Blackwolf Blackwolf and Sub-MOA Barrels Review

[Franklink]

Got home late this evening and had time for one card...kinda.
Lost enough daylight to see very good about 6 boxes from the bottom, and then visibility really went south on those last two boxes.

But 197, 13x is perfectly acceptable, given the situation.
Only 3 nines on the non-mulligan boxes, the rest tens, although a couple of those tens were just barely tens with the scoring plug.

 

[Franklink]

@cavedweller,

Configured like this....


12lbs, 9.9ounces.
43 inches long without the moderator
50 inches long with the moderator.

 

[Franklink]

Three cards tonight.

Two 30 yard challenge cards-started at about 6:30. And those went well enough that I shot my first ever 40 yard challenge at about 7pm. And of course the wind kicked up for that one, lol.

197/16X (30 yard)

198/13x (30 yard)

192/9x (40 yard)

I'm really liking the performance of this .177 OEM barrel. I've been spoiled by some exceptional sub-20 fpe guns that simply don't produce flyers, and this OEM .177 Blackwolf barrel is so far hanging right there with em in the "no flyer" category. When it doesn't go where I want it to, it's correlating to my poor input (either poor trigger control or misreads on the wind).

 

[Adrian Q]

That’s some great shooting. It’s a testament to your concentration to be able to do that at the end of the day. Well done.

 

[Franklink]

Broke 200 on a 30yard challenge last night...


Blackwolf .177 with 23" OEM .177 barrel
JSB 10.34s @ 925-935
Athlon Midas Tac 6-24 @ 24x (typically shoot at 16x)


Shot at about 8pm last night, and the very low wind conditions were a large factor in how it scores.
It's 4xs from a perfect score so I dang sure plugged those 4, 10s a couple times but there was definite "peach" color between the edge of the plug and the black X dot.

The 8 in one of the mulligan boxes was a bad pellet or a low fps shot or a gust I didn't see or something. With where it is in the card, fresh reg caused a low fps shot is what I'm leaning to as the source.

The 9 in the other mulligan box was me holding (too much) for what I thought the wind was doing, so a misread on the wind.

 

[Franklink]

BW was in pieces on my bench for most of a week. Had a really slow leak that I was chasing down. It was on the order of just under 8-10 bar per 24hrs.

Couldn't get soapy bubbles from anywhere - assumed maybe poppet/valve interface had an issue, piece of fuzz or something was what I was imagining. So I tore it down that far, put it back together and let it sit another 24hrs, same slow leak. Pulled gauges and replaced orings under them, and then let sit another 24hrs, same slow leak. Ultimately found a chewed up Dowty under the foster fill and replaced it and it held for that 24rs. So I think it was the bonded washer, even though I couldn't get it to bubble with soapy water. . Lots of degassing to drop reg pressure in all the testing I'm sure contributed to the state of that Dowty under the fill port.

Put 'er back together late yesterday and shot the following two cards. POI was slightly off, from the disassemble, for that first line of bulls on the 197.

And switched from the bench to stool/sticks now.

As suggested by the scores, not much wind to contend with.

 

[Franklink]

Tinkered on and with the BW quite a bit today...

It's a personal preference, but long guns are hard for me to enjoy. Pulling the shroud and using a thread adaptor cut off 2 inches. Swapping to a shorter moderator cut off another 2.75." So this current config is nearly five inches shorter, without losing any barrel length.

Current... (45" oal)

Pellet tin in there for perspective.

Previous... (Just shy of 50")

As for weight...
Current =

And previous...

So saved about 3ounces. Heavier/shorter moderator versus the lighter/longer moderator + these shroud components...

And the brass thread adapter I'm using instead...

And the current balance point...

Every inch is noticeable on OAL of a gun, so 5 inches is quite the change. Here it is next to an HW50s...would be very close in length to the 50s without the moderator.

Will give it a go with these current changes and see how it does and what I think of accuracy and the decibels, etc.


Also finished out the first tin of the "7" batch of 10.34s, so pushed some Slick 50 soaked qtips through and got this...

4 qtips and it's clean as a whistle. This made me realize that having that outer shroud off is one fewer step to clean the barrel. Prior, I was taking the outer shroud off to avoid losing fuzz or a qtip in between the end of the barrel and the end of the shroud.


Also been dealing with a small leak that's worth about 8 bar/24hrs. I've got an email out to Shane. Obviously the valve, and probably the poppet. Will be interesting to see if AOA opts to replace the whole valve like they did with the leaky Ghost, or if they'll just replace the poppet and seat (acetal disc) that the valve stem seats/seals against.

And on the topic of the Ghost...my favorite configuration of the BW so far has been with the 15" barrel, which coincidentally makes it nearly the same length as the Ghost, once I slap a moderator on there. Seems like that puts it in the 35-36" OAL realm, which is downright handy. The BW with a 15-17" barrel is simply a happy medium between bull pup length, but with the pros that come with a non-bull pup platform (barrel isn't next to your ear, avoidance of long linkages in the trigger, etc). Really a bummer that those 15" .22 barrels didn't work out, cuz you sure don't NEED a 23" barrel for sub20fpe work.

As an aside, I really should get a bunch of close-ups of the Ghost and share those on the Ghost review, as a curiosity, with my thoughts on how's it's held up over 4 years of getting used hard.

 

[cavedweller]

@cavedweller,

Configured like this....
View attachment 23605

12lbs, 9.9ounces.
43 inches long without the moderator
50 inches long with the moderator.

My BW in blue laminate with the new 19" LW .20 barrel and shroud with Vario palm riser weighs in at 11.525 Not to chubby. certainly below my 12 lb threshold @Franklink