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    While the advent of CO2 has reduced the problems of getting consistent performance from a restrictor setting, the following method of making restrictor breaches may still be useful.  With the constant pressure from CO2 a good setting will stay so on or off the water.  However, other problems may still effect the setting.  The BBs may be slightly different sizes, especially if you use a mixture of plain copper and the silver type of BBs.  If you have the weight and room allowances to use the spring type breach, you may still want to try them out.   Keep in mind that this article was written before the days of CO2, so that some references (time wise) will not confuse you.

    The mighty Battleship approached it's target, and lined up for the perfect shot.  The captain pushed the trigger anticipating the cries of anguish from his victim.  As the mighty guns fired the powerful sound of "PUH" could be heard, as the BBs gently rolled out the barrels, onto the deck and fell overboard. "PUH" what do you mean "PUH"?? I just adjusted those ***???!!!***###$$$%% guns!!!

    Having learned? his lesson the captain tweaked his guns tighter the next sortie, only to have the BBs hang up and the guns not fire at all.

    If you are like a majority of us you may have trouble "tweaking" your breaches. They fire fine at the shoreline but not on the lake.  After two years of battling I still had many sorties where my guns were only marginal at best.

    I have found what I believe is the ideal solution.  Spring loaded breaches (see Figure 2).  These breaches always fire, as long as everything else works, no "PUH", no hangfires.

    These breaches do not fire as hard as a properly tweaked regular breach, but the difference is negligible. This is especially true if you take into account that every BB comes out hard.

    I used these breaches for the entire 1991 battling season with exemplary results.

    The spring breach idea is not original to me, but was thought up by Rick Schultz and Carl Camurati.  Rick used the original breaches for a while but gave up on them.  The shots were noticeably weaker than a regular breach.  After some experimentation, I have solved this problem.  Rick had the built the breaches without enough compression on the spring.

    The secret was to build the breaches so that the nut could be tightened down until the spring bottoms.  The breach would then act just like a regular one. Then the nut is backed off until the barrel can be pulled out from the rest position about 1/8 inch (see Figure 2).

    The breach works by letting the barrel move a little if the BB hangs up.  This relieves the pressure on the O-ring, allowing the BB to fire.

The materials need to build the breaches are:

1. Brass tubing for the barrel. I recommend a double thick brass tube from Campbell Tools Co., 2100 Selma Rd., Springfield, OH 45505, (513) 322-8562.  Their part name is Brass Tubing Half Hard very sturdy - 1/4", and costs about $2.10 for a 1' section.  This will make 3 4" barrels.  This gives better ding resistance under fire. Otherwise solder two sizes of regular tubing together for strength.

2. The next four sizes larger of regular brass tubing.

3. Compression nuts.  Two for each breach.

4. Breach spring.  The spring is from LEE SPRING COMPANY, 104 Industrial Ave, Greensboro NC, 27406, 919-275-3631. The part number is LC-038E-6 Price Group SS (for stainless steel).  The minimum order is 10 springs at about $2.98 each (call - this is an old price).  The price per spring drops significantly as the order goes up, so you may want to order larger quantities.

    Cut a length of the double thick tubing for the test barrel.  You may wish to substitute a normal brass tube for the more expensive double thick tubing for the test barrel.  The test barrel will not be useable for a working gun.  Cut a piece of regular brass tubing the next size larger to a length about the same as the sleeve on the old barrels (two compression ring lengths).  Cut a piece from the next larger size tubing to the same length.  Cut short lengths ( about 1/8 inch) from the remaining two sizes.  These last two pieces will be used as a seat for the spring.

    Assemble the pieces as shown in Figure 1.   Be sure that the brass tubing pieces all line up squarely where the spring will seat.  Ignore the fit at the o-ring end for now, unless it is really poor.   Solder all the parts together.

    Cut the o-ring end square.  Chuck the barrel in a drill, drill press, or lathe.  Using a file (or lathe bit if using a lathe) square the o-ring end and the spring seat if needed.  This completes the test barrel.

    Next we need to make the nut assemblies.   These are all the same so make as many as you will need plus some spares at the same time.  To accommodate the spring in the assemblies we need to use two nuts stacked on top of each other.  Take 1/2 of the nuts and drill out the compression ring end so that the hole is smooth to the threaded area (see Figure 3). Place a regular nut on top of one of these so that they form a double length nut (see Figure 2).  Silver solder these nuts together.  Repeat this for all the other nut pairs.  In addition I drilled out the compression ring end of the modified nut to the next size larger hole to make it easier to align the parts during gun assembly.  It takes a fair amount of force to compress the spring while holding every thing else together, and this helps to eliminate binding while you are juggling all the pieces.

    Now comes the time to take the measurements.   Slip an o-ring into each breach assembly.  Slip a spring and double nut over the test barrel. Install the test barrel onto each gun and make sure that it can be pulled outward from each gun when the nut is fully seated.  Shorten the sleeve area if not.

    Reinstall the test assembly on a gun with the nut fully seated.  Measure the length of barrel protruding from the nut.  Pull the barrel out as far as you can and measure the extended barrel length (wiggle it a little as you do to make sure it is not binding).  A second person comes in handy for this step.  Subtract the first measurement from this and add a smidgen.  This plus the original length of the test barrel sleeve is the length that the sleeve for this gun should be.

    Repeat this for the other guns and make the final barrels for each.  Be sure not to mix them up!

    Install an o-ring and final barrel/spring assembly on a gun and screw the nut down until you can pull the barrel out only about 1/8 inch.

    Your gun should now fire strongly and every time.  If not check that the raw barrel slides in and out of the breach smoothly, through the nut without binding, that the spring seat and o-ring ends are burr free and square, and that there are no defects in the spring.

    Repeat for all the guns.  Release the tension on the spring if you are not going to use the guns for a while, so that the o-ring is not crushed over time.

    Using this breech I went the entire duration of each event I attended that year (including Nats) without adjusting the breeches of my guns.  The guns during this time consistently fired hard and problem free.

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