Blackwolf Blackwolf and Sub-MOA Barrels Review

[Solo1]

How would you say the trajectory of the bw compares to the ghost when charted out in strelock? Ive never really checked a real low scope height. Better yet what is the bw scope height for strelock

 

[Franklink]

How would you say the trajectory of the bw compares to the ghost when charted out in strelock? Ive never really checked a real low scope height. Better yet what is the bw scope height for strelock

I'm still in the gunroom so busted out my notebook and a couple guns and found some comparisons for you.

This is nerdy field target dude bread and butter...

I didn't build a profile for the BW in Strelok, but the measured scope height looks to be about 2".
Compare the 10 and 55 yard holdovers to see the scope height effect. As stated in the last post, 2.2 mil holdover for 10 yards. And 1.1 mil holdover for 55 yards. Of all these guns I've shot for FT in the last few years, the BW has the lowest holdover value for 10 yards.

As an aside, differences in BCs can alter 55 yard holdovers.

(When I build my dope cards I use click values, all of my ft scopes are 1/10 mil clicks, and the reticles are chosen b/c their design makes it easy to convert from clicks to holdover. Ie, "46" on my dope card = 4.6mils).

Ghost scope height was 3.4" in Strelok for actual to match predicted.
The Ghost was the winner for the largest 10 yard holdover amount of all of these, both as a 19fpe .20 and a .177.
Ghost as a 19fpe .177.
Ghost as a 19fpe .20

USFT scope height in Strelok is 2.5" for actual to match predicted.
USFT as a 19 fpe .177
USFT as a 19 fpe .20

Veteran Standard as a 19fpe .177 (scope height 2.4" in Strelok)
Veteran Short as a 19fpe .20 (scope height 2.3" in Strelok)




Generally speaking, a high scope height equates to more holdover for 10 yard shots, and less holdover for 55 yards. It's a pros and cons situation. Neither is definitively "better" or "best." Both a high scope to bore and a low scope to bore situation has its merits.

 

[Billm]

Well, National Weather Service got the wind wrong for Saturday.

The highly variable winds are the hardest to shoot in, both in direction and intensity, and I had both on Saturday. But it was my day off so I shot anyway.

Run some more of the 12.5grain NSAs through Rudy's barrel with current settings, on paper at 50 yards.

Here are 10 groups of 10 shots each at 50 yards, using the 12.5grain NSA from the Blackwolf. 15% plenum reduction. Blue spring @ hammer tension of 4. For an average fps around 900. Small ES, almost all were 890-905ish.

Top left of each page was the sighter bull.

First page was dirty barrel, second page was clean barrel, didn't change the average of each page much, but the smallest ten shot group was from the clean barrel.

Overall average size of those ten, 10 shot groups was a 1.08", which would put us at just a hair over 2moa. Most of that was wind. I've long held the opinion that there's a weight component to a particular projectiles ability to deflect the wind that our usage of the ballistic coefficient simply doesn't account for. And these small .177 pellets fit my theory. They have a BC up around 0.06-0.07, but in the wind, behave about like a 10-13 grain pellet with a BC of half of that does. Fun to shoot, but you dang sure better be on your wind game, watching flags like a hawk. When assessing accuracy I sometimes don't hold off for wind, to see what the true accuracy potential is. I feel that trying to outguess the wind only muddies the waters. I wasn't holding for wind for those 120 ish shots above.

Overall not as good as that one 0.8moa group from a few days prior, but still respectable, given the conditions.

As for shot count, at one point I kept track and got 60 shots from 240-170 bar. With a reg pressure of 130 bar, and just doing comparative math....a full 250-130bar should yield around 100 shots at this modest 22.5fpe setting.

Very pleasant overall shooting experience.


Bump the reg up from 130 bar to 140-150 bar and run some of the 36-40grain slugs through the 1:16 barrel on paper @ 100 yards.

