The
Crosman 600-Sears & Roebuck model "126.19360" from
the J.C. Higgins line
Why this gun is so special to me:
This was
my first ever gun of any kind. I bought it in the mid 1990s, when I was about
14 years old at a garage sale in the North Seattle area from a demolition
contractor who found it at the job site. The seller suspected water damage and doubted
it worked so I was able to pick it up for $25. At the time I had no idea what
it was exactly or how it operated. The markings indicated it was a Sears and
Roebuck. I initially thought "126.19360" was a serial number and
later found out it was actually the model number. It had a small pistol scope
mounted all redneck style above the barrel using straightened cotter pins as
shims and was missing the sights.
My
household was vehemently anti-gun so I stored it and fondled it in secrecy for
years without any knowledge of how to care for it. After having it around for a
few months, I got my hands on some CO2 powerlets and found out that it held
pressure! Around the age of 16, I finally obtained some cheap daisy wadcutters and
the gun ate them right up – sometimes just a little too well, going fully
automatic on occasion due to worn parts. The cyclic rate was incredibly fast so
instead of sounding like a machine gun during the fully automatic
malfunctioning, it sounded more like one big blast.
At this
point in my life, being deprived of all the cool shooting stuff my classmates
talked about, I relished this beat up old partially functioning gun. It gave me
a feeling that I could only imagine getting today from things that I perceive
as unobtainable like a personally fit 28 gauge Holland and Holland or one of
those handmade Chinese swords forged over burning human bones. The mid to late
1990s era internet provided a lot of information on the gun that I obtained
despite distractions from sites like thepersiankitty.com (if you don’t know
what that is, don’t go there if you are at work.) Within the first year of
owning it, I knew it was a Sears marketed Crosman 600 variant with the push
button piercing cap that was likely produced in the mid to late 1960s.
Unfortunately,
the internet did not do much in terms of teaching me how to not eff one of
those old gas guns up. By the time I got out of high school I had regrettably
destroyed it through negligent abuse such as using wd40 for lubrication and
polishing off the ugly flaking off paint job to make it look all bling (until
the nasty white oxidation kicked in.) When it started leaking real bad, I
attempted to take it apart and fix it with a handful of improper tools, messing
the whole thing up. At this point I had already acquired a small firearms
collection, lost all interest the airgun and threw it away.
After becoming
an adult with a stable income in the early 2000s, I made it a goal to obtain
the exact same Sears Crossman 600. For over a decade I looked for one in
the classifieds, gun store inventories and online auctions. Unfortunately, they
were far less common then the regular Crosman 600s. It would be over a decade
until I found one like it on gunbroker.com with the box, old school sears pellet
tin, unjamming tool, manual and paperwork. I fought off my frugal sensibilities
and snatched it up.
When it arrived,
I opened the box, held it and let the old memories and feelings come back. Some
were the good ones of young curiosity and other were the embarrassing juvenile
stuff that I will leave out for the sake of my mortal ego. It will be
maintained properly this time and stored in my safe along with my real gun
collection, safe and sound, until I die.
About the Crosman 600
The
Crosman 600 was introduced in 1960 and produced until the 1970s. I was not born
for another couple decades but it sounded like an exciting time for us blue
collar people. Regular productive people at the time actually watched TV with
its westerns, later Bond knock off spy stuff, Star Trek and finally the Moon
Landing. Since there were no personal computers and Al Gore hadn’t invented the
internet yet, I could imagine myself getting caught up in muscle cars and amateur
radios. My Glock 19 would instead be a Smith and Wesson 19.
Well... while I do like women who rock a hairy muff, I think I would get sick of
the crappy beer selection, bad coffee or getting mistaken for a drunken Indian, so I am going to get back on track here.
A quick search on Google will result
in several pictures of an ad from 1960 from which I took the following
excerpts:
10 SHOTS IN LESS THEN 3 SECONDS!
Another “world’s first” by Crosman! A major
breakthrough in CO2 gas powered gun engineering… opens a whole new era in
handgun shooting. Now, for the first time you can enjoy match target accuracy
in slow, timed and rapid-fire competitive or practice target shooting, fast
plinking, gun shooting… anywhere… anytime… at lowest possible cost. The
revolutionary new “600” SEMI AUTOMAC .22 Pellgun Pistol is truly a superb
precision handgun you’ll be thrilled and proud to shoot”
ONLY 19.95 Biggest value… best buy in the gun field
today!
