Sunday, February 1, 2009

Reanimating a Daisy 230, Part 1

As you know from reading the blog, I am nuts. So when I saw a rusty pile of parts for a Daisy model 230 on Gunbroker I had to buy it. $33.33 including shipping and three days later I had a new project. The Daisy 230 is a .22 caliber spring piston air rifle made by Milbro in Scotland, based on the Diana design as they had appropriated all of the Diana machinery after WW2. I say "Reanimating" as this job is more akin to reanimating a zombie from a rotting corpse than it is to a proper refinishing and restoration. You can buy a 230 in good shape for around $60-$80 on Gunbroker when they come up.

The stock was cracked and had a big chunk out of the bottom of the cocking slot. I milled that area flat.

Glued in a block of walnut.

Smeared epoxy mixed with sawdust in the crack and clamped everything together. I rasped and sanded it back to the original shape more or less and hit it with some stain. Not that it took the stain well, but it was solid.

Here's some of the rust. The blue was nice, wasn't it?

I didn't have to disassemble much, here's the detent, retained by that screw.

The detent pieces.

The seals weren't in bad shape but the screw was broken at the slot (how on earth did that happen?)

I drifted off and disassembled the rear sight. Notice that I had wire brushed most of the rust off. You can make out a "R" stamp, not sure what that stands for ("Rear", "Refurbished", "Reject"?)

The front sight was similarly drifted off.

I decided to use a #8-32 screw for the seal. The original screw was maybe #8 BA or some metric size I didn't have...

So I tapped the hole in the piston to #8-32.

I oiled the seals and made a new breech seal.


The new breech seal which goes in the tube end, rather than the barrel.

The chisel detent was cleaned, lubed and reassembled. I had polished/sanded the rest of the metal parts and used Oxpho blue to at least make it resemble a finished gun.


Brad said...

I have offered to work on a Daisy 230 for a friend. It it missing the detent pieces. I am not qualified to machine a detent. Do you know if there is a source for parts?

Nick Carter said...

For reseal kits, parts and service you can try Bryan and Associates, Mac1, Precision Pellet or JG airguns.

JG airguns may be the best bet or Chambers in the UK:
Chambers Gunmakers

Jim said...

I have a daisy 230. It holds air but does not generate enough to fire the pellet completely out of the barrel. What is causing this?