The Benjamin Part Uno

Its been a few days, ok maybe a week. I've had a lot on my plate recently with clinic, 2 online classes, work and trying to fit a girlfriend and some trigger time in when I can.

I'm going to do a series of posts entitled "2000 rounds with my Trail NP." One of my rifle as previously mentioned is a Benjamin Trail NP. It was my first air gun I really enjoyed and its come up on a year ago now that I first bought it. I guess this will be a series of review, ideas for improvement, what I've done, and if I can come across a good camera, some pictures. I guess, here we go.

Part 1:
The TNP is an interesting mistress. When you first get your TNP (if you get one) you will find that it spits fire, smoke, and in general is quite bad ass. Benjamin claims 800fps with 14.3 grain lead ammo, and in the beginning, its pretty damn close! As time goes on though the velocity drops to the low 7s, or high 6s. This is still perfectly acceptable in a hunting rifle at 680fps your still producing 14.7 fpe with 14.3g, at 720 your making 16.5 so you are still well within the range of a decent hunting rifle. When my TNP had settled in it was a fantastic hunting machine and took quite a few squirrels but it was also used EXTENSIVELY for recreational target shooting. I will also go ahead and mention here that you will receive no chrono data from me since I don't have one. I know what these things make when they settle in because it can be found out very easily with a google search. I do have one chrono'd rifle I will use for a frame of reference, but I digress. Anyway, after about 1500 rounds or so I noted a change in the "thwack" that the rifle produced on the spinner targets, after around 1700 rounds I had a very unsatisfactory hunting experience that caused me to put the rifle in the gun cabinet and almost get rid of it completely. I normally put squirrels down in one shot, not bragging, just stating a fact. Its due mostly to the way the pellet hits the squirrel, 15ish fpe and the pellet almost always stays inside. Suddenly it took me 3 pellets to put a squirrel down? This was NOT cool, I had noticed too that I had to constantly re-zero my scope every time I shot it. Sooo the TNP got benched and was almost sold.

Fast forward a few weeks, I'm bored, its midnight, I've got a spare Benjamin piston seal? Hmmm.... So I dive in to what became my first tune. I will mention everything I did in later posts, but like I said I'm looking to make a series here. Lets just say I've fallen back in love with the old girl. She's shooting harder than ever and has the smoothest trigger of any of the air guns I've ever owned. Now I will also tell you this, I have EXACTLY $10.95 invested in my tune. Everything I've done was to stock parts and the 11 bucks was just to pay for that piston seal I mentioned. I will as the next couple weeks progress teach (as best I can, this may be a visually impaired person leading the blind at this point) you to do some of the same things with your TNP if you have one.

I want to get this out of the way right now too, if you do any of the things I have done, you will void your warranty. I only did them because mine was already up and I figured I didn't have anything to loose anyway.

Thats post one. Just a little taste of whats to come. I guess I will review the stock rifle as I go along? No real rhyme or reason to this at the moment. As always, any questions, let me know! I can see how many people have actually looked at my page but not comments yet, bring em on. I may not be able to answer every question but I can probably point you in a good direction!

As always, stay safe and keep it classy!