Disclaimer prior to reporting how this went: I realized after I was all done shooting the heavy stuff, that I hadn't swapped out out to the .22 probe!!! So I shot a bunch of heavy slugs with the 1:16 barrel, using the .177 probe! I laughed at myself when I realized this at the end of the day. I wasn't feeling any puff of air, but definitely noticed how sharp the crack of the report was. I noted a bunch of the tuning info, but most of that is probably useless since I had the wrong probe on and was likely losing some air there. Suffice it to say that I was surprised to be able to shoot the 40grain Altaros as fast as 850 with a reg pressure of 140 bar, and the .177 probe! lol.

I shot 3 different slugs in that 36-40grain area: the Altaros 35.8gr, Altaros 40gr, and Thomas 38.5grain. All were from the 1:16 SubMOA barrel.
All three shot fairly respectably, given the conditions.
The two ten shot groups from the 35.8s on the top of the first page are decent.
The first page has a 5 shot group with the 40grain Altaros that is less than an MOA (bottom right).
The second page has a 10 shot group with the Thomas slugs that is much better than it looks (also bottom right). I numbered the shots on that one and shot 8 nicked the nail that holds my target to the cardboard backer, and of course that caused chaos.

The 40grain Altaros seemed to do better at 850 than they did at 825-830.

I've said it previously in this review, but the easy button for the Blackwolf is high BC slugs from the 1:16 barrel. I'm experimenting with plenum size and transfer port, etc, for .22 pellets an even lately .177 stuff, but the Blackwolf really seems to be designed for these heavy slugs. And they shoot well. The price per shot of lathe turned (Altaros) slugs isn't very appealing to me, but it's dang-sure are easy to make them go where I want them to at 100 yards, even in the wind.

Degas, drop the reg down to 70-90bar and start dialing in on a sub20fpe tune for pellets with Rudy's .177 barrel.

Rounded out the day doing the above. While I had it degassed for the plenum reduction, I traded out my 15% plenum reducer for AOA's prototype reducer. Figured if the goal is 19ish fpe as a .177, sure don't need much plenum volume for that. I didn't try the water displacement to figure out CCs, but from volumetric comparison (yes, the ole "eyeballin" it method) I'd estimate that AOA's reduces the OEM 53cc plenum to more like 10-15ccs. There's just not much room left in there for air, as the prototype takes up nearly the entire volume.

White hammer spring for this.

I'm really hoping this barrel likes JSB manufactured 10.34grain pellets. In field target we usually shoot for high teens in energy level, depending on the speed that the barrel shows a preference for. So, something like 880-930 with the 10.34s is likely where we'll end up.

I started with a reg pressure of 75 bar and worked my way up, shooting two pellets at min, and then two shots at max.
75 bar --> min = 818,819 and max = 848-849
85 bar --> min = 828, 828 and max = 863-865
95 bar --> min = 835, 838 and max = 863, 865
100 bar --> min = 847, 846 and max = 900, 902
105 bar --> min = 854, 851 and max = 921, 916

at this point had noticed how much more pleasant the shot feel and sound was with less hammer spring tension than it was with more, so jumped to 120 bar, hoping to use less hammer spring to get in that 880-920 window

120 bar --> min = 848, 854 and max = 953, 956
130 bar --> min - 858, 855 and max = 972-977
130 bar looked good enough that I gathered a bit more detailed data...."4" = 893, 895 and "8" = 928, 921 and "10" = 930, 936

The above was mostly for fps gathering, but I also shot at paper at 30 yards for all of this. The first ten or shots went into the same dime sized group, until the fps climbed out of it as I made adjustments and incrementally increased the reg.

Very down and dirty here, but right of my thumb is the first 10 or so shots. Started cranking turrets after that.

Having some baseline data, decided to shoot it a bit at 50 yards too. I was running out of light by now. It was shooting good, and then wasn't. I concluded that the barrel was likely dirty after all the slugs from earlier that day. And called it a night.

Fast forward to this morning...I had about 20 minutes this morning before work, so hastily (read not thoroughly) ran a few patches through barrel and took about 20 shots at 30 yards. This was the best 5 shot group from this morning.

