Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Air Guns Metallurgical quality on Spanish Gamos and Chinese airguns?

I purchased a Gamo bottom cocker for my grandkids a couple weeks ago to play with on the farm. I'm 66 and shot all my life and like good guns. I was surprised at the quality and accuracy. The fit and finish is excellent. I like it so much I guess I am shooting it more than my 22's. Not a lot of money to purchase and really cheap to shoot. It's not meant to be a upper end gun at that price but a heck of a lot of fun. How long will it last?? I don't know.

I think tmitch hit it, it is all in the trigger, or at least a major part is in that all so important link of what makes a gun great.

I have two chinwerkbaus and the triggers is where they save money and where the chinese guns fail.

IF they had a decent trigger they would likely match some of the high dollar guns, but they don't so they don't.

I don't know what the long term is going to hold for it but I certainly like my new Stoeger X5. I've put about 400 pellets through it and it's breaking in very nicely. It has a 3.75# trigger pull that breaks cleanly, no creep. The stock is shaped well for iron sights (which I wanted) but it does have a rather long lop, 14.5". It cocks very nice, about 18 lbs. The front iron sight is a bit clunky but the rear is well made and adjusts easily. Best of all, it shoots the CPHP 7.9gr into one hole at 10 yds. The cost was only $90 at PA.

My experience with Gamo is a sample of one, a compact target pistol



From my experience I wouldn't worry about the metal, I'd worry about the plastic. The plastic strap that keeps the barrel in position would loosen up over time, which was really more of an annoyance than anything. The true problem was the plastic grip frame cracking. Unfortunately they no longer make the gun so I'm SOL on a repair/replacement.

It's a wonderfully accurate gun but if you are looking for a long term air gun, I'd pony up for a German air gun. I have a 30+ y/o Beeman R7 that asside from replacing the seals is as good as new and I expact will last for several generations.

The German guns may be double plus the price, but IMHO they are ten times the gun in terms of quality.

Broke down and bought a HW97K. A really nice gun but I don't know if it's worth the $500.00 difference in price from the gamo I mentioned above. Just received a trigger from Tuna for the Gamo and will install soon. I'm really interested in group size after the trigger kit.

I have had several of what I call chinwerkbaus over the years and except for triggers found them to be decent metal and accuracy.

Triggers are terrible on the Gamo. However, I installed a "Tuna" trigger on my Gamo and it's now better than the HW97K I own. I really like the Gamo underlever, it's a lot lighter and shoots really well now the the trigger is great. I don't know about the metalurgy, but it sure shoots great now.

Do you have any links for the Gamo and Tuna trigger please? Thinking of getting an underlever airrifle again and while I very much like the HW97K, something a little lighter would be nice.