More About Our Visit to the Shanghai Airgun Factory

Many people have asked for more photos about the Shanghai Airguns Factory, so here’s a second part to our factory visit report...

Here's the Testing Department - Test Range is at the back of the room.




Above - It's me again (at left).

Along with improved product quality, there’s a focus on marketing, with “Industry Brand” being retained for existing products - such as the QB78 family - but with newer, more up-scale models being given a new “SAG” (Shanghai Airgun Factory) brand.

Below, another assembly area.


And as everyone knows, much can be known about people’s real interests from the desktop and/or screen saver that they have on their computer. Well, the VP of Product Development has a very interesting screen saver. It’s a photograph of a heavily tricked-out M16 with every known accessory loaded on it. This gentlemen is obviously really interested in guns and that has to be good for us as they introduce new airguns in future!

The current factory is one third larger than the previous one, which was located much closer to the city center - in Pudong. The factory move took place in 2007 as the area in which it was located is being re-developed as the home for the Shanghai “Expo 2010”, a HUGE international exhibition that is expected to generate 70 million visitors flocking to Shanghai. You can read more about Expo 2010 at http://en.expo2010.cn.

Below: modern Pudong, in Downtown Shanghai. The Head Office is near here.

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Our Visit to Shanghai Airgun Factory

During our vacation in China, Cornelia and I visited the Shanghai Airgun Factory. There we met the company President, the VPs of Sales and Development and were shown the operation very openly.

The factory is about 30 miles outside Shanghai and comprises three buildings: there’s an office block, a manufacturing building and a warehouse. About 400 people work there and the factory is running at capacity in spite of the recession. There’s also head office building Downtown in Pudong (a part of the city).

This is a general view of the facility.

The manufacturing building is the most interesting, of course. It’s about 100 yards x 20 yards in size (at a guess) with four floors. The ground floor is full of lathes and mills, all busily churning out gun parts from steel bar or tube. There’s also multiple barrel-making machines and a very large blueing tank area.

Here's an assembly area.

The floors above accommodate assembly and testing areas. Here you can see carts full of guns in various states of assembly. Most of the guns being built during our visit were springers: QB36-1 and QB36-2 models and also plenty of B3s. There’s also a pellet-making facility with multiple new pellet-making machines chunking out pellets from lead strips.

Racks of guns awaiting testing.

Until 1997, the factory was owned by the Chinese government, but then it was sold to the employees. Both staff and management now have shareholdings in the company and benefit from its success - this is clearly a strong motivator behind the great improvements in product quality that have been made in recent years. The factory is clean, the employees seem happy and proud of what they do. There are even clean restrooms - a considerable rarity in China but, I think, symptomatic of the attitude in the company.

Here I am meeting with the VP of Sales and VP of Product Development.

Shanghai Airguns runs very much like a company in the US. New product design uses CAD extensively and computer systems monitor the business. This is clearly NOT a “Third World” sweatshop but a sophisticated modern facility determined on expansion.

Shanghai itself is a huge, bustling city with an excellent public transport system and terrible traffic congestion. Here you can still see the old China, but it’s rapidly being swamped by ultra-modern buildings and a Western way of life.

I hope you enjoyed this report!

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Which QB78 Parts Fit My Crosman 160?

We're often asked this question here at Archer Airguns!

The answer is that many QB78 parts do, in fact, fit the Crosman 160, and also the Crosman 167, Crosman 180 and Crosman 400 models. We publish a list of individual part compatability at http://www.archerairguns.com/crosman-160-airgun-parts-s/24.htm and also list the main parts kits that are available to keep these classic American air rifles in service.

And how to fit them? That's where our QB78 Family Workshop Manual comes in.

This unique 88-page publication gives the information required to make repairs not only to the QB78 family, but also the Crosman 160. The Crosman 167 and 180 models are very similar and can also be repaired using these instructions as a base.

The Crosman 400 is, however, a completely different issue. It's a far more complex air rifle due to the magazine system and we recommend professional repairs for that reason, even though some of the QB78 parts will fit that fine airgun.

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The AR2095. The Air Rifle That Never Was.