Just under 1/2." And the ever present wind was...present.

Next step is to polish up the barrel well.

I might end up taking out AOA's major plenum reducer, and either put my 15% reduction back in, or leave it at the full 53ccs. The port on this .177 barrel is small, and might be sufficient air restriction by itself, for the intended purpose. I'm also wondering about maybe getting to my 880-930fps with 10.34s with either less reg pressure and/or less hammer tension, goal being an even gentler shot cycle.

That white spring on the lower end of the hammer spring tension wheel almost feels like cocking a Red Wolf. There's just hardly any cocking effort there. It's a desirable enough trait in a field target gun that I'm interested in fiddling with the tune to be able to take advantage of it.

Lots of shooting, and lots of fun.

Are those EBR target rings that you shot the .22 Altaros at 100yds? I’m just trying to get an idea of the group size with the BW and slugs at 100yds. Thanks

 

[Franklink]

Are those EBR target rings that you shot the .22 Altaros at 100yds? I’m just trying to get an idea of the group size with the BW and slugs at 100yds. Thanks

Yes. EBR targets.
X-Ring: ~0.200 inches
10-Ring: ~0.475 inches
9-Ring: ~1.250 inches
8-Ring: ~2.000 inches
7-Ring: ~2.800 inches
6-Ring: ~3.580 inches

Keep in mind that I'm not a cherry picker. Those are just average groups, not the best of 10, 20, 30 etc groups like some people get so excited to share.

The post you cited was also when I pulled the bone-headed move of shooting .22 slugs with a .177 probe.

 

[cavedweller]

Since my last update, I've had 3 or 4 small shooting sessions with the 19fpe Blackwolf in .177, all from Hunter class field target position: stool and shooting sticks. The goal has been to dope out the actual trajectory from 10-55 yards, and get some practice under my belt in case I can make it to a field target match in the near future.

The BW shoots really well from the shooting sticks. Pretty pleasant and enjoyable experience.

Shot a couple groups at 55 yards this afternoon.

Top left is a 10 shot group with JSB 10.34s. = 1.2" CTC
MIddle left is a couple sighters with some experimental pellets I was sent. They weigh 12.7grains
Middle right is those same experimental pellets, first four shots were nearly touching, then a flyer about 2 inches away. Good enough to be worth a second look to determine if that flyer is a frequent occurrence, or a once only deal.
Bottom left is 10 shots with JSB 13.43 MRDs. 0.85" CTC

It's sighted in for the 10.34s, so the other groups were just to see how they'd group, I wasn't trying to center the groups over the bulls.

View attachment 17902


As previously stated, the 13.43s maybe have a slight bit of an accuracy edge, but both the 10.34s and the 13.43s are shooting more than well enough to be competitive in field target, if the operator doesn't screw up.

A couple of BW-for-field target related observations:

