Chapter 35: Classic Tactical Sniper Air Rifle

For the past few days, Qin Jun’s schedule has been strictly regimented. He spends half of each day at the lime kiln and the other half at home, tirelessly experimenting with steelmaking. Every batch yields very little high-quality steel—only about four or five pounds at a time. Consequently, the items he crafts are small, and many would be considered substandard by professional standards. Of course, this is only by his own rigorous measure; for an average person, they would be perfectly functional. Tools like his heavy crowbars and sledgehammers are exceptionally durable.

While making steel softer is a challenge for Qin Jun, hardening it is easy—he simply adds a bit of carbon powder. Through this process, he has managed to produce some high-carbon steel. While it may lack the ideal toughness compared to professional-grade high-carbon steel, it is definitely hard enough and perfectly usable. During this process, he also accidentally produced some alloy steel. The iron ore he possesses inevitably contains impurities such as manganese, silicon, and, most significantly, sulfur. Since he lacks other raw materials, Qin Jun only knows how to desulfurize using lime. Coal desulfurization also requires lime, though professional desulfurizing agents are more complex. Lacking the proper materials, he just makes do with what he has, and the final results are serviceable.

Qin Jun has successfully cast all the components for his air rifle. However, cast parts are never precise enough for immediate use, requiring manual cutting and polishing. This demands a high level of precision; otherwise, the pieces would never fit together. Fortunately, Qin Jun possesses enough experience to estimate measurements just by touch. Although not perfectly precise, a bit of fine-tuning usually allows the parts to assemble. This is where his self-made tools—chisels and cutters—prove their worth in shaping the components.

After four days of work, the rifle is nearing completion. However, without industrial machinery, some parts, such as the silencer and the springs, are beyond his reach. These two are different: a silencer must be custom-made, which is impossible without a lathe, while springs, though he cannot manufacture them, might be sourced through other channels. Aside from these, the most critical part of a firearm is the rifling. He can cut the rifling manually, but it is an incredibly time-consuming process. Given these difficulties, Qin Jun had to carefully plan his design.

Ultimately, Qin Jun chose to replicate a classic firearm: a break-barrel air rifle. To put it simply, operating a break-barrel rifle involves holding the stock with one hand and the barrel with the other, then snapping the barrel open at the breech. This motion pushes the piston to the rear of the receiver, compressing the mainspring behind it. Since he lacks springs, he can use a latching mechanism instead. When the piston is pushed to its limit, a small notch on it catches onto the trigger sear. Once the sear locks the compressed piston, the entire mechanism is ready. The pellet is loaded directly into the breech. After loading, the barrel is returned to its original position, completing the preparation for firing. When ready, the shooter holds the rifle steady and pulls the trigger, which releases the piston. Driven by the energy of the compressed spring (or in his case, the latching mechanism), the piston surges forward, forcing air into the compression chamber and driving the lead pellet out through the barrel toward the target.

Because Qin Jun cannot manufacture high-tension springs, he cannot use the standard break-barrel design. Naturally, he wants to build something better, so he opted for a .177 caliber sniper-style air rifle. This type of air-powered weapon is renowned globally for its precision. While it cannot match the range or power of true military firearms, it is far from a mere toy. Such high-power air rifles are capable of hunting game as large as wild boars or water buffalo. This specific model, the .177 Black Ops Tactical Sniper Air Rifle, is an exceptional piece of pneumatic weaponry that holds its own even in Western nations where firearms are common.

This rifle features a .177 caliber, a muzzle velocity of 381 meters per second, a 457mm barrel, and an overall length of 1117.6mm. It uses a single-shot mode with a rifled barrel, an adjustable stock, and packs 22.3 joules of energy. Such power would be legally problematic in later eras, but in the 1970s and 80s, an air rifle of this caliber was just for casual sport. Still, building it is no easy feat. Only someone with Qin Jun’s wealth of experience could hope to hand-craft it using such primitive tools. This model can easily pierce a metal soda can from 77 meters away, shatter an empty beer bottle at 50 meters, and has an effective precision range of up to 91.44 meters.

The rifle uses a gas-piston system for power rather than a traditional metal spring. This gas-strut design provides a smoother firing cycle with minimal recoil and is more durable than a metal spring. While modern versions of this gun look impressively tactical, much of that is purely cosmetic. Despite having a magazine and a bolt, they are merely for show. In reality, it remains a single-shot break-barrel rifle, requiring manual reloading after every shot. Though tedious, this design is much easier to manufacture.

The rifling is essential, as the spiral grooves inside the barrel significantly improve accuracy and range. However, for this first prototype, Qin Jun decided to forgo some precision, as he was unsure if his piston mechanism would function correctly. Any loss in accuracy could be compensated for through testing and shooter skill. He also omitted the muzzle brake; while it acts as a silencer and reduces recoil by an estimated 50%, it was unnecessary for his purposes—he wasn't hunting soldiers, just dealing with pests. He did, however, include a bipod, as it was simple to make and fold away when not in use.

Other features, like the adjustable stock length, were discarded as useless for him. He also faced the challenge of a scope. While the original rifle came with a 4×32 telescopic sight, Qin Jun truly cannot manufacture one. The "4" represents the magnification, and the "32" is the lens diameter in millimeters. It would have been a great aid for precision shooting. The original design also featured a 152mm optical rail and side Picatinny rails for lasers and tactical lights. Unfortunately, these are beyond his reach to hand-craft without existing components. If he could find an infrared emitter, he might be able to cobble together a primitive laser sight, but where would he find such things? They surely exist somewhere in the world, but he has no idea where to buy them.