The Crosman 600-Sears & Roebuck model "126.19360" from the J.C. Higgins Line

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.