V-Mach .20 spring/piston air rifle

I am a complete sucker for a quality built spring powered air rifle, I like the no- nonsense single shot format, and not having to rely on an external scuba bottle for a power supply. There is something that’s ‘just right’ about hunting with a spring powered air rifle, tilting the balance towards proper field craft rather than relying on high tech gadgetry.

Venom Arms used to be the masters of the custom spring powered air rifle, but sadly they are now gone… however, fortunately for us, top quality custom air rifles are still being crafted by Steve Pope, the son of Dave Pope one of Venom’s founders. Steve also worked for Venom Arms, but now runs his own company, V-Mach.

Steve Pope is a terrific chap and really takes pride in his work, and when you buy a product from V-Mach you know it is made to the highest standard. When still at Venom, Steve built a .22 fully suppressed rifle based on the old Webley Tomahawk wearing a gorgeous walnut thumbhole stock and dubbed the ‘Sidewinder’ – for obvious reasons most Venom rifles were named after poisonous snakes.

Some years ago I asked Steve if it was possible to make a ‘Sidewinder’ style rifle in .20 calibre for me, but make it a switch barrel system.. Not surprisingly the answer was, “No problems bud, send up the Tommy” – and I eagerly obliged.

Base Rifle

I wanted to retest the original .22 pellet performance of the base Tomahawk rifle and compare them to the rifle’s performance with the new .20 barrel; obviously there would be a power difference as the spring or propulsion is tuned to each individual pellets calibre. To me it did not matter if there was a power drop when switching from .22 to .20 calibre as accuracy is far more important to me, and anyway if I really liked the .20 I could have Steve make me a full power .20 rifle later.

The base gun is a Webley Tomahawk but Steve can convert many other models of rifle if you desire, a Weihrauch HW80 would be a good candidate. Every part of the rifle has been stripped, cleaned, tuned, honed with every effort to get the internal components working perfectly in harmony with each other to develop the maximum amount of efficiency with smoothness of operation.

This is achieved chiefly by short stroking the action, the standard Tomahawk chamber length is long but by short stroking you now achieve the minimum of cocking effort combined to delivery of the maximum power output. Steve has also achieved a lightning fast lock time (in airgun terms that means the time the trigger sear falls to time the pellet leaves the barrel). The shorter the time the less likely you will pull the shot off target as the pellet is travelling down the barrel.

Steve fits a proprietary V-Mach spring with a high tech synthetic piston seal to achieve an incredibly smooth and quiet power delivery from the piston system.  Gone is any trace of spring noise, vibration or piston slap and on balance this is were your investment is going, it may not be visually apparent put custom work in this area is crucial to achieving the sort of accuracy one expects from Steve’s rifles. 

The Barrel System

The barrel measures just 17 inches but that’s the outside measurement for the metal shroud that houses a 12.5 inch barrel. The last 4.5 inches of barrel/shroud consists of baffles to form an integrated sound moderator. In that way there is no unsightly moderator screwed onto the muzzle, just a sleek lined continuous barrel profile. The barrel is top quality and the baffles are all perfectly aligned and coupled with the smooth internal mechanics of the power plant makes for absolutely zero muzzle blast. A very light `phut` is audible telling you that the rifle has fired with a very little external movement from the gun itself.

The break barrel design incorporates a breech-tightening mechanism from a screw and lock nut unit. If you shoot the rifle enough (heavy use over a very long period of time) the breech jaws might loosen, slackening off the lock nut, but this adjuster allows you to nip the main through breech bolt to remove any slack, retighten the lock nut and keep the action tight.

Steve has also removed the barrel linkage pin and replaced it with a removable lock nut and screw. This enables you to change a barrel swiftly without having to have two linkages per barrel. This means barrel exchange takes just a matter of minutes.

Right at the back of the action is the safety catch, which forms part of the automatic safety system. As the rifle is cocked the safety is activated and the safety button with its twin `wings` is pushed rearward. To fire the rifle all that is necessary is that the safety button is pushed forward with the thumb of the firing hand. If you do not want to take the shot, then the safety is resetable by simply pulling the button back again using the twin wings.

The trigger has also been tuned to Steve’s exacting standards until the two stage unit is butter smooth and breaks very precisely at 3lbs weight,  just right on a sporting arm in my view.  Steve has also lavished a lot of detail into achieving a perfect blued finish on the metal work, which is superbly deep and rich in colour that only comes from a lot of elbow grease and preparation.