I can’t help but read that in my head
with a mid-Atlantic accent. 19.95! Damn inflation. Working samples of guns go
for 150-300 today depending on variant and condition.
From what I read, this and other CO2
gas guns that used the 12 gram CO2 cartridges at the time were not as well
received because those early powerlets leaked from the bottle cap style seals.
This was too bad because they were producing other cool CO2 guns at the time,
like a gun that resembled a Colt Single Action Army called the SA6 and a bolt
action repeating rifle made of blued steel and wood called the 400. I think it
is fair to assume that those who wanted reliability in a CO2 system went with
Benjamin’s gas guns that ran off of more reliable 8 gram cartridges that had
already long been used to make soda.
Check out that unique action. The pellets are fed from a tubular style magazine that sits
horizontally over the back half of the receiver. When the trigger is pulled the
hammer goes forward to hit the valve. The hammer assembly is attached to a ring
that rides along a cam that rotates the loading arm as the hammer assembly
travels toward the valve. When the loading arm rotates it places a pellet into
battery between the gas transfer port and forcing cone of the barrel. Finally,
bam, the hammer hits the valve, opening it up letting CO2 escape, forcing the
pellet out the barrel and blowing the hammer assembly back into the cocked
position. That would sort of make this an “open bolt” design. Since the pellets
are stacked in the magazine in a tubular manner, the gun can only reliably feed
a wadcutters and domes that do not exceed the length of the feed arm. I am
guessing it is possible to shoot pointed pellets as long as they are short enough
to fit into the feed arm without hanging it up, but you would be stuck loading
them one at a time. The safety is located on the left side of the gun and
cannot be easily, nor safely worked with one hand.
According
to the manual the Specifications are as follows:
Caliber: .22
Weight: 2 lbs, 10 oz
Overall Length: 9 3/8 “
Overall Height: 6 “
Sights: Fully Adjustable open rear sight. Rear
windage moves 1/32” per click at 25 feet. Elevation moves 3/16 “ at 25 feet.
Undercut sight 1/10” wide
Sight Radius: 8 3/4” along grooved rib and receiver.
Barrel Length: 5 1/16”
Rifling: 6 lands, right hand twist, one turn in 16”.
Button rifled. Groups ¾ “ at 25 feet.
Trigger Squeeze: 3-4 lbs.
Power Source: 12.3 gram Powerlet. 900 PSI at 72
degrees. No appreciable velocity loss between shot of rapid fire string.
Number of Shots Per Powerlet: up to 40
Velocity: 340 fps at 72 degrees.
Muzzle Energy: 2 foot pounds.
Projectile: 14.3 grain Crosman Superpell.
I will
soon be comparing these specs to the performance of my own pistol a little
later.
About the J.C. Higgins line:
Excerpt
from wikipedia:
“From 1908 until 1962, Sears, Roebuck & Company
sold a wide variety of sporting goods and recreational equipment, including
bicycles, golf clubs, rifles, shotguns, and revolvers under the brand name
"J. C. Higgins." These products were well made and were popular with
the company's historical core of rural and working-class consumers.
The brand name, J. C. Higgins, was based on a real
person, John Higgins who was a Sears employee. He moved from his birth country
of Ireland to the United States in his late teens and began working for Sears
in 1898. He spent his entire working career with Sears and was Vice President
for the company for a period of time. He was actually born with no middle name
but the Sears Co. presented the idea of labeling their sporting good line with
his name and saw it more presentable labeling the brand as J.C Higgins. He
worked with the company until his retirement as head bookkeeper in 1930.
Higgins died in 1950. His expertise in sporting goods or sports is
unknown."
Yea…That
is an interesting story where the ethnic minority of the time (I think the
Irish back then were like today's Mexicans of North America or the Philipinnos
of Asia today) rising the ranks of a huge company in 20th century and becoming
the name of for high end line of products. It would be like Cabelas coming out
with a premium line branded "Jesus .A. Cortez" on AyA shotguns and
Wilson combat 1911s. Well, perhaps more likely a future Costco line of sporting
goods that is rebranded with some naturalized Romanian American executive’s
name to distinguish it from the cheaper Kirkland signature brand.
Shooting and Handling:
Well… this
gun was just too fun to sit down and break out the gun nerd stuff at first, so
I wasted a bunch of my free time blowing through a couple cans of pellets and
half a 40 pack of CO2 before settling down for stuff people usually want to
know from these reports. After getting over my sentimental ballistic giddiness,
I casually put together some brief data on the gun.
