Attack of the Clones – The all new P12 Bullpup
Please guys, I will remind you that this is a world stage and this is the first time this rifle has been on show in the public eye.. This thread will be the first and only info on this bullpup until its distributed. This thread will come up on many web search engines and will be read buy thousands of potential customers and also the manufacturer. Can I please ask that you keep it on topic throughout the duration of the review.. Regards, Wingman.
There has been much talk of a Bullpup some say an EDgun clone from China yet no one has actually handled one or
in fact seen one other than a few photo-shopped factory images on the interweb..
Until now that is..
I have just taken delivery of the two very first production prototypes for testing and review purposes, one in .177 and one in .22 and for the curious minds out there Im going to completely tare these down and compare them to their European counterparts for you all and answer every question you and the manufacturer want answered..
At this stage this rifle is not available but to the public but once the manufacturer gets the required feedback on their new product and make any modifications needed they will hit production and be distributed to their representatives around the globe. You cant buy these directly from the factory unless you are a representative as they don’t deal directly with the public and they have a minimum purchase number of 100 units. Please don’t ask me what these will retail for as it will depend entirely on your location and local distributors costs and mark ups. However I can tell you it will be cheaper (much cheaper) than any other bullpup currently available on today’s market.
Will this new low priced Bullpup compete with the European bullpup market needing very few mods right out of the box?
….or will it always be an entry level rough around the edge rifle with the quality resembling a the QB series of rifle etc that the tinkerers on a budget among us will flock to and replace every part on the rifle until it no longer resembles its original form and end up with something they can never recover their cost on when they eventually get pissed off with it and sell to buy the European Gun they wished they had bough in the first place..
Here is the Factory info on this pup before I get into this..
They are made by the Snow Peak Airgun factory in Shaoxing China who are well know for making cheap springer’s, some owners have remarked that they have been of reasonable quality but I have never owned or inspected one so I will not comment.
Snow peak Airgun factory was established in 1976 and at present, the company has 10 series with more than 30 specifications of airgun products, and owns several patents. The company also cooperates with internationally well-known airgun brands, and is rich in mature OEM experiences with a strong design and R&D team, they boast a first-class quality control system and testing equipments.
PCP Rifles are a new venture for Snow peak and they are gearing up to produce two PCP rifles, the M10 which looks to be a Air Arms S400 clone and this one the P12 bullpup which will be the subject of this independent review.
This is the manufacturers specs for the P12 bullpup they have released on their website.
MODEL P12 Bullpup
Magazine capacity: Single shot
Manual safety
Available in .177 (4.5 mm), .22 (5.5 mm) calibres.
Air tube volume: 317cc
Fill pressure: 20mPA, 200 Bar, 2900Psi
Precision rifled steel barrel for accuracy.
Scope mount rail & shock absorber scope stop.
Stock: European hard wood
Over all length: 710mm (28”)
Weight 3.1kg (6.8lbs)
Max velocity: 4.5mm (.177cal) 1100fps
5.5mm (.22cal) 1100fps
Please note this will be an evolving thread with an extensive unbiased review that tests every component of these PSP’s professionally and thoroughly.
I will first test and provide data on the rifles exactly as they arrived from the factory floor and then (should I need to) I will provide a list of all defects, point out any “quirks” and improvements needed to bring them up to an international standard.
Once all testing and data collection is done going onto a section of “extensive modification and tuning” in an attempt to get this Bullpup to be “all it can be”
I have a stock of new .177 and .22 L/W and BSA match barrels should the stock barrels be less than perfect.
Where is the .25cal model I also hear you all ask? I also have two new .25cal match grade barrels, one BSA and the other Lothar Walther that will I test on this platform for all those modders out there with the burning desire for more energy..
I know there will be plenty of questions rattling around out there already but please allow me the time to finish this first section before slamming me with them as I will do my best to leave all questions unanswered in the initial review.. I will be open to all questions and suggestions once I complete this initial review and start on the field testing stage.
First up.. The un-boxing… second…the strip down and comparisons, is it actually a clone?
The boxes The P12s were shipped in were unremarkable, just the usual Chinese brown box with the stamped on black writing..
Two rifles were packed in the one box and both had the model and calibre marked on the ends.
Inside the rifles were secured in place with some high density foam, no way they could move but a sharp blow to the top of
the package could go through the two layers of cardboard and cause damage for sure. I would be nice to see a layer of foam on the top as well.
A bag of bits is taped to the inside of the box, but not well enough… the bag can sill rattle around within the box and
contact the stock.. both rifles had small dents in the lower stock caused by the metal parts in the bag..
