Manufacturer:- www.feinwerkbau.de

Retail Price :- No longer available new. £160 Upwards Secondhand depending on the age and condition and market fluctuations
Intended Purpose :- Spring Powered 10m Match Air Rifle
Power :- Spring
Caliber :- 4.5mm / .177
Length in mm :- 1092mm / 43 Inches
Total Weight :- 4898g / 10.8 Pounds
Action Finish :- Blued Steel
Barrel :- Not sure who this was made by?
Manual :- 300s Manual
Average Velocity :- 620 FPS +/- 7FPS with 7gn R10 Match Pellets
Average Energy :- 6ft/lb
Sights :- Aperture, with micrometer adjustment
Trigger :- 2 stage, fully adjustable
Stock :- Walnut on early models / Stained Beech on later ones

24-12-2009

This is a bit of a review on a couple of old 10m match rifles that I have recently purchased. I bought the first one as I wanted to have a go at shooting Bell Target at the club with a match type rifle with aperture sights rather than the scoped rifle I usually shoot with. The Feinwerkbau 300s looked to be the perfect choice and the price was very reasonable.

Having done a bit (well a lot ;-) ) of research on the web, I realised that the 300s was very well made and should be good for many hundreds of thousand of shots.

The first 300s I purchased is the older of the two with serial number 137xxx which I think dates it around 1974. I think the stock on this one is walnut due to the markings left in the wood even after stripping it.

The second 300s is serial number 187xxx which is around 1976. This has an identical action but the stock does look to be Beech on this one. The second rifle was bought as a project gun to spend some time restoring, but the internals are so good it shoots just as well as the first one I bought.

You can see the differences in the pictures below.

The newer rifle has some wear to the blueing. It was bought knowing this with the intention of getting it professionally refinished in the near future. I hope to update this page with the pictures of the results of this renovation.

Both rifles have been taken apart by me to check the condition of the internals and give everything a good clean and proper sparing re-lubrication of some of the working parts.

I found a couple of excellent guides to this on the following website along with the trigger adjustments and the instruction manual.

http://www.pilkguns.com/tenp/spfwb300.htm

They are reasonably easy to work on providing you are careful with all those tiny e-clips on the trigger assembly! I bought some spares and it was a good job I did as some pinged off to be lost in the dark corners of the room.

I bought a tube of the Feinwerkbau Special Grease to lube the metal to metal parts with. You only need a tiny amount.

The two springs are unusual in that they should be run totally dry to ensure maximum shot to shot consistency. It does twang a little when shot but nothing to really annoy you.

The piston is a mechanical marvel. Made to work just like the one in a car engine with a metal piston ring providing the air tight seal. It is supposed to be good for over a million shots. I doubt I will ever test its limits. My older rifle still has a piston buffer and white coloured breech seal in good condition, so I have let them in for the moment. But I have ordered a new set of seals for when they may need replacing. The new breech seal is Blue in colour.

The trigger mechanism is reasonable complicated with quite a few individual parts .I was initially nervous about stripping it down, but after I had bought the second rifle I was happy I had something to go and look at if I got stuck. In the end it was reasonably straight forward to strip and clean. I did not make any adjustments to the setting screws as both triggers were perfect as they were.

It was worth stripping them down as there was a fair amount of accumulated crud and old lubrication in there. Judging by the look of the screw heads keeping the action together I suspect it has not been taken apart very often since it was made. Another testament to how well these rifles were actually built.

In use the rifle is cocked with a side lever. As it is a 10m Match rifle the power is reasonably low for a air rifle at around 6 ft/lb compared with the normal U.K. sub 12 ft/lb legal limit for unlicensed airguns. But lower power for a match rifle is a major advantage in many ways. It reduces the overall recoil (more on that in a moment) and the lower velocity means there is less muzzle flip from the release of the high speed air. It is also a lot easier to cock it, only two fingers are needed to pull the lever back.

The cocking lever has a ratcheting mechanism to prevent it from moving forward until fully cocked. There is also an additional sliding retainer to hold the piston in place until the cocking side lever is fully closed again. A third device unblocks the trigger mechanism when the lever is fully closed.

