The Precihole Pegasus - Musings
Posted: Sat Dec 01, 2012 1:18 am
The Precihole Pegasus - Musings
It's not everyday that a new airgun appears. It's a great time to be alive and healthy when it does.
Those of us who have been around for awhile, and have had a heap of these sticks pass through our hands, have a "sense" of something that those starting out will learn along the way.
In this slick age of advertising and marketing we expect anything made of wood and metal to be a work of absolute perfection when we open the box, much like a fine piece of jewelery. Hole-in-hole blah, blah, blah.
Some of us old timers know better. Anything made by man has its quirks. Given time some of these quirks become objects of great affection. Read xl target's awesome post called the Gift. He says it better than I ever will be able to.
Last week a friend was gifted a very old (circa 1930's) Stevens double barrel shotgun by his Dad. Any badly made desi shotgun in any gun shop would have looked like a million bucks compared to what this Stevens looked like. Many would have walked away, looking for a tetanus shot, and would have missed something phenomenal.
The oil, the rags, the mops, brushes, rods, the rubbing down of every square inch. The satisfaction when elbow grease is applied and rust and blemishes start to go away. The endless cups of coffee, the war stories about when, where and how the Stevens did what and to whom. The discovery of a lateral movement in the stock. The hypothetico- deductive method of a Sherlock Holmes used to determine that a striker was broken. All this and more.
The home visit by the ancient gunsmith. The scavenging of a litre of petrol and then the inevitable dismantling and incessant scrubbing. The arrival of a new set of strikers - two days later - perfectly machined using the one surviving striker as a template.
Then reassembly - Balistol and Vaseline (the ancient one showing his contempt for moly and other newfangled greases). And then a sense of satisfaction that beggars description.
And why am I boring you with all this ?
Because a couple of days back I got my hands on a new Precihole Pegasus in .177 and I'm going to tell you about it somewhere below.
I'm going to be casting a hyper critical eye over this pipe and want to set a tone. In no way am I going to be pulling my punches, but at the same time I'd like a sense of the fun I'm having in spotting glitches and figuring out solutions to be hovering over this post.
Not to do so would be downright misleading and missing out on the whole point of this magnificent obsession we all share.
I've been reading all the posts on the Precihole posted in IFG and am slightly pained by the hard stance taken by many newbies. I'm advocating another way all together.
What follows will all sound negative, but try to suspend judgement for awhile. I'm leaving out all the good stuff I like about the Pegasus - which is considerable.
Let's start with the Front Sight.
There is a grub screw holding down the front sight. This presses directly on the barrel. I found that mine had scratched into the barrel and had exposed metal.
The solution was of course to wipe down the barrel with Balistol and put a couple of threads from the cleaning cloth down the screw hole before re tightening the screw.
I had the "Oh No" feeling when re fixing the front sight - thinking I'd need a spirit level and a target sheet to realign the vertical. I was wrong. The barrel has a scooped out bit at the end that fits exactly into a protrusion on the inside of the front sight. Perfect centering very time. Whew !
Read and Heed - the screw is an M2 Allen - do not over tighten this as it's threaded into the poly carbonate sight assembly. Do not try to pry the front sight unit off the barrel. It is sweated on tight. If you must remove it do so by pushing from the bottom with both thumbs. Do not rotate it because it's fitted into the cleft I mentioned earlier.
The Rear Sight.
The Pegasus is a kicker. It's 12 foot pound spring piston remember ?
Now by that very definition its going to rattle everything loose. Don't seek exemption from the laws of Physics.
The rear sight is held laterally by a chrome plated hinge pin. The sight itself screws vertically into the top of the breech block with two Allen M2 screws.
20 shots and things start to get loose. The chrome pin starts to drift out left to right (seen from above). The two Allen screws start to loosen up and the rear sight starts to rattle. The groups start to open up.
The solution is easy enough. A little thread locker in the screws and a fingernail to push the chrome pin back in.
Read and Heed - Thread locker is not for first time brain stormers. Watch someone using it before using it yourself. Use the Locktite Purple 222 specially made for screws less than 6 mm/ or Anabond Blue. At present I don't recommend you do any of these things.
Put a drop of the thread locker onto a piece of glazed paper and use a pin (the point, not the head) to apply only that much to around 2-3 threads on the center of the screw. Any more and you'll need a grinding wheel and much praying.
Do not put the pin into the bottle as you will polarize the rest of the solution and ruin it for later (acrylates polarize on contact with metal - that's how they work)
I'm told these bugs have been ironed out in the newer serial numbers. So don't go running for the gum bottle.