• I've taken a handful of shots with the BW from the offhand and kneeling positions. Not too bad. I wasn't sure what to expect, since the gun seems so geared towards high power benchrest. BUT, it shoots quite well from the offhand position. The only room for improvement that I noted is that I'd like more depth to the forearm if I was going to be taking lots of offhand shots. That would simply help lock the elbow into the hip and still have the eye alignment for thee scope without scrunching up so much. I don't expect it would balance so well for offhand if the 3+ lb SubMOA barrel was installed.
• The first/cold shots are slow. This was one of my main criticisms of the Ghost platform for field target use. The Ghost, when configured for sub20fpe, no matter how I did it, would start 50ish fps slow, and then take 6-8 shots to slowly climb into the expected fps range. The Blackwolf has low cold shots as well, but not nearly as drastic. The first, cold shot will be about 20fps slow, second shot is about 15fps low, and third shot is within 10fps of the average I see over the whole string. My primary field target gun has an ES of 20-25 and so I know that that much of a spread isn't an issue for the kill zone sizes we shoot at for field target. Soooo, the BW does have the slow cold shot situation, but it's not gonna cost misses. Or at least it won't based on how the BW in my position is set up and behaving.
• BW is holding scope zero from day to day in an admirable fashion. A gun with a floating zero is NOT a field target gun. We don't get sighters, so a gun absolutely has to be trusted to maintain its point of impact. Guys will occasionally pop up on the forum and say how come such and such gun is never used in field target. Well, there's your reason. Field target shooters use guns that maintain their impact points. I've been zeroed at 30 yards with the 10.34s from the BW, for a few days now, and it puts pellet right where it should from one shooting session to the next. Trajectory data is also tracking just like it should, for the extremes of what it'll see in an ft match, 2.2 mils of holdover for 10 yards, and 1.1 mils of holdover for 55 yards. And it's been exactly that, and everything in between, each time I've gotten it out to practice, verify over the last few days.
• As much as I enjoy bullpups, the long gun form is truly easier than a bullpup to shoot well for target purposes. And that holds true for the BW. It's plain and simple a long gun. Nothing bullpup-ish about it. It can't even ambiguously claim "semi-bullpup" status. While I prefer a short gun for most of my uses, the time i"m spending shooting the BW from sticks is further convincing me of this simple fact.
• And related to the above two bullet points, the design of the BW allows for a pretty low scope mount situation. It's been fun to see how that affects holdovers for the 10-55 yard field target ranges.
• May or not be applicable for us field target shooters, but I found this interesting tidbit today....
  • There is a different valve stem, designated for low power. That might take a guy all the way down to UK legal sub 12fpe, but it would also be fascinating to see if a 19fpe tune could be derived using that. I suspect it'd further quite down the report, and improve shot cycle, air usage, etc.
  • View attachment 17903

I'm thinking a good palm riser into the UIT or ARCA would work on the Chassis?

 

[Franklink]

Today the .177 barrel is getting dropped off to be sent to @cavedweller. I expect him to do quite well in ft matches with it. I've assessed quite a handful of sub20fpe barrels and guns since I got into FT in 2017, and the barrel on its way to him, when installed in a Blackwolf, is pretty dang good.

One last comment on the sub20 Blackwolf concept (.177 or otherwise)...
This photo is a mock up of what a BW would like like with a short, shrouded barrel.
Large pellet tin in there for perspective.

That configuration would get you to a 34" overall length. Owning and having used a handful of guns in that length, less than 34-35" is where an airgun really starts to get convenient to use. The form factor (NOT a bullpup) of the BW means you're limited to a barrel about 12-14" long, depending on shroud choice. Such a short barrel would NOT equate to big power, but could sure be a really high end, highly refined field target platform, or backyard plinker. I like short guns and I cannot lie.


I'll now be shifting back to the .22 testing. First order of business is to optimize the BW for high power .22 pellets, using the SubMOA barrels. Before the .177 detour, the hypothesis was that we were overdriving the pellets with the huge plenum and very large transfer ports. Since the .177 testing involved placing a plenum reducer, I will start with just that change. Depending on how that goes, next step would be to place the transfer port restrictor as well.

The intended pellets for this are: AEA 25.4, JTS 25.4, JSB 25.4, JSB 28.55, and maybe even the 20-22grain pellets.

I'll post updates as they happen.

 

[Franklink]

Wanted to see some results of just the plenum stuffer.
Started with the white spring, reg of 128-130 bar.

1:22 SubMOA barrel

First shot with the Grands on MIN was so slow that the Chrono didn't catch it. It also went through the part of the paper that curls against the side of my bucket pellet trap. Bumped up to MAX and shot three into a cloverleaf (bottom left), 790fps. 30 yards.

Next group was middle left. Switched to AEA 21.9s. Still @ 30 yards. MIN on the wheel was 680. Three into a cloverleaf.

Last group @ 30 yards was top left. Still the AEA 21.9s, but @ MAX for 900fps. Three into a cloverleaf.

Moved the trap to 50 yards and shot three, 10 shot groups, starting on top right, ending at bottom right. All with the AEA 21.9s @ 900ish. Bottom right 10 shot group is less than 0.5.