For several years, the Shanghai Airgun Factory had showed a new PCP air rifle on their website, in catalogs and at the SHOT Show. This model - the AR2095 - has never made it to production and has become something of a mythical beast. But there is one example in captivity and we’ll see it in this blog post.

The owner of the Shanghai Airgun Factory sent me a prototype AR2095 back in 2007 and asked for my opinions. I was, of course, happy to help and provided the requested input. Unfortunately it was not too complimentary. Maybe my view was shared as the AR2095 has never made it to production and has now disappeared from the company’s catalog.

I’ve never shared details of this air rifle before, but here it is in public for the first time.

This AR2095 weighs 6lb 13oz without an air tank and has an overall length of 40.5 inches. The pull length is 15 inches.



The side lever breech mechanism is not unusual for Shanghai as they have used this concept before in the rarely-seen AR2078B and AR2079B models. But probably the most contentious feature to me was the removable air tank concept. The idea was good, but it was - in my view - unnecessarily compromised - by trying to make it also “built in” to the gun. I would have preferred either a built-in fixed tank, as the BAM B50 or an entirely separate tank in QB79 style.

What do you think? Should they have introduced this PCP air rifle?

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QB57 Performance Review. Part 2 - Accuracy and trigger Pull

This is my own cutomised QB78, with a re-finished and extended stock, muzzle brake and other modifications.

Here’s some more, never previously published, “hard data” on the performance of the QB57 air rifle from Shanghai Airguns. It’s derived directly from Archer Airguns “Gold Service” testing of these guns and summarises results from a large number of tested guns.

Part 1 covered muzzle velocity testing. In this second part we’ll cover accuracy and trigger pull results.

The factory spec for accuracy is a grouping of 30mm - that’s 1.2 inches - CTC (center to center) at 10m (32 feet) for just 3 shots. This spec is not impressive (in fact it’s terrible), but performance is hugely better in practice. In “Gold Service” testing, we see an average CTC of around 0.6 inches for 10 shots at 10 yards - 2X better than the factory spec - as this chart shows.

This compares very well with the tested accuracy of QB78 family air rifles - it’s about the same CTC as “Gold Service” testing produces with these accurate CO2 guns. And I’m emphatically NOT a good shot with a springer, I just can’t manage a completely consistent hold time-after-time, so good spring rifle shots using pellets the gun “likes” will undoubtedly be able to improve on my accuracy results.

Average accuracy is slightly better for .177s over .22s (just as with the QB78 family), but there’s actually very little in it. It’s too close to call without an even larger population of guns to test. Just give me more time, I’m working on it...

Most of these accuracy results are obtained using a basic Leapers red/green dot scope. Where customers specify our QB57/Leapers Scope Combo, the test results were achieved with that combination. I’ve not differentiated between sighting options in this graph, but you can understand that most of the “tight” groups were sighted with the 4 x 40 scope.

As I measure CTC only to the nearest 1/8-inch, that accounts for the steps in the graph. But, as you can see, here we have an accurate little air rifle!

The QB57 has a long, creepy trigger pull - as you might expect from a cheap bullpup-style air rifle. But it’s actually not that bad and is surprisingly light and consistent. There’s also an adjustment screw, but I never touch that so this data represents completely “stock” trigger performance.

The factory spec provides a very generous range from a maximum pull weight of 5 lbs 10 oz (itself not unusual in a cheap spring-powered air rifle) down to a minimum of 2 lbs 4 oz. But the actual results are much better and are shown in this chart.

The good news is that trigger pull weights are all very close to the minimum factory spec and - as you can see - a reasonable average figure is around 3.0 lbs. Again, a very good performance for such a low cost air rifle. And the trigger is adjustable via a setscrew, so there’s the potential to improve these pull weights beyond the stock factory settings.

So, that’s the QB57! It’s an unique little air rifle and the performance is really very good for such a low cost air rifle. And - being made of real “tree wood” and steel, there’s much potential for tuning and customisation.

I hope that you’ve enjoyed this review of the QB57. Try one, you may find it a lot of fun :-)

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