The rifle comes shipped with an operators manual, some spare O rings, 4 Allen wrenches, a fill probe and a male foster fitting for the probe.. a nice addition for sure! Even the Allen wrenches are of good quality and Im still not sure if shipping a PCP with tools to fix it is a good thing or a bad thing.. The spare O rings are very soft and of low quality.. they would be be better replaced with some nitrile or poly 70 durometer if you can get them. The probe comes without the O rings fitted so I fitted some good quality ones from the get go..
There is a small collar on the bottom of the probe that the thicker Oring supplied fits onto sealing it inside the foster fitting. I chose to leave this out and fitted mine with a dowdy washer instead. Just a note, all the gas threads (Probe and gauge) on these guns are 1/8 NPT not 1/8 BSP.. this is the standard for most Chinese made air guns. Both rifles came shipped basically empty, there was about 5 bar in the cylinders just to keep the O rings good.
First Impressions:
The build quality of these rifles is actually really good… well better than I had expected anyway..
The bluing on the steel barrels is perfect and I can not fault it, the machining tolerances and threading etc is great.. the alloy parts have been bead blasted and anodised and I had to look pretty close to spot any machining marks at all! The alloy has a charcoal matte finish that I personally prefer for all types of air rifles.
There is a few very small blemishes in the breech on the .177 which looks like small pits but the .22 is spot on.
The finish on the cylinder is very average and it marks very easily, there is parts at the front of the cylinders on both rifles where the alloy is “grinning” through the black anodizing where it looks worn.. more on this later..
The rifles I received have been fitted with a new Weaver stile rail rather than the 11mm dovetail pictured on the Snow Peak website.. Great!
They are easy enough to cock and push the bolt home with ease! The safety mechanism is in the front of the trigger and operates like a Benjamin Marauders safety, back for safe and forward to fire. Not every one cup of tea! But better than nothing, I suppose a non-loaded rifle is better, load when ready to shoot. is the key!
The triggers were set as a two stage with a little bit of gritty creep then about a 2 lbs break.
Not perfect but I have felt worse for sure..
I filled them both and dry fired them, they are both very loud and would lean toward wearing earmuffs… yup “that loud”.. they have a shocking PING that resonates for about 5 seconds after the shot! Both guns have breach leaks from the bolt probes and the front of the breach where the barrels fit up which Im glad I found before I put my face to the action! I will sort that little issue later too..
The P12 is fitted with an integral forward mounted glow in the dark pressure gauge to keep the shooter informed of all-important residual pressure even on those night hunts..
TIP: don’t trust the pressure gauge on the P12 rifle! They are cheap and in both cases inaccurate when compared to several of my dive bottle gauges, the rifle in the pic below has exactly 200 bar in the tank tested on both my dive bottle gauges.. however, it reads 220bar on the guns manometer.
Always fill to the gauge on the dive bottle/pump not the one on the gun.
I will be replacing my cylinder gauges with good quality units in the near future.
What really grabs the eye with these new China dolls is the stock design woodwork fashioned unusually from what I’m pretty sure is is beach wood. I is much lighter in colour than the stock pictured on the Snow Peak website, It is more of a honey tone but the wood grain looks good and has no voids or knots. There is a few darker areas where they needed more sanding before the final finish was applied but it could easily be stained and refinished or repainted to the owners preference.
All Replies
Thank you Trygve,
As you know it is the documentation process that takes the time.. I too was a big fan of your Matador v/s Cricket thread. 
Ed has spoken out many times about his the price of his guns and his thoughts on the P12 (he refereed to as the Chinese Edgun), I have Quoted just a few that I could find..
How do you feel about the Chinese copy of your gun? …. It’s coming!!
I feel nothing about it as I know for sure, it will be cheaper them my guns with worse quality, or it will cost the same money with the same quality, as there is no miracles in this world, the technologies, materials and good working force cost almost the same all over the world.
All guns are assembled with parts manually selected, checked and prepared. we never put a part to the gun directly from the CNC machine, you can call it hand work 🙂
The price of the gun doesn’t depend on the country it is made in, as the CNC machine hour cost almost the same everywhere, as the materials and workers’ time, the only thing we can save some money — logistic and I insure you that is not the money I can take off the price, it is too small amount I would prefer to keep it to put to the development 🙂
Ed
Ed
I have seen Ed say more than once that the price of the EDgun will never come down and I agree with him that it shouldn’t. He once said that if Edguns stopped selling he would just pack up and stop making them before he would drop the price.
