Homebuilt baffles and Tony’s shroud…..

…. They don’t mix.

A couple of weeks ago I posted about the 6″ Tony’s shroud extension I bought and using it installed on my gun along with leaving my homebuilt baffling installed inside the frame too.

Things have worked great until yesterday when I blew an easy shot that has been bugging me every since. This was a shot on a fairly large sized bird (which will remain annonymous… :oops:) which I knew should have been an instant DRT shot.

Today, I got a target out and took a 30yd shot. The pellet hit about 1″ high and 6″ right from where I had it zero’d. Next shot completely missed my 2 foot by 2 foot backstop. I removed the tank and looked down the barrel and could not see daylight….. 1st clue that something bad is wrong.

Removed the Tony shroud and again look and I’m still obstructed somewhere inside the frame baffling I had installed. Started removing the series of baffles and found that I had clipped the very first fender washer nearest the muzzle. the pellet then impacted the second length of baffling, smashing and torquing over the top of the next fender washer. Damn lucky it didn’t go through the frame I reckon….LOL

So here was what caused the problem I discovered.

Before getting Tony’s extension, I had my baffling held in tight with the endcap. The endcap has a partially drilled hole the grub screw goes into keeping it locked solid and tight.

On Tony’s extension, the aluminum insert that slides inside the frame is too thin to have the partial hole drilled in it like the endcap does. Instead, the grub screw just makes contact and slightly cuts into the extension insert when tightened to keep it in place.

With the added pressure that my baffles had against the extension when I tightened the grub screw down on the extension, finally worked the grub screw loose a bit allowing it to slide out a tiny bit from inside the frame, which in turn allowed my baffling to slip a tiny bit. The pellet clipped the first fender washer I suppose when I took the shot at the bird and it was catastrophic failure from there.

Funny thing is, I took all my baffling out and just installed only Tony’s extension shroud and it is still just as quiet as when it was shooting with his shroud combined with my baffling. …… 😀