Marauder G3, The Things I Do For Fun

[Pumacarl]

This was a long time coming for me and I started to think that it wasn't going to happen at all. Never been happier to be wrong. The third genereation of the Marauder is surprisingly here. I have been rather outspoken on many threads over the years about what this gun should be, to us as shooters, to Benjamin as a company, and the airgun community in general. Actually, a lot of us airgunners have. Has Benjamin listened? Well, that is not what this thread is about, but I will talk about that plenty along the way. This thread is just meant to be a long ramble on what I do to a gun, and why, and how things develop and actually turn out. I have already started down paths that I have abandoned and I didn't want to exclude why, so I thought that I had better start writing about it, or I'd forget, or I'd never want to start. I am not a writer, or a machinist, just a long time tinkerer who uses basic hand/power tools to accomplish things that they are not meant to do. Patience is key. I type slowly too. So this is going to take a while. I don't work for or represent anybody in the industry. If you enjoy following along, great, but honestly I catalog these exploits as a sort of cloud storage so that I don't have to keep re-explaining something to somebody, and for me to remember what I did. If it helps or inspires you, more so the better. On to the G3 mrod...


I had a rudimentary plan already in place when I heard this gun was coming. To drop significant weight, a carbon fiber bottle would be the first thing done without hesitation. This was not going to be a bench gun for me, and I didn't want the weight. Wanting at least twice the volume of my G2 mrod, I figured that a 360cc bottle plus the 80cc of plenum would cover that. I got the fattest, shortest, bottle that I could find because I knew it would look better on the gun, and keep the weight back. Long story short, the bottle didn't fit, until I came along. I'll explain later, here's some pictures:

Bottle comparison, check out the neck lengths and radius difference.


Using just the side edge radius of a WorkSharp belt sander to start the concaved radius needed.


Finished, after sanding and 100 checks for fit.


The fit just accepts a strip of paper w/o touching. The lines of this size bottle look really good.

 

[Chief55]

Nice job. It looks great. How much does it weigh now?

 

[Pumacarl]

Nice job. It looks great. How much does it weigh now?

I'll never know because things are still going to change. This bottle weighs 14.5oz less, and the cg for its weight is a couple of inches back so it feels like a bigger change than the numbers would indicate anyway. I have many things to do before this gun goes back together. I'm taking apart and going over everything. I've warned you, this ramble is going to be so long winded that you could sail around the world on it, lol.

 

[Billm]

I have to admit when I saw the first photo, I started to weep . Then by the last photo, I was darn, it really looks good. Nice job, keep going.

 

[Pumacarl]

So many people get turned off by the process of creation that they never proceed, hey, baby birds are ugly, and pruning looks like hell when you get done, but the results speak for themselves.

I said that I had abandoned some ideas already, one of those was to put on a full length Arca Swiss rail from just in front of the trigger guard to within an inch of the tip of the stock. Once I got done with this bottle several points finally hit home. This looks really good, better in person then in the pictures, almost like it's molded into the gun, and I don't want to screw that up. The other reason is big too, weight. The only really good rail to get for what I wanted to do was the 10.25" MDT, but it alone weighed 6oz. Add in the hardware and the JBWeld I was going to need to form it in, and how far out that weight would be, and I scrapped it. If I had wanted an Avenge-XL, I would have bought one.

Here is some more pics to show how fluid and melded in this bottle is to the look of the gun:




This is the way.

 

[BBGunn]

Reminds me of the look BSA has had with their PCP bottle guns for years.

 

[Pumacarl]

I'm still planning and working on putting a short Arca rail in front of the trigger guard. I like them too much not to use one. I'm trying to keep it low and as inconspicuous as possible, but it is what it is. It will be level and not match the angle there because I want to use my aluminum hamster that I made during the 250Z project. We'll see how that goes.

 

[Pumacarl]

Reminds me of the look BSA has had with their PCP bottle guns for years.

That was the inspiration! That is what I was begging for on the new Marauder, but they wanted to keep the price down. I'll tell you what, I like this gun, it's power, and it's internal design, w-a-y better than the R10/R12. I almost bought those guns on looks alone, until I watched sub12airgunners videos on how they were made internally, yeah, forget that. I care about what's inside and if I can work on it myself and those guns are a no-go for me. The BSA barrel is top notch though, but I'm getting ahead of myself.

 

[rayroz]

Carl , killer job ! Custom work .
Quick question , i will be getting my carbon fiber bottle next week and i would like to remove the stock .
Do you have a link to remove it or can you spell it out to us watching your job .
Thanks and great job .
Ray

 

[wolfmangreg]

Looks great! Not good... Great!

What kind of projectile do you envision setting it up for?