Much fun was had wandering through the gullies of the hardware market (SP Road in our neck of the woods), with a posse of shooting buddies, looking for Allen keys, thread lockers and O Rings.
Note: the Stock screws with their star washers have not moved.
The 11 mm Scope Grove.
There's a big difference between a Scope Rail and Scope Grooves.
A rail is mounted on top of the receiver and has fairly deep grooves cut into it. The Pegasus has grooves cut into the sides of the receiver itself. An entirely different proposition.
I spent three days trying to mount a 4 x 32 metal body Gamo scope on the Pegasus.
I begged, borrowed and stole Leapers (2 piece Medium) mounts, Air Force (2 piece High) mounts, an unknown (2 piece High) mount, a Leapers (one piece offset, 3 screw) mount, and finally a Hawke one piece 4 screw Medium mount.
Day 1 and a sweat soaked T shirt later, I PM'd Pratik Mahale on IFG to find out how he's scoped his Pegasus. He very kindly answered immediately and said he'd used used Araldite (an epoxy resin) and a one piece 4 screw mount.
Day 2 I decided against the Araldite and went back to the Hawke one piece, 4 screw, Medium mount. It took me about 20 minutes to torque in the 4 side screws. A miniscule amount of extra torque on one screw would pop the other screws off the mount. My sweaty T Shirt collection was now up to two T Shirts.
Day 3. Finally got the Hawke mount to sit on the grooves firmly. This time I scrubbed the grooves, the mount screws, and the claws on the mount with Surgical Spirit to degrease them before installation.
Then I decided to be brilliant and wrapped two pieces of masking tape loosely around the scope and receiver - just in case.
10 shots later the scope and mount fell off - the scope was saved by my brilliant use of masking tape - No Applause Please !
Sweaty T Shirts now number 3.
I got onto chat with Pyramidair (after changing my T Shirt) and was told they don't have any mounts in their inventory that wrap around a semicircular receiver and fit into the grooves therein.
So for those of you planning on harassing friends and relatives to bring you mounts from abroad, hold off for a while.
No solutions to this one yet, but stay tuned to this channel, some very smart friends of mine are working on a solution and I'll let you know when something is figured out.
Accuracy.
The Pegasus is not the Precihole Club. Along with 12 foot pounds you get more cocking effort, more felt recoil and a heavier trigger. It's called the Laws of Physics remember ? After ten shots at 10 meters it will go through a 450 page phone book (using GSmith High Impact round heads). Use a sturdy backstop. I'm glad I did.
Being a heavy hitting springer I estimate the Pegasus will take somewhere between 400-500 shots to settle in, accuracy wise.
My first groups were around an inch by an inch at 10 meters with GSmith round heads. At the lowest elevation setting for the rear sights the group was around 3 inches high.
After the first 50 shots this had settled into a group about a half inch by half inch at the same distance with the same pellets. It was around 2 inches high at this time. I'm expecting the groups to shrink further with use - remember all that old timer stuff I bored you with earlier ?
So, for those looking for a "Buy"/"Don't Buy" recommendation; Sorry you've wasted your time reading this.
For those wanting to buy jewellery and perfection; Sorry again.
For those of us obsessed with this whole business of pipes, wood, plastic and flying objects and Thunk sounds, I hope I've brought back some memories and the sense of fun we all have in doing what we do.
For Newbies and stick-in-the-mud veterans; there's nothing fundamentally wrong with the Precihole Pegasus. It's right on the money and capable of giving years of pleasurable shooting. That's unless you've gone over to the dark side and got yourself one of them girly compressed air sticks with a zero weight trigger and zero recoil and zero whatever else the Devil gives children now a days
In my neck of the woods we give respect to those who can do what we can't do, but want to - Olympic sportsmen, Astronauts and the like. So my salutations to Precihole and the Good Doctor for creating the Pegasus that's giving me such fun. But like Tendulkar's batting, the Good Doctor will get bouquets and Brickbats in equal measure. I hope he's enjoying himself too I write this with the utmost respect for him and his creations.
Whew ! This has been a long post. I've written this in the hope that the Precihole/Anti Precihole blood feuds will now officially end and much fun will be had by all.
Ashok
P.S. I must put on record that some of my friends tell me that Precihole is well seized of all the issues in this post and have already fixed most of them.
What a pity depriving late buyers of so much fun
Contact them if you have any issues with your pipe. They seem a decent enough bunch.
Many thanks to Shankar for all his support, wisdom and endless conversations on the phone discussing - well, what else ?
It's not everyday that a new airgun appears. It's a great time to be alive and healthy when it does.
Those of us who have been around for awhile, and have had a heap of these sticks pass through our hands, have a "sense" of something that those starting out will learn along the way.