He is right about many things in the quotes I have added apart from one thing… the cost of labour in China is nothing.. I could almost guarantee the workers on the factory floor are taking home less than $1 USD per hour and this is where China will always have the manufacturing cost advantage. Their R&D teams also are not as costly as the rest of the world, after all, pulling other makers guns apart to copy doesn’t exactly require you to have an engineering degree does it? 😉
Ed is Right about the quality though, the P12 will never be a Matador, not even close.. It is more to the quality level of a Korean made Evanix or similar.
The P12 will fit into the market as a cheap modders gun.. I would not recommend it to anyone who could not do the basic mods needed to make this thing safe and shoot to its potential. If you buy a P12 and expect it to be great right out of the box then you will be very disappointed.
I can foresee people spending big money on these P12’s with new match barrels and regulators etc which will transform them to a very usable Bullpup but it will still never be an EDgun.
Ed has no need to worry about this pup, as I have already pointed out, it is not a clone of his gun, it undeniably takes some design aspects from a few Russian guns but it is not a clone.
The market for Edgun will always be there, for those that want the best will still buy Edgun.
The P12 doesnt however fit in Eds market, for those that dream of a $2000+ USD Edgun but could never afford one or would never have the chance to buy one will now be able save a hard earned $500-$600 USD to own a Chinese made bullpup that looks similar but will still never be the quality of an Edgun. Two very different markets of customers.
I can however also see a market of people who already own the Russian Bullpups and simply must have every other bullpup produced on this planet.. for you this will be another fun toy to mod, and enjoy fuxing. Just dont expect it to be as good as your Russian pride and joy.. :2cents:
Spare a thought for people like myself who live in more remote countries having to pay a premium for an Edgun, my cost of getting an Edgun in my hot little hands here is nearly $2800 USD and that’s even after buying it the EDgun representative price! Count yourselves lucky that in the USA you will always have a larger market of Edgun buyers, keeping the price at what I think is fair for the product in hand. Edgun are not the dearest PCP on the market but IMO they are by far the best PCP on the market. Ed will always be at the top of the game with innovation and PCP appeal and just when you think the market is flooded and no one wants an Edgun any more… in rolls the new Matador R4 😀
That must of went over like at fart in church :rofl:
I am deeply impressed with your work as well as photos. Very instructive as well as enlightening for us on the side line……… :8:
Extremely well done !!! Keep it up please, – this is in many ways “dynamite” in the marketplace if the final conclusion is “buy one” ….!!!
I once emailed an image of the P12 to Ed and asked him for his opinion. He came back immediately saying he was “not impressed with it”. He may have reasons for his statement, but somehow my gut feeling tells me there’s a huge market out there lusting for a bullpup at a reasonable price. How that is going to impact Ed and others remains to be seen…….
Anxiously waiting for more……. 😉
Cheers from Trygve in transit…. :biggrinn:
I agree 100% !
BTW – Your own comparison thread (EG vs Cricket) was/is very well done too. It´s good there are individuals willing to walk the extra mile for the rest of us. My span of interrest would never allow me to do/write anything even remotedly as thorough than you two are able to. Add to that a little Finnish impatience and a smidgeon of ADHD and anything that takes more than 30 minutes – and that goes for everything i do – is too long.
Wingman, – what can I say but this……..:
I am deeply impressed with your work as well as photos. Very instructive as well as enlightening for us on the side line……… :8:
Extremely well done !!! Keep it up please, – this is in many ways “dynamite” in the marketplace if the final conclusion is “buy one” ….!!!
I once emailed an image of the P12 to Ed and asked him for his opinion. He came back immediately saying he was “not impressed with it”. He may have reasons for his statement, but somehow my gut feeling tells me there’s a huge market out there lusting for a bullpup at a reasonable price. How that is going to impact Ed and others remains to be seen…….
Anxiously waiting for more……. 😉
Cheers from Trygve in transit…. :biggrinn:
So, you´ve never seen Chinese knock-off´s before ? Ever ?? :rofl:
How come your $300 Mitutoyo Caliper looks exactly like my $30 Harbor Freight Chinese one? The case and buttons are exact. Only the label is different. 😯
Thank you for the updated info.
This seems to have taken over as a 2nd employment, but I (we) truly appreciate your (and wife’s) endeavor. I don’t think SP could have picked a better barista to do this. :whistle:
Just for now I am putting the .177 aside and leaving it in the factory issue condition.. Ill be concentrating on the .22cal P12 for the first section of mods/tuning.
First up: Fitting a regulator.