The trigger is single stage and a
little mushier then I remember as a kid. I do not have a trigger scale, but it
is somewhere between the 2-3 pound trigger on my old Smith and Wesson 10-5 that
I no longer have and the 5-6 pound trigger on my Rock River M4-gery. That would
put it within the factory specification ballpark.
I had a
hang up every 20-60 rounds where the loading arm would get stuck trying to pull
a pellet from the magazine. Perhaps the sharp edges on the RWS Meisterkugelns
are getting hung up at the entrance of the pellet shuttle as they are forced in
by the magazine follower. I will have to confirm this later if I can find some
dome or diabolo pellets that work in this gun.
The
following chronograph results were obtained with Rws Meisterkugeln 14 grain
wadcutter pellets. The temperature was around 66 degrees Fahrenheit. I allowed
approximately 10 seconds between shoots with a fresh CO2 capsule in the gun.
1-error
2-358
3-363
4-364
5-363
6-361
7-367
8-358
9-362
10-366
That makes
an average of around 362 feet per second, an extreme spread of 8 feet per
second and about 4 lbs/feet energy. The performance surpasses the original
Crosman specs. While this gun might be a little hot, I’m sure the modern
Meisterkugeln pellet would outperform the original Crosman Superpell in most
guns.
This thing
is a gas hog and starts to really lose power after about 25 rounds. The gun
usually sputters out at around 33 shots. So much for the claimed 40 shots per Powerlet.
Handling
is not bad, but due to the unusual design, it is very top heavy. Compared to my
regular fire arms, the grip is pretty fancy and lends itself more to target
shooting with the right hand. It has a thumb rest on the left side and the
plastic resembles the cool swirly brown phenolic plastic (like Bakelite) found
on other neat old things. In comparison to more sport oriented handguns the grip
feels a little small for my average sized hands.
The gun
does look strange to anyone who envisions a browning-ish pistol whenever they
hear the word “gun,” but the look has really grown on me. Take this how you
will from someone who recently found beauty in ugly and/or boring things like
old 80’s Volvo wagons or Chelsea Clinton (yea, yea, yea… she is on my rhymes
with bucket list.) I guess some things, like why someone prefers Camels over
Marlboros or Miller over Coors, just can’t be explained logically.
Despite all these quirks, I find it easy
to shoot. As far as looks go, the odd appearance is to be expected as one of
the pioneering semi-automatic design co2 pistol designs. Just look at
pioneering semi-automatic firearm designs intended to be carried in a holster
such as the Schönberger-Laumann 1892, Borchardt C93 or the Mauser
broomhandles…
They all
look kind of ridiculous and based off of what I read, do not handle very well
compared to what we use today.
Accuracy:
For the
following group, I was shooting two handed, unsupported and standing. The
distance was around 17 feet (close enough to 5 meters for me.) The group is .645
inch center to center (.865 total width.)
After constructing a makeshift bench rest out of a
waded up old coat on a chair in my garage, I attempted to get a nice little
rested 10 shot group at the same range and conditions.
That is a 10 shot group measuring .5 inches in total
width making it .28 inches center to center. At this distance it looks like the
gun with the Meisterkugelns are also on pace to outperforming the Crosman Pells
in the specifications as well, assuming they were measuring center to center.
What
is Next:
There is a lot more I
could write about in the as I explore this gas pistol in the future. While 5
meters is not a long range in the world of pellet pistols, the groups I got
casually shooting are very good considering this gun fires from an open bolt, rips
the soft lead pellet from a tubular style of magazine with a somewhat loose
shuttling arm and blasts it into forcing cone in the barrel. To put this into
perspective, this airgun is more accurate then my Ruger New Model Bearcat. I am
looking forward to setting it up on a 10 meter range and plinking in the
wilderness on nicer days.
Now,
after all this time of searching for what I broke, will I take this Pistol
apart? Keep in mind it is complicated and specialized. The days of shoddy
interwebs info on sites that resembled today’s DrudgeReport are gone and at least
one airgun smith has been blogging about their exploits on the Crosman 600 for
a few years now. I now have the service manual for the gun and enough amateur
mechanical know how to do things like change the timing belt and water pump on
my Aveo (every 60,000 effing miles) or replace the transfer bar that kept on
braking in my Ruger. I can’t say I won’t send it in somewhere in the future for
service, but I will someday show off a few the 600’s gun guts for my readers.