Wood Work

You can opt for many differing stock options in both style and wood quality as well as wood type. With premium grades of walnut achieving premium prices the stock is often the most expensive part of the rifle, yet to me is one of the most important. My rifle was to have the same thumbhole design as the original Sidewinder primarily due to the fact that it was gorgeous, and quite frankly stunning not only in looks but also fit and finish.

I particularly like the thumbhole design, the butt stock has a graceful flowing rearward pointing cheekpiece that takes care of the proper scope to eye alignment beautifully - as well as looking great. There is a second twist to this design however, in that the cheek piece is full on the right hand side, i.e. biased toward the right hand shooter yet the roll over to the left side would probably not impinge in proper stock fit for a south-paw shooter. There is no bias either way in the pistol grip and so the stock design is actually an ambidextrous configuration, which is not apparent at first glance. A ventilated rubber recoil pad with white spacer is provided and is the only thing I do not like, solid pad with no spacers are my thing but may not be your taste. The pistol grip itself has a tasteful flare to the end to seat the hand comfortably and is very well chequered on both sides.

If thumbholes are not your thing, then Steve can fashion some very practical and highly ergonomic sporter style stocks in right or left hand bias - boy this chap is good.

Field Tests

This is a test of two halves, the .22 barrel and the .20 barrel. Because this was more about the .20 calibre I only tested seven .22 pellet brands but I sourced thirteen different .20 pellet types.

The .22 Pellet Test

In the .22 barrel the Crosman Premiers - to which the rifle was originally regulated - shot very well, as would be expected, giving 600 fps at the muzzle and 11.39 ft/lbs energy which produced excellent 0.40 inch groups at 35 yards. The Lazapells and Accupells too had impressive accuracy figures of 0.45 and 0.50 inch respectively with the Accupells having a velocity of 607 fps (11.62 ft/lbs energy) and the Lazapells producing 598 fps (11.56 ft/lbs energy).

The Bisley Magnums that although having the slowest velocity figures of 449fps and 9.62 ft/lbs. at the muzzle, actually retained an energy figure of 7.65 ft/lbs at 35yds which beat all the other pellets. But you have to watch out for the exaggerated trajectory curve that makes shot placement a little trickier. The remaining pellets all shot reasonably well but for hunting use I would settle for the Crosman Premiers.

The .20 Pellet Tests

The .20 was my real interest and proved very interesting. As expected when I switched the barrel from the .22 to the .20 the overall power drops. Here are the results

I was really surprised at how many types of .20 pellets I could source, many coming from C.H.Westons in Brighton. Accuracy wise there was little difference between the Logun Penetrator, JSB or Daystate pellets, all producing five shots into about 0.40” at 35 yards. The lighter JSB or Daystates would be my choice as their respective velocities were 569.7 fps and 565.4 fps developing just shy of 10 ft/lbs although the heavier Penetrators at 15.76 grains weight were more efficient with a lower velocity of 546.2fps but nearly 10.5 ft/lbs energy.

Highest velocity went to the H&N Diabolo Sport pellets with a cracking 714.4 fps from the 9.66 grain pellet and produced a healthy 11.0 ft.lbs energy. However they were quite a hard lead surface and only gave a poor 1.25 inch group at 35 yards - not good enough.

The FTT pellets were also light and need sizing to get the best from them and when shot the 11.64 grain pellet shot over the chronograph at 642.6 fps producing 10.7 ft/lb energy and clustered five shots consistently into 0.6 inches.

Two other pellets of merit were the .20 Crosman Premiers, which are expensive but nice and accurate or the Eliminator pellet, the lighter version of 12.55 grains that shot 0.55 inch groups and gave 614.9 fps and 10.7 ft/lbs energy.

Conclusions

Workmanship, fit and finish as well as function of the rifle was second to none, as expected from Steve who carries on the Pope family tradition with pride.

What was interesting was the performance shift when changing from a .22 to a .20 barrel, to me the power drop with no compensation in spring or tuning was of no consequence as realistically the accuracy was paramount and at the ranges I shoot rabbits every well placed shot proved lethal. Steve can make you a full power .20 rifle no problems, but think how nice a switch barrel rifle would be for your air rifle shooting regime. Just call Steve, tell him what you want, and start saving the pennies…

PRICE: poa (depending on customer specification)