I am modifying and fitting an Altaros regulator made in the Czech Republic. The reason I wanted to use one of these regs is because there is no need to drill a atmospheric pressure hole in the titanium cylinder meaning it can be returned back to factory std without any permanent mods. The reg doesnt require a hole drilled as it breaths through the cylinders rear threads when you remove the rear O ring.. I am using a Evanix Reg because it was the closest in diameter to the P12 without getting one custom made. It is also a very small little unit so will not take up a lot of precious air space in the cylinder..
http://www.altaros.cz/regulators/rainstor-evanix/
I have turned the reg and plenum spacer down to 28.80mm OD and cut the Oring groove deeper to accept a 23mm x 3mm O ring. The Oring is removed from the valve body as the air is now sealed within the reg and cant escape past the Oring on the rear face contacting the valve body.
The Kalibrgun Cricket regulator is also a good candidate for a P12 reg, it is 30.35mm in diameter so could be turned down to fit. You would need to drill a vent hole in the titanium tube though or remove the rear O ring and machine one into the rear face of the reg body and the stand off spacer.
The Altaros reg is adjustable from 100bar to 150bar which will do fine.
Once I had it all fitted and back together I made up a long extension brass rod with a small flat screwdriver shank pressed into the end for adjusting the reg from the front of the cylinder instead of having to strip the entire gun each time I want to bump the pressure up or down.. Worked a charm 😀
I also turned down a new Acetal transfer port bush with a 4.5mm hole to dump the regulated lower pressure air from the valve and plenum to the barrel as quickly as possible.. Again I didnt want to just drill out the original in case I choose to return it to standard.
The first thing I noticed when I first shot the P12 with the regulator fitted was the “PING”!!! has completely gone ! It is now very quiet..
After a few pressure adjustments Ive settled at 130 bar and the strings are running 18.13gr @ 840 to 845fps with the HST nearly maxed out..
Its a little lower than I want but even lifting the reg pressure to 150 doesn’t seem to change the velocity much, the extreme spread just gets worse.. so I have set the reg back at 130bar when it does the tightest strings and just had a little play making a few different plenum spacers from some 6061 T6 1/8″ wall tube to alter the air capacity between the valve and the reg..
I still haven’t got it perfect so will try some different hammer and valve springs tomorrow as well and post results.
I have just received an email from S/P with some answers to a few more questions..
They have apparently been on holiday so they were unable to contact their engineer to answer some of my “technical” questions but they did answer a couple for me.
The stocks are indeed made from European Beach wood.
In regards to barrels I have been holding back a little info until I heard it from the factory confirming my tests..
Unlike the European Bullpups offered in several different lengths, the P12 comes in one length, 725mm (28.5″) not the 710mm (28”) that is on the factory website data.
The barrels are 460mm (18″) long and have a diameter of 15mm. The twist rate is on the faster side with a 1-16.5″ ( 1- 420mm) which suggests to me they will favour the heavier/longer pellets.
The bore is a 12 groove with very similar shape and depth grooves to a Lothar Walther barrel, the P12 barrel is not choked at the muzzle.
Note the small scales of lead clinging to the rifling.. this .22 barrel has had 600+ shots through it since its first clean.. The lack of a choke doesn’t seem to hinder accuracy of this barrel.
Pushing a pellet through the .22 bore with a alloy welding rod there is no hang ups or loose sections, just nice even pressure required to press the pellet right through smoothy.
The pellet measured 5.54mm on the way in and came out 5.52mm, this particular barrel is on the large side and favours the larger head sized JSBs.
This .177 barrel however is a little on the loose side when pushing pellets the bore.. there is very little resistance felt at all. In my opinion THIS .177 barrel will never shoot as well as THIS .22 barrel as the tolerances are no where near the same quality as this .22 cal.
Something tells me results will vary greatly between barrels and rifles once these thing are in full production.. Im sure there will be some real dogs amongst the great ones.
Lots of fine machining marks and fine scratches can be seen in the bore with a bore scope that will accumulate lead and they certainly don’t have the smooth mirror finish the European barrels do but they are certainly not bad!
I will lap the bores lightly with some Autosole to help prevent lead scale build up and see if I can achieve a slightly better smooth shiny finish.. Accuracy improvements are debatable but I certainly helps to keep the bore cleaner between cleans.
After LOADS of chrony work with the .22 and a whole tin of pellets I have tried a number of different tunes and have found two favourites.
It loves the 18.13gr and 15.89gr JSBs and will stack them all day at 50 yards so these are the pellets Ive chrony tested it with.
I found that reducing the HST certainly gets more shots but the strings are no where near as flat as having the HST wound up full. I think this is due to a very heavy valve return spring so I may experiment with lighter ones a bit later.
