Hammer Wear & Prevention
My Condor hammer has been showing signs of wear. Only slight wear around the forward delrin cap but a lot to the forward slope of the rear delrin cap. Interestingly the scrapes are all around the hammer. That tells me the hammer must do a lot of turning. See image with breech end to the right:
My Condor is 2 years old now and has discharged at least 5,000 pellets. The extruded aluminum frame is a wonderful design but is not as hard as steel. With heavy use there is going to be wear. A couple of battles with it failing to latch probably caused me use more force than necessary to cock the hammer.
So, I finally found a wear problem when I noticed that as I cocked the hammer, due to the breech and hammer being loose fitting in the frame, they both tip upward at the rear. This causes the rear of the hammer to protrude up into the large cutout slot that the breech bolt travels in. This shouldn’t be a problem if the edges of the slot were smooth. They are not smooth and worse yet the forward end of the slot takes a hit from the bolt everytime it is cocked hard. When I removed the breech and felt the inside edge of the slot, I found a LARGE BURR at the end of the slot. It has been chewing away at the delrin cap and was most likely responsible for some inconsistent velocities.
This image shows using a rifle file to remove the BURR:
Uh huh, that will call for a thorough cleaning of the trigger group also. I then smoothed all the edges with 400 grit:
and polished a bit with Flitz metal polish. What the heck, good time to Flitz the inside of the frame and the bore too! Wish I had a better polishing rod but a 3/4″ dowel will do until next time.
OK, it’s amazing how much easier it is to cock the hammer when a large BURR is not taking a bite out of the hammer delrin cap.
Now I will have a happy home for my new TalonTunes brass hammer when I switch back to my 24″ .22 caliber barrel.
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I use a etac and I’m getting 975 fps with 6 rings I get 144 fpe With 9 rings.
Just notice you want to use the stock tank. Length of pull get a little long. Works best with a 53 or 62 ci tank.
Just a little off subject but I noticed you have the Etac reg. on your rifle which looks awesome. how does it work? is there any loss in power? i have a very powerful condor shoots 62’s at 905fps for 114fpe. will it work for my setup? the reason for the question is It looks comfortable and i have an fx bottle cover that I think would look awesom and feel comfortable with the angle of the Etac. any advice would be appreciated.
Thanks for the tip
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Gonzo,
The combination E-TaC shoty (no regulator) & WOKBUTT take the strain off the neck and give more of a heads up view through the scope.
Can’t take the tank off as easily because of the gauge on one side and foster quick fill on the opposite. Roachcreek put the tank collar set screws on one side to facilitate tank removal. I may do that but I rarely need to break the rifle down and the foster fitting can be used for tethering as well as filling.