Airgunning

     BAM B51 .22      

For some reason, I think a collection isn't complete without a high power .22. I have the Stealth filling that gap but I wanted to add a more conventional styled gun giving a more comfortable hold than the Stealth (any reason is good to buy another gun ;-)). Since I know I won't be using this gun much, I didn't wanted to spend a lot of money to it so when the cheap BAM XS-B50/B51 became available, I was interested. After reading a few reviews, I decided to try one ... or two ;-).

The gun doesn't feel cheap at at. It feels very solid and doesn't look bad. The finish of the stock could be nicer, but it isn't too bad especcially considering its price tag. However the gun needs some fiddling to get everything right. The trigger needs polishing, and although the adjustment screws are glued, whem you adjust them, they become a very loose fit and need some glue to fix them again. On my B51, the stock touched the air tube at the front giving bad accuracy, so I had to sand the stock so I would not touch the airtube. I've treated the hammer with some dry lube, I 've polished the bolt, on the B51 I had to drill the hole for the ball which secures the bolt as this wasn't deep enough and my bolt was moving when I shot .... Most of these imperfections are easily cured and at the end, you're rewarded with a gun that is still cheap, but very accurate.

These guns can easily go up to 33 fpe but I lowered the power of my gun to 26 fpe to get more shots from a fill. When filling to 200 bar I get about 35 shots at 26 fpe with a spread of 15 m/s (50 fps). However the first 10 shots seems to be less accurate so I only fill to 180 bar, shoot 30 shots and refill.

As said before, the gun is very accurate once set-up right. One hole accuracy at 25 m (27.5 yards) is no exception. The target below was shot with AA Fields 5.51 (wrongly written 5.52 on the card) and the gun at 24 fpe.

But also at 50 m (55 yards) the guns is capable of very nice groups.

Is it worth buying ? As you see, there are many things to solve, but once you solved them, the gun is not bad at all. So if you're capable to solve the problems, it's definately worth buyng.

Yesterday, I sold the gun. A friend was coming over to pick up the TX200 which he wanted badly but after trying the B51, he changed his mind :-)). Since I didn't have much use for it, I let him have the B51 and from what I hear, he's giving it much better use than I ever would. Have fun, pal ;-) ! Now what am I going to buy next ?

March 27, 2005 by Mario Severi

2 years later

The guy who bought this B51 rapidly got problems with the filler valve which more or less disintegrated. He got it solved with some lathe work but it got me worried about the material quality and safety when using this gun.

He also sold the gun after he fixed the problems, but after some time bought another one. This new one had a barrel which was not fitted straight into the breech block (bad machining) and the gun kept leaking at the connection of the air tube with the filler valve. He even had to cut down the air tube and re-thread it to stop the leaking.

With all this in mind, I no longer think these guns are worth buying, some of the quality issues have repercussions on the safety aspect and that's totally inacceptable.

April 28, 2007 by Mario Severi