Decide to try a 100 yard EBR practice card after that, using the AEA 21.9s @ 900ish. Conditions were good, but results were...not amazing. The AEAs were hitting high and low at times, despite the fps being quite consistent, ES was around 15fps.

String here includes some of the 50 yard shots with the AEA 21.9s.



From the above, I concluded that the 21.9grain AEAs are a very good 50 yard choice, but NOT a great 100 yard choice, at least with this combination of adjustments. This likely speaks more to the pellet than it does the barrel or the platform. Also of note here was the difference in elevation adjustment required going from 50 to 100 yards. Most rigs shooting MRDs or Grands seem to need 28-32 1/10mil clicks difference, from 50 to 100 yards. My highest BC pellet rig is a 26 click difference. The 21.9grain AEAs needed 36 clicks. While I didn't measure a BC, that suggests a BC down around 0.045, in other words, not as good of a BC as the MRDs and Grands are capable of. At least at the speed they were being shot at today.

Swapped out the white spring for the blue spring and went to JSB Grands @ 100 yards with hammer spring on MAX for about 900fps. Wind had picked up by now. Top left was my sighters, top right showed that I should have taken a few more sighters. The bottom four, 5 shot groups were mostly 44s, which would get a guy into the low 220s, for a full card score. This was promising. These were predictable and behaving correctly, for my input and the expected influence of the wind I was seeing from the ribbons.

Sufficiently consistent across the 25 shots that I scored here.




The wind was at a point to make accuracy testing rather inconclusive by this point, so I called it a day for the shooting.

I did however, cut the channel and ramp for my .22 single shot loader this evening. I like the shape of this one better than how the .177 turned out. Second attempts at making something usually turn out better.



Next step will be installing the prototype transfer port restrictors. BW is currently degassed and ready for the change, just trying to decide if I want to start that project this late at nig

 

[Franklink]

With hopes of another hour or so of decent shooting before the wind picks up tomorrow morning, I just finished installing the prototype transfer port restriction. That required pulling the valve, and I hadn't broken the gun down that far yet so went searching and found a video by Daystate. It's a rather long video, but was exactly what I needed.

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So, next variable to be accuracy tested will be with the transfer port restriction AND the plenum reducer installed.

 

[Solo1]

Cole try the aea 21.9 at 970-975 when you get the gun set up to push them that fast.

 

[Franklink]

I did try to do some shooting on Saturday morning but the wind started sooner than it had on Friday, and I was getting 3-5inches of wind deflection. Simply not the conditions to try to assess ANTHING.

Also, seems I tore my ACL playing basketball this morning. That 100 yard walk to swap out target paper is gonna be tough for awhile-maybe I can train one of my kids to run paper back and forth . Appointment with ortho tomorrow to confirm my self-diagnosis.

Accuracy testing might be on hold for awhile.

 

[pan60]

hope your better soon!

 

[Solo1]

Hoping its not torn!

 

[cavedweller]

Here's a quick pick of what that custom 19" barrel that is now installed in my BW can do at 55 yards with JSB 13.4 Exacts - very pleased as long as the pellet quality is good.

This is with AA 10.3

 

[Franklink]

For anyone curious about the effect of the plenum stuffer (volume reduction) + the transfer port restrictor, here are some of the numbers from my notebook.

Plenum reducer with blue spring and reg of 128-130 with HS adjustment on max produced 900fps with JSB 28.55 Grands (51fpe).

Plenum reducer + transfer port restriction with blue spring and reg of 128-130 with HS adjustment on max produced 865fps with 28.55gr Grands (47.5fpe).

All the same as previous paragraph but with reg pressure of 140 BAR got the Grands to 885fps (49.6fpe).

Bumping the reg to 150 bar got me back to 900-905 with the Grands.

So, the transfer port strangler certainly is minimizing flow to the pellet, which is what we wanted, on the assumption that too much air flow was inducing some pellet instability.

