About Shrike Precision

In a bygone era airguns were manufactured with the same materials & to the same quality levels as firearms, very often in the same factories & on the same machinery. This is a time before die casting & plastic injection molding, which means that each component was MADE: it was first blank cut or cast in a foundry, after which it went through countless stages in various fixtures & on different machines along its journey to becoming a dependable, durable part in the finished gun. Even guns which fall borderline in the toy category, for example BB guns, were made to a high standard & featured blued steel & wooden stocks. 

We have in our collection several airguns from the very early 1900's which to this day function flawlessly, despite being used by several generations to teach youngsters to shoot & just shooting for the fun of it. The fact that these guns function today just as they did when they were new, with very minimal occasional maintenance, is not only a testament to their exceptional designs but most importantly to the quality of the materials & the manufacturing standards of their parts. We have several pre WW1 BSA rifles which will happily shoot 500 pellets in a weekend, flawlessly, then do it again next weekend. All they will ask for is an occasional spring or piston washer replacement. Have a look at some of the early BB rifles on eBay; consider that these guns were made to hold several hundred BB's & that parents often bought BB's in 500 packs. How may BB's have most of those guns shot & there they are today, still doing it!

Plastic injection molding, investment casting, die casting, cnc milled & extruded aluminum certainly are integral to gun & airgun manufacture today & rightfully so: these processes have brought prices down & have made things possible that were difficult or impossible in the past. When you're looking through the sights of a gun you're no longer concerned about what the gun looks like or how it was made, how it shoots is what matters now & whether a gun is plastic or whether it's steel matters not, if it's accurate the joy it brings is the same.

However... aesthetics & retention of value are a different story. Most of us remember the first guns we ever saw as high quality items featuring blued steel, walnut stocks or grips, a fair amount of weight & a smell of gun & raw linseed oil. Manufacturers' marks & serial numbers rolled stamped in, fit & finish exact. Guns that were shown to friends & family, after which hand prints carefully wiped off with an oily rag before the gun was stowed away. These are the guns that not only retain their value, but increase in value & it's no wonder that guns have traditionally been great investments. We chuckle every time we see one of the early BSA's mentioned above for sale for several hundred, sometimes thousands of dollars; we have copies of the early advertisements showing a sale price of a few dollars! Manufacturers love modern manufacturing techniques for the reasons mentioned earlier, they get to churn out huge volumes of guns easily. Many manufacturers also bring out a wide range of new models on a regular basis, obviously employing the "latest is the greatest" sales technique. The downside of these practices is resale value. For example we do not know of any pcp air rifles (bar maybe the Theoben Rapid 7), which retain their value, let alone increase in value. In fact as soon as manufacturers releases their "new & improved MK2", the MK1's immediately half in value. These guns are just about becoming disposable & the upside for manufacturers is that they do not have to make things that last anymore, all the product needs to do is be functional & look cool for the moment. 

Call us old fashioned nostalgic freaks but for us the joy of airgunning lies equally in the exhilaration of watching & hearing pellets zip through a target as it does in the satisfaction that one gets from a quality piece comprising quality components, be they factory or aftermarket. We know there are like minded folk out there in the shadows, we take extreme pleasure & pride in manufacturing these products for you!