MarauderAirRifle.com

[pb177]

Shhhhh…

When I first got my Marauder, I thought it was so quiet.
But then one day I was shooting in my back yard and I could hear an echo from across the green belt that I live on. The houses across from me are about 150 yards away and once my ears tuned into the sound, I could hear as many as 5 separate echoes coming back to me from different directions.
I figured that if I could hear an echo, then my neighbors could hear me.
Time to make it quieter.
First I cut a piece of tubing for use as a depinger and it worked like a charm, but still an echo from across the greenbelt.
I tried adding materiel inside the baffles, but that did not work. It turns out that the only one who found it to be quieter was me. It seemed to be insulating the shroud from the sounds and reducing the amount of air in the baffles. The baffles break up the air/sound waves. It sounded quieter to me, but the echoes grew slightly louder. I removed the materiel.
Then, I built a slip on brake with baffles, sound deadener and large air volume. That was the answer for most of the sound. It was built to just be temporary in order to isolate air noise from mechanical noise. It was so well built that I occasionally still find myself putting it back on, sometimes at night when I find a single rabbit nibbling on my lawn. I’m amazed at just how loud a pellet striking a rabbit is when it is the loudest sound you hear.
Lastly, I moved onto the internal mechanical noise that is so evident now that the other sounds have been greatly reduced. These noises are from the moving parts, most notably the hammer striking the valve. The solution is simple, reduce the force behind the hammer and the impact will be quieter, as well as reducing the muzzle blast of excess air. The problem with that solution is it also greatly reduces the velocity of the pellet and its energy. Even a .25 cal Marauder can be made to be quiet when the pellet leaves the barrel at 400fps!!!
It’s been a challenge achieving a balance, however, I’ve managed to tune a lot of the mechanical noise from the firing cycle and still be able to coax 20 FPE from my .177 for field target use next year. My Marauder is much quieter now, I don’t need the additional muzzle break.
I have other plans to further quiet my riffle. I’ll share the results when done, but for now, my friends Marauder is sitting on my work bench waiting for me to duplicate my results for him.
Anyway, I wanted to share with those concerned over stealth. Keep working at it, there is more stealth hidden in your Marauder.
Paul