 

[Solo1]

Well its been a while since we heard anything have anything new?

 

[Franklink]

Well its been a while since we heard anything have anything new?

Lol, yeah. Complete tear of the ACL and also shredded the medial meniscus. They harvested a replacement ACL from my quad, and trimmed out all the strands of meniscus.

Im currently in a full length leg brace that has to be locked out in straight-leg position. Have only been cleared to remove it for showers and dressing changes.

This was yesterday evenings dressing change.


Would really like to get back to shooting, but can't yet run target paper and it's hard to carry a gun on crutches.

 

[FL22]

@Franklink , that looks painful… hope you get well and back to shooting soon .

 

[pan60]

get well soon!

 

[Solo1]

Well that sucks! Hoping you get better soon!

 

[Franklink]

On 12/30 I had knee surgery to repair a torn ACL and shredded meniscus. And was on crutches for 7 days after that. Crutches and carrying a gun to my bench don't really go together, not to mention trying to run target paper back and forth. So, I apologize that I haven't had any updates lately, BUT, I got off the crutches a few days ago, and today bribed my kids to run some target paper downrange for me. So I've got a bit to report on how that went.

Kids running target paper. The traps are the two tiny circles to the left and beyond the kids in my back field. And yes, we got some snow a few days ago, and it hasn't been warm enough to melt it from the shade of my house yet.

I'm still working on the goal of figuring out long range .22 pellets from the Blackwolf, specifically with the SubMOA barrels. All of the shooting today was through the 1:22 barrel, and the following parameters.

• all pellets straight from the tin, not even lubed
• Reg @ 150 bar
• blue spring
• prototype plenum reducer
• prototype transfer port restrictor.

I've got some permanent steel at 30, 40, 50, etc yards, so verified scope zero with those, but the groups on paper I'm about to share were at 100 yards.

Temp was 34 degrees (F). Per NWS, winds were a pretty consistent 7-9mph, but would switch back and from from left to right, and sometimes a headwind as it switched.

Started with the AEA 21.9grain pellets. Hammer spring setting of 10 (with the above) produced an average fps of just under 970fps, and looked like this...

Here is how they grouped:

Overall the 21.9s behaved with these settings. The wind, as it so often is, was the wildcard. I was needing 1-1.2mils of holdoff for the full value 7-9mph winds, which worked pretty well to get them to drop in the 9 and 10 ring, until the wind changed. The problem with a long range pellet needing so much hold-off is that when the wind changes quickly, you're caught with your pants down and end up with pellets going where you're holding for 10 seconds ago's wind. Full on example of that on the bottom right group. Those three out past the 7 ring are what I was mostly needing for wind-hold off through the majority of this card.




Moved to the JSB 25.4grain MRDs after that, specifically the "shallows," just cuz.

Played with the hammer spring tension a bit with these, but wasn't getting much speed increase beyond a setting of 12, so left it there. And here is how it looked once I settled on that...

Here's a full card on the left, and a couple respectable 5 shot groups on the middle two bulls of the right page...

The MRDs shot better than the AEAs, specifically b/c of the wind. The MRDs were needing 0.4-0.6mil of holdoff, roughly half. In a low or now wind situation, both of these pellets I tried today seem like they'd shoot very respectable groups, and probably would be pretty close in performance, BUT...wind.

Overall impression of all of this left me pretty optimistic. This is the the first decent shooting session I've had with ALL of the prototype power reducing parts in play. Shot cycle was pleasant, report was quick and snappy, and fairly quiet. Didn't feel like a 454 engine in a 4 wheeler anymore.

I noted the beginning and end pressure with the 35 shots with the AEAs and it was 250 bar, down to 180 bar. That still left me another 30 bar above reg pressure. Could maybe get another 12-14 shots from that extra 30 bar that I didnt use. So something like a shot count of 45-50 shots at a little over 45fpe.

I'll try to repeat this in better conditions and see if it'll shoot tighter groups and concurrently higher scores. Felt really good to do a bit of shooting after a couple weeks away from it.