My Airgun Cocks but Does Not Fire?

You cock the gun as normal and everything feels (and sounds) okay, but when you pull the trigger there’s obviously no ‘pop’ and the pellet doesn’t leave the barrel.

You’ll need to do a bit of disassembling here. As you’re reading this, I’m going to make the assumption that you’re okay to do this and know a bit about what you’re doing.

IF YOUR AIRGUN IS UNDER WARRANTY THEN DO NOT DO THIS AS IT WILL VOID ALL WARRANTIES WITH THE RETAILER AND MANUFACTURER! 

• Seal – take a look at the seal and check what condition it’s in. If it’s of leather construction you could consider applying a tiny amount of oil to freshen it up a little. Take a look at the breech seal and do the same here, leaving the gun stand on the butt overnight. This will soften the seals up and actually may be the solution. If you’re worried about dieseling then don’t be in this case, it’s rare that detonation takes place with guns that have these leather seals.
• Refresh and Replace – If the above doesn’t fix the problem then further disassemble the gun to take a look at the main spring. If you’re at this point then you may as well replace the spring whilst you’re here! Clean all of the internal mechanisms as best as you can. They should come up like new if you do it properly. If your gun is quite old and has leather sills then now may be a good opportunity to replace them for the synthetic variety. Although, if you do this, please remember not to apply oil to them in the future or dieseling will most likely take place.

Next, put it back together again and keep your fingers crossed. By the way, if you’re new to this, a little tip is to take photos of each stage as you’re disassembling it. You can then refer to the photos when putting it all back together again.

If you have had this problem and your gun is quite new, it’s worth thinking why it may have failed of course. Do you dry-fire your gun at all or could someone else have? This shouldn’t have caused the problems immediately but continually, over time it can cause some issues!