere read about 2,8 mm beeing sold in UK but have no proof. For a "genuine" UK sub-12fpe a TP of 3,2 mm will fit perfectly if you are using all the other parts (piston, spring, top had, spring guide) unchanged. Going FAC a TP of 3,4 - 3,5 mm will do. Don't go further.

I shoot/shot all of them. OOB the LGU is by far the better rifle as the HW97. And cheaper too. To bring a HW97 to the same technical standard as the LGU (double bearings each on compression tube and piston) you will need a V-Glide tune that will cost you a fortune. You are based in UK so I would suggest to take a TX into consideration. OOB technically better than a HW97 and espeacially with a walnut stock much more beautiful. Metalwork IMHO better too. If you want to fettle / tune you can bring all of the three to a standard that will outshoot the man behind the trigger easily. LGU - trigger (polish and install metal tuning blade) and transfer port (for 12fpe - if not already done - open to 3,2 to 3,4 mm)- HW97 - trigger polish, deburring and polishing the whole system and as written above a V-Glide tune. TX200 (HC) - trigger polish. Generally all three will profit from a degrease and regrease with proper MoS2-grease/paste (I have no experience with Krytox so far but think it is highly overrated) and from my own experience a VORTEK PG2 tuning kit will work a treat in any of them. Anyway you should try to shoot the different models before making any decissions. At least get them in your hands and shoulder them to get some feeling what suits you better. Happy shooting.

I tuned a HW30s .177 with some shortened parts of a partly used 25mm HW50 Vortek-kit. Spring, parts of rear guide, top hat and Vortek piston seal. Clean, debur, polish and MoS2-regrease as always plus some barrel bore polish awa trigger tune. Resulting in 8+fpe with any tested pellet (836! measured shots with 29 different pellet types and/or sizes) and a very nice shooting manner. Best pellet was JSB Exact Express 4,52 / 7,9 gr (381 measured shots) producing 8,5 fpe / 697,6 fps / max dev 2,8% / std dev 3,8 fps Scoped I could easily hold 20mm groups at 30 m shooting seated with foreshaft on stockhand on Caldwell but maybe the small gun was little bit over powered. Main problem for accuracy at this airgun was the ball barrel lock. Initially it wasn't closing repeatingly properly - as I had to find out due to improper fitting of cocking rod thus resulting in galling at the underside of the sys-tube and early stopping of barrel locking process. Quite some grinding off the uper sides of the cocking links solved the problem. Still think that this gun was quite a lemon but after a lot of work and pellet testing it shot quite decently. Anyway - no intention to touch one of those anymore.