This is a spring powered rifle, usually the spring recoil will generate a movement of the rifle when fired as it moves the piston to compress the air. The 300s has a way of controlling this recoil effect by mounting the whole action on a sliding sledge. So now when the rifle is fired the reaction of the piston moving forwards is countered by the action moving backwards on the precision ground rail system. The results in a rifle that shoots in a similar manner to a pre-charged pneumatic rifle not a spring powered one!

The pellets are loaded directly into the barrel, the sliding breech exposes the loading area when the side lever is pulled back. The breech end of the barrel is conical in shape and this seals against the sliding breech. On firing the piston moves forward and the seal is pushed hard against the end of the barrel as the air is compressed. A great system that should be self adjusting as the seal beds in.

One loaded and with the side lever clicked back ito position the rifle is ready to shoot. There is no additional safety as this is a target rifle. The trigger is something of a surprise after shooting many different PCP's and spring air guns. I was not expecting it to be as good as it is. It really is one of the very best triggers I have ever used. With a nice two stage feel and perfect break like glass action. It is very light to the touch, I am not sure of the exact weight for let off as I don't have a trigger weight gauge. But compared with a 10m match pistol at 500 grams it feels lighter.

The rifle is supplied with aperture sights consisting of a front housing that accepts a pressed metal ring. These front rings come in different sizes, but I only have the one that came with each rifle. I have since purchased a set of clear front elements from Neil Price (Also know as U.K.Neil on several forums) these are great as they have 10 hole sizes in 0.1mm increments, so you can adjust the amount of white around the black centre of the target to your own preference.

The rear sight has a fixed pin hole diopter disc with micrometer adjustments for windage and elevation. The hole size is fixed by can be changed by buying different diopter discs. These just screw into the main sight block. I see you can buy an adjustable iris from www.gehmann.com and www.centra-visier.de and this may well be on my wanted list. Although some of them cost more than I paid for the whole 300s!

The manual instructions for the sight are as follows.

Shooting High: Turn the upper adjusting screw to direction H.
Shooting Low: Turn the upper adjusting screw to direction T.
Shooting Right: Turn the side adjusting screw to direction R.
Shooting Left: Turn the side adjusting screw to direction L.
One click changes the point of impact by 0.5 mm at a distance of 10 meters.

This is the first air rifle I have ever used with aperture sights and I was skeptical that you could shoot accurately with them compared with a scope. How wrong could I be! At 10m they are incredibly accurate. Bench rested you can pretty much hit the 10 dot on a 10m rifle target every single time! The trick is to do that standing! :-)

After what must now be many hundreds of shots with both rifles I am pretty much convinced that they offer fantastic value for money second hand. They are built to last and are a complete joy to use. The icing on the cake is that they are also so accurate and do not compromise in any way due to their age.

So far my efforts on both rifle have consisted of the following.

1.) Remove and strip both stocks back to the bare wood with Nitromors. The original finish looked like varnish on one of them and it was heavily marked and scratched. Now stripped the wood is actually very nice. They have then been carefully sanded smooth and then treated to several applications of a Napier London Gunstock Finish rubbed in sparingly by hand. Some of the major dints are still visible on the base were it has been rested on a bench. I didn't want to remove too much of the original wood, plus they give a little character to the stocks.

2.) Both actions stripped to component parts and cleaned with Brunox then lubricated correctly with Feinwerkbau Special Grease.

3.) Stock retaining and butt plate screws upgraded to socket head cap screws. The originals cheese head types were worn were they have been undone over the years. These have been stored carefully for completeness if I sell the guns in the future.

4.) New seal kits ordered for both rifles. This consists of a Piston buffer, Breech Seal and piston ring.

I am still debating if I should replace original springs with genuine Feinwerkbau spares, but they are expensive at around £45 a set. The power is not down very much on the factory specs so I think that will be left for now.

It would be nice to get the full set of metal inserts along with the rifle adjustment tool. The sight knobs could also do with replacing on one rifle.

In the next month or so I hope to get the external metalwork on the 1976 rifle reblued and if this works out as nice as I think it will then the other one will also be restored.

Thanks

Mark

The pictures below are a mixture of both of the rifles I have bought.

The Walnut stocked one is the oldest and the Beech one is newer but the metalwork is not in such good condition.

www.airgunbbs.com

www.guns-n-stuff.co.uk