So heres my best .22 18.13gr string:
50 shots @ 200 bar start pressure: FPS= 878 880 879 881 885 883 889 888 891 190 bar 893 896 899 898 898 900 902 899 905 909 911 909 911 910 909 909 904 908 913 915 915 915 914 912 908 907 904 901 901 900 896 899 894 890 888 889 884 120 bar 882 881 880 874
Heres the .22 15.89gr string:
59 shots @ 200 bar start pressure: FPS= 888 889 890 895 899 896 896 899 901 900 905 902190 bar 903 902 906 902 911 909 915 917 915 914 913 917 918 918 914 913 912 914 919 919 915 914 919 919 921 918 916 912 917 920 915 916 913 912 918 918 904 901 900 898 894 894 120 bar894 892 891 888 886
The .177 seems to like the 10.34gr JSB heavy pellets but I will try some 10.5gr Crosman Premiers and maybe so H&N barracudas too..
I have not spent a lot of time tuning the .177cal. with the new O ring kit and the reducer bush to make the transfer port smaller it is now feeding perfectly without any pellet damage or jams and shooting good tight groups at 50 yards with the 10.34gr JSBs. I just set the mid pressure velocity to approx 950fps as I have had good results with theses pellets at those speeds.
103 shots @ 200 bar start pressure: FPS= 920 921 918 916 916 918 913 913 914 913 915 928 934 939 945190 bar 943 944 946 950 950 945 953 947 947 951 951 954 952 951 951 956 958 954 954 953 957 959 951 957 952 953 956 957 951 949 953 951 951 958 956 958 953 954 959 957 957 954 958 952 953 959 960 958 951 953 958 958 957 957 953 959 957 952 958 952 958 959 963 961 958 959 963 958 953 959 959 960 960 958 953 951 948 949 940 940 941 939 939 931 939 931 928 933 929 930 934 933 931 120 bar 927 922 918 912 909 901
This is the target I had at 40 yards while running the chrony tests.. There’s 59 shots on the .22 target and 103 shots on the .177 target.. The groups were rushed shots as my wife was getting bored of recording the velocity for me but as you can see; even in an unregulated state these P12s have serious accuracy potential!
sorry no target for the .22cal 15.89gr….The wife was well over data recording by that time 🙄 so that string was just shot into the ground and recorded myself..
Time for some servicing and performance mods! :geekn:
Wing
Any chance to type that Chrono strings? You have to feed us some info as a lot of us is addicted to this thread.
Paul
Thank you for that info Hoot: , putting some rubber hose in your air cylinder is indeed a good way to dull the ping sound but I don’t want to just mask the problem, I am going to expose the poor design and engineering that causes this problem and provide a fix that can be done by Snow peak on the production line before poor Mr Joe Blogs customer gets a ring in his ear an has to lower his shot count by filling his air cylinder with rubber tube to remedy a problem that should be there to begin with ..
Heres our buddy Ted doing exactly what you speak of to his Edgun R2.5: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kWZBxMZ7dbg
Another very simple method to kill the ping before it even starts is to ad an O ring on the poppet valves stem, it can be done several ways but here’s how I normally do it; make a brass insert and thread it into the rear of the valve body, fit an O ring the is a slip fit over the valves stem and tighten the brass screw down on it just until you feel resistance on the poppet valve.. not only will this remove the ping but it acts as a good back up seal that will stop air leaking back up the valve stem when firing..
The pic is of a custom .25cal Valve I made for a guys QB78 :
‘Knife’….at our age, it might well have been us dropping a nut! Check the floor, especially if you hear the “Ping” while in the kitchen standing on ceramic tiles. Not certain what to do if you do find one of your balls on the floor. I suggest you might drop it in a glass of salt water, put it in the ‘fridge, and call the doctor in the morning. (…if,however, it’s black and shriveled…disregard and feed the damn thing to your dog.)
Kindest regards….
Uncle Hoot:
PS: I certainly hope Jim Gaska, or Ernest, or both are reading this thread. There are several quick fixes they might be able to mill up, turn a few bucks, while benefiting us modders. Hmmmm…a thought: would it be untoward to refer to our wifes as “modder fuckers”??? (apologies to the non-regular forum readers…we are a loose and outspoken group here…Freedom of Speech, and all that…snort! snort! :rofl: I am SO going straight to hell…or Finland, whichever is closer.)
“PING”! 😯 WTF was that??? :whistle:
hoot you have such a great vocabulary I even understood that one :rofl: this new zeeland dude has got me all in on this one.iwake up in the middle of the night all sweaty and check and see if anything new has been written but alas it is only you hoot and sir making funnies :angrymob: back to sleep and dream of the wingman :winkn:
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Comparing the P12 to an Evanix says enough. Very good summary! 😉