Weihrauch HW95K

Weihrauch HW95K

The HW95 is a classic Weihrauch break-barrel. Similar looking but smaller and lighter than the HW80 it has become a favourite in the airgun world. I've owned several examples including the latest “Luxus” version, which has extra chequering on the stock and comes with a 12 inch barrel & Weihrauch silencer.

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The stock is ambidextrous, simple and traditional. The grip and forearm are chequered and the bluing is nice and dark with a deep shine. The build quality is generally of a high standard, although for some reason HW stick with slot head screws on the stock (and quite roughly finished ones at that).

The shooting procedure and characteristics of the HW95 are pretty straight forward: The rifle cocks and  loads easily and fires with minimal recoil. The safety operates automatically when the rifle is cocked. The breech lock up mechanism is very substantial and needs a solid tap to break the barrel. As with any spring gun, there's some degree of hold sensitivity, but this is easily overcome with practice. I find the HW95k to be very “pellet friendly” producing good groups with most ammo.

The example shown above was quite “twangy” out of the box, so I did a quick strip down. The new style cocking shoe appears to be very robust and there’s also some sort of anti-rattle arrangement on the cocking link, which wasn't fitted on earlier models. The piston was sleeved internally, with a thrust washer inside but no top hat. The spring guide was quite loose and able to drop out of the spring (which explained the twang) while the spring itself looked good with properly finished ends. But the internals were very dry with no grease in evidence and just a light sheen (oil?) on the mainspring.

I was intending to just put a quick dab of moly grease here and there but the temptation to tinker got the better of me and I ended up machining a properly fitting spring guide and top hat. Once back together the twang had gone and the 95 performed like it should, showing around 11.5 fpe on the chrono.

After some time with this rifle I came to the conclusion that it’s too light at the front and exhibited noticeable muzzle flip - probably due to the short barrel. I'm also not convinced that the silencer does anything worthwhile: On a springer most of the noise comes from the action rather than the muzzle and I can't helpt thinking that the silencer is something of a gimmick. Overall, I prefer the older versions of this rifle with the 16” barrel and muzzle weight. Hence I subsequently sold the rifle shown above and bought an older model for a suitably modest price.

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This rifle had clearly been around the block, with plenty of wear and tear marks, and had been rebuilt (probably more than once) by the type of person who always has a few bits left over! Still, it was mostly sortable from my spares box: The spring was straight and good. There were a few missing stock washers, the trigger was missing a bush and the piston and breach seals had seen better days.

With that lot sorted (about £20 all in) a top hat and current spec cocking shoe this rifle was shooting very nicely at around 11fpe. And accuracy, well... 10mm groups at 25 yards with practically any ammo. Oh yes, this is an old-school .22 Weihrauch barrel and at least as accurate as my Walther Century, albeit not as refined. She may not look like much, but this is one of the most accurate and consistent rifles I've owned in the last 20 years.

Well, of course I got the desire to tinker. From a distance it looked OK but close up this gun was covered in scratches, dinks and dents and most of the blueing was either thin, brown or just  gone. First in the order of business was the muzzle weight. These are fixed with a grub screw and some kind of loctite material. I removed this by taking out the grub screw and then heating it up with a paint stripping gun. Once it was nice and hot, and the loctite had let go, I grabbed it with a rag and twisted it off. I cleaned it up by chucking it in the lathe and then spinning it while holding progressively finer wet & dry paper against it until all of the paint (and the scratches) were gone. I then primed it and gave it a coat of Rustoleum gloss black. This proved to be a durable finish.

For the rest of the metal work I decided to get bold - not that I had much to lose. I cleaned the parts thoroughly with a degreaser followed by washing up liquid and water and then wiped over all of the metal parts with brick cleaner (aka hydrocholoric acid). This last took the blueing off almost instantly and the action was down to bare metal. I then scrubbed it up with wire wool and rinsed and dried it very carefully. I used a hair dryer on the clean, bare action to get rid of any residual moisture.

Then I attacked the prepared parts with Abbey Gun Blue Gel. I just followed the instructions: Swipe it on, leave for a minute or so, then rinse and repeat several times. And the end result? Not bad actually for a DIY job. OK, I couldn’t do much about the pitted metalwork but overall the finish is quite acceptable.

The woodwork was rubbed down with fine grade paper mostly using an orbital sander and doing the awkward bits by hand. I removed the bare minimum of material - just enough to take off the surface finish. I left the butt pad in place during sanding, protected with several layers of masking tape, to avoid rounding the end of the stock. Once down to bare wood I steamed out the majority of the dinks with an iron and a damp cloth. It worked surprisingly well with 99% of the marks just disappearing. For the refinish I used Ronseal “Diamond Hard” varnish in deep mahogany and overall I’m pleased enough with the result. In the flesh, the Ronseal isn’t as orange as it appears in these photos and could pass for a factory finish, although their “Walnut” or “Dark Oak” colours are probably closer to the current HW stock finish.

All told this is a really nice old rifle that performs far better than it's modest appearance suggests and again, it seems that the older versions were better than HW's current offerings.

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