In this slick age of advertising and marketing we expect anything made of wood and metal to be a work of absolute perfection when we open the box, much like a fine piece of jewelery. Hole-in-hole blah, blah, blah.
Some of us old timers know better. Anything made by man has its quirks. Given time some of these quirks become objects of great affection. Read xl target's awesome post called the Gift. He says it better than I ever will be able to.
Last week a friend was gifted a very old (circa 1930's) Stevens double barrel shotgun by his Dad. Any badly made desi shotgun in any gun shop would have looked like a million bucks compared to what this Stevens looked like. Many would have walked away, looking for a tetanus shot, and would have missed something phenomenal.
The oil, the rags, the mops, brushes, rods, the rubbing down of every square inch. The satisfaction when elbow grease is applied and rust and blemishes start to go away. The endless cups of coffee, the war stories about when, where and how the Stevens did what and to whom. The discovery of a lateral movement in the stock. The hypothetico- deductive method of a Sherlock Holmes used to determine that a striker was broken. All this and more.
The home visit by the ancient gunsmith. The scavenging of a litre of petrol and then the inevitable dismantling and incessant scrubbing. The arrival of a new set of strikers - two days later - perfectly machined using the one surviving striker as a template.
Then reassembly - Balistol and Vaseline (the ancient one showing his contempt for moly and other newfangled greases). And then a sense of satisfaction that beggars description.
And why am I boring you with all this ?
Because a couple of days back I got my hands on a new Precihole Pegasus in .177 and I'm going to tell you about it somewhere below.
I'm going to be casting a hyper critical eye over this pipe and want to set a tone. In no way am I going to be pulling my punches, but at the same time I'd like a sense of the fun I'm having in spotting glitches and figuring out solutions to be hovering over this post.
Not to do so would be downright misleading and missing out on the whole point of this magnificent obsession we all share.
I've been reading all the posts on the Precihole posted in IFG and am slightly pained by the hard stance taken by many newbies. I'm advocating another way all together.
What follows will all sound negative, but try to suspend judgement for awhile. I'm leaving out all the good stuff I like about the Pegasus - which is considerable.
Let's start with the Front Sight.
There is a grub screw holding down the front sight. This presses directly on the barrel. I found that mine had scratched into the barrel and had exposed metal.
The solution was of course to wipe down the barrel with Balistol and put a couple of threads from the cleaning cloth down the screw hole before re tightening the screw.
I had the "Oh No" feeling when re fixing the front sight - thinking I'd need a spirit level and a target sheet to realign the vertical. I was wrong. The barrel has a scooped out bit at the end that fits exactly into a protrusion on the inside of the front sight. Perfect centering very time. Whew !
Read and Heed - the screw is an M2 Allen - do not over tighten this as it's threaded into the poly carbonate sight assembly. Do not try to pry the front sight unit off the barrel. It is sweated on tight. If you must remove it do so by pushing from the bottom with both thumbs. Do not rotate it because it's fitted into the cleft I mentioned earlier.
The Rear Sight.
The Pegasus is a kicker. It's 12 foot pound spring piston remember ?
Now by that very definition its going to rattle everything loose. Don't seek exemption from the laws of Physics.
The rear sight is held laterally by a chrome plated hinge pin. The sight itself screws vertically into the top of the breech block with two Allen M2 screws.
20 shots and things start to get loose. The chrome pin starts to drift out left to right (seen from above). The two Allen screws start to loosen up and the rear sight starts to rattle. The groups start to open up.
The solution is easy enough. A little thread locker in the screws and a fingernail to push the chrome pin back in.
Read and Heed - Thread locker is not for first time brain stormers. Watch someone using it before using it yourself. Use the Locktite Purple 222 specially made for screws less than 6 mm/ or Anabond Blue. At present I don't recommend you do any of these things.
Put a drop of the thread locker onto a piece of glazed paper and use a pin (the point, not the head) to apply only that much to around 2-3 threads on the center of the screw. Any more and you'll need a grinding wheel and much praying.
Do not put the pin into the bottle as you will polarize the rest of the solution and ruin it for later (acrylates polarize on contact with metal - that's how they work)
I'm told these bugs have been ironed out in the newer serial numbers. So don't go running for the gum bottle.
Much fun was had wandering through the gullies of the hardware market (SP Road in our neck of the woods), with a posse of shooting buddies, looking for Allen keys, thread lockers and O Rings.
Note: the Stock screws with their star washers have not moved.
The 11 mm Scope Grove.
There's a big difference between a Scope Rail and Scope Grooves.
