About Charlie

Hi...first let me say, my real name is Bob Werner and I live in South Carolina, but I'm also known as Charlie or CharlieDaTuna, a pseudonym.

Charlie is a guy, who blew out a shoulder a several years ago requiring rotator cuff surgery, also had open heart surgery, gall bladder yanked out, kidney stones, and some other bodily malfunctions and was beginning to run out of steam don't ya understand. Now I had this Benjamin pump that I had to crank 6 or 8 times. It was powerful and very accurate. But crankin' that ol' Benji I had was gettin to be a real hassle don't ya know, but I sure liked shootin' her.

Then a few years ago I goes into this gun shop here in Greenville to buy me some pellets and I got to talking to the owner . He starts telling me about this pellet gun he bought from the Sports Authority store called a Gamos that you could pump one time and it would shoot about 1000 fps. "Really…1000 fps in one pump?" "Aw go on, can't be" I tells him. "Ain't possible" says I. "Yep" he says. "One pump. Some people calls em a springer, I heerd."

Well, I paid him for my pellets and went out the door and thinking as I walked to my old pickup: "Now this fella is probably in there laughing his fool head off at me thinkin' I bought his story. Hmmmm….but…..what if it's true?"

Now a course you understand that I gotta see the impossible for myself.

Now that's how big a dummy I wuz at the time. But I wuz about to git a hole lots smarter and that's when and how I got myself into this mess.

Anyhow, I carries myself down to the Sports Authority store that afternoon and shure nuff, just like he said, they had one of them thar Gamos guns he was a talking about. I looked and I listened and don't ya know I bought me one of them Gamos right then and there, I did.

AND NOW I WUZ ABOUT GET HOOKED LIKE A CATFISH SUCKIN' ON BLOOD BAIT.

OK, so much for the theatrics.

I did buy the Gamo 220 with the scope in .177. That's all they had. After I it got home I was surprised at how hard it was to cock. It had 42 pounds of cocking effort, but it was powerful and accurate. I decided to get on the internet and find out more about these air guns and was truly amazed at the information that was available, and eventually ran into James Kitching's Forums. Now there is the place to learn about Air Guns and gunning.

I returned the Gamo (because of the cocking effort) and I bought 2 B-19s (a little half the effort), one in .177 and the other in .22. Shortly after I got them I had a problem with the .22. It was very twangy and felt low in power. I wondered what the problem was and started researching on the forums. I learned about seals, springs, lubes, the do's and don'ts, safety, spring compressors and on and on. I am very mechanically inclined and wanted to learn all I could about the B-19s and air guns in general. I began to realize there were many people using a lot of different approaches to meet the same ends. But I started gleaning information and following whom I considered the real pros, like Russ Best, James, Steve in NC, Jim Maccari, Gene Sunday and a few others.

Then I started building a spring compressor that I had designed in my head. I didn't know just how strong the spring compressor had to be, but what I built will never ever fail for sure. I asked Steve-in-NC and he told me a spring compressor can never be too strong especially if you're working on magnums. And that is so important. You ought to see the contraption he presented on the forum. Uses a scissors jack for compressing.

I ordered parts from Jim Maccari and Gene Sunday. Gene Sunday is a wonderful guy. He spent several hours on the phone with me plus a lot of e-mail and provided me with a wealth of information. He also makes specialized parts, like bronze tophats and such, and he has made specialty parts for me. And if you want good or special springs and special lubes and seals, see Jim Maccari.

I finally tore the first one down and was shocked to see how poorly the parts were stamped and finished, very rough, to say the least. The piston seal had chunks gouged out of it, probably during assembly, and a few steel shavings in it, as well, and it was missing the tophat. The cylinder walls were a little rough and very dirty looking lubricant. It turned out to be an excellent first gun to learn on.

Well, I did a job on that B-19 .22. I was really proud and I didn't have a chrony yet but I could sure tell the difference. Unbelievable. Then I did the B-19 .177. I went on to purchase a B-4-2 and then two Fast Deers (Norinco KL-3B), and rebuilt them. I learned a lot from those guns as well as the Benji and an old Crosman my wife likes to play with.

Well, that's it in a nutshell and how I got into tuning these Chinese guns. I love em'. I've learned over a period of time and a lot more guns how to make these inexpensive guns into something that is more powerful, more consistent, more accurate and more fun to shoot and without a great deal of expense.

I've done a lot of tunes on these Chinese guns since I started, and learned that you can make an inexpensive gun into a fine machine, a poor gun into a better gun and a good gun into a great gun, and that some will turn out better than others. In fact, it's my personal opinion, that you can take an $80.00 gun and make it perform nearly as well as a $400-$500 dollar gun and in many cases even better. Just take a look at these testimonials. And I've learned from Gene Sunday and Russ Best that when you build up a gun for a customer, you build it up like you were doing it for yourself. Every customer tune-up I do, I do it as if it was mine and I was going to keep it forever. Now these guns may not be as pretty as the high dollar guns, but pretty don't punch holes in cans, hit bottle caps, or knock squirrels out of trees, but if you like pretty, you can do that to them too

SPECIAL ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

First, I would like to thank all of the good people on all of the forums for their questions, contributions and the sharing of information and ideas that they make available on those various forums. It is these people that make the airgun world an interesting and fun place to be a part of, a great place for fun, sport and hobby for all of us, young and old, rich and poor alike. There are no boundaries, there are no limits. It is because of you this information is available.

I would like to pay special tribute to all of the very knowledgeable people like the Russ Best's, the Gene Sunday's, the Jim Maccari's, the Steve's-in-NC, and so many others that have the special airgun knowledge, talents, and expertise that they pass on to guys like you and me.

I would also like to give a special thanks to Herb Williams at PrecisionMarketing.Biz, who with his special Web Site building abilities and talents for building this site for me. He and I have spent many hours in its construction, to make available all of this information to share within the world of Air Gunning. If you are interested in a website of quality construction, I would recommend you contact him. Thanks Herb.