A rail is mounted on top of the receiver and has fairly deep grooves cut into it. The Pegasus has grooves cut into the sides of the receiver itself. An entirely different proposition.
I spent three days trying to mount a 4 x 32 metal body Gamo scope on the Pegasus.
I begged, borrowed and stole Leapers (2 piece Medium) mounts, Air Force (2 piece High) mounts, an unknown (2 piece High) mount, a Leapers (one piece offset, 3 screw) mount, and finally a Hawke one piece 4 screw Medium mount.
Day 1 and a sweat soaked T shirt later, I PM'd Pratik Mahale on IFG to find out how he's scoped his Pegasus. He very kindly answered immediately and said he'd used used Araldite (an epoxy resin) and a one piece 4 screw mount.
Day 2 I decided against the Araldite and went back to the Hawke one piece, 4 screw, Medium mount. It took me about 20 minutes to torque in the 4 side screws. A miniscule amount of extra torque on one screw would pop the other screws off the mount. My sweaty T Shirt collection was now up to two T Shirts.
Day 3. Finally got the Hawke mount to sit on the grooves firmly. This time I scrubbed the grooves, the mount screws, and the claws on the mount with Surgical Spirit to degrease them before installation.
Then I decided to be brilliant and wrapped two pieces of masking tape loosely around the scope and receiver - just in case.
10 shots later the scope and mount fell off - the scope was saved by my brilliant use of masking tape - No Applause Please !
Sweaty T Shirts now number 3.
I got onto chat with Pyramidair (after changing my T Shirt) and was told they don't have any mounts in their inventory that wrap around a semicircular receiver and fit into the grooves therein.
So for those of you planning on harassing friends and relatives to bring you mounts from abroad, hold off for a while.
No solutions to this one yet, but stay tuned to this channel, some very smart friends of mine are working on a solution and I'll let you know when something is figured out.
Accuracy.
The Pegasus is not the Precihole Club. Along with 12 foot pounds you get more cocking effort, more felt recoil and a heavier trigger. It's called the Laws of Physics remember ? After ten shots at 10 meters it will go through a 450 page phone book (using GSmith High Impact round heads). Use a sturdy backstop. I'm glad I did.
Being a heavy hitting springer I estimate the Pegasus will take somewhere between 400-500 shots to settle in, accuracy wise.
My first groups were around an inch by an inch at 10 meters with GSmith round heads. At the lowest elevation setting for the rear sights the group was around 3 inches high.
After the first 50 shots this had settled into a group about a half inch by half inch at the same distance with the same pellets. It was around 2 inches high at this time. I'm expecting the groups to shrink further with use - remember all that old timer stuff I bored you with earlier ?
So, for those looking for a "Buy"/"Don't Buy" recommendation; Sorry you've wasted your time reading this.
For those wanting to buy jewellery and perfection; Sorry again.
For those of us obsessed with this whole business of pipes, wood, plastic and flying objects and Thunk sounds, I hope I've brought back some memories and the sense of fun we all have in doing what we do.
For Newbies and stick-in-the-mud veterans; there's nothing fundamentally wrong with the Precihole Pegasus. It's right on the money and capable of giving years of pleasurable shooting. That's unless you've gone over to the dark side and got yourself one of them girly compressed air sticks with a zero weight trigger and zero recoil and zero whatever else the Devil gives children now a days
In my neck of the woods we give respect to those who can do what we can't do, but want to - Olympic sportsmen, Astronauts and the like. So my salutations to Precihole and the Good Doctor for creating the Pegasus that's giving me such fun. But like Tendulkar's batting, the Good Doctor will get bouquets and Brickbats in equal measure. I hope he's enjoying himself too
I write this with the utmost respect for him and his creations.Whew ! This has been a long post. I've written this in the hope that the Precihole/Anti Precihole blood feuds will now officially end and much fun will be had by all.
Ashok
P.S. I must put on record that some of my friends tell me that Precihole is well seized of all the issues in this post and have already fixed most of them.
What a pity depriving late buyers of so much fun
Contact them if you have any issues with your pipe. They seem a decent enough bunch.
Many thanks to Shankar for all his support, wisdom and endless conversations on the phone discussing - well, what else ?
I'm a couple of weeks away from my review on the Pegasus.
) at work in tandem, the following has been observed in *my* Pegasus piece:
(So no, unlike the kings of our folk-lore, I am not going to throw/ sell away that older N25 in favor of the younger, err, newer, Pegasus that has catching hold of my active interest and imagination. 
Fortunately, neither the scope nor my eyeglasses suffered. Unfortunately, in my attempts to remove the remaining FeviKwik, I inadvertently removed some of the bluing 
So now, another spend for Ballistol!