Shanghai Airgun Factory B3-3 Review

Overall Rating

Cheap, all metal construction, acceptable quality, blued (not painted) surface finish, good power, scope grooves, tuning potential.

Stock is made of low quality wood, mechanism needs tuning, recoil might be lighter.

So, I purchased a Shanghai Airgun Factory B3-3 in a local store for about 30 euros (in Finland). Honestly, I did not expect any miracles for this price, that's why I have been positively surprised. Right from the box the rifle have been dieseling like an untuned tractor, so the first thing I've done was a full disassembly and regreasing with weapon oil (I used Dextron).

The stock... that's a long story, it was covered with nitro-polish that'd been perfect for collecting fingerprints, also the touch-feeling was pretty disgusting 8-). So, with help of aceton and fine sandpaper it was stripped down and polished. Right then I've noticed that the wood has several twigs and (most disappointing) there are 3 places where the shape of the stock had been formed with polyether filler, especially on the cheek piece. Apart from that, some oil-based mordant and natural wax helped a lot to improve the look and feel; even the filler covered places took some colour, thus not too obvious anymore.
Result - MUCH nicer looking stock.

The bore. Firstly, I've cut off and mirror-polished the facet on the front end of the bore, 45 degrees and about 1 mm. Then the same procedure had been done for the loading port. You should clearly see the edges of the rifling. According to information in the Net, it greatly improves the accuracy. The bore was polished slightly as well.
Result - 15 mm ctc at 10 m with Gamo Match pellets.

The piston - I did not touch it and do not think I will, it is alright like it is. When the tome to change the seals and spring comes, I'll give some polishing for the inner surface of the main cylinder.

The trigger mechanism - solid steel, no plastic, thanks a lot! All parts were polished till nearly-mirror finish and greased with molybdenum grease.
Result - MUCH, MUCH lighter trigger feel.

Now this B-3 sends the pellet through the beer bottle, or 15...18 mm into the pine board, or 25...30 mm of address book.

I would not recommend to buy this rifle, if you do not want to spend from 3 to 8 hours of tuning and finishing, it is Off the box exactly a sub-30 euros Chinese rifle.
If you enjoy metalworking, B-3 is a good material to work with, and there is a good potential for improvements.
Stock is the weakest part, but the all-metal mechanism is a definitely positive feature. maybe in the future I'll take some time to carve a bull-pup type stock for it.

Personally, I enjoy my B-3, with all those modifications; it became a decent mid-powered rifle. It is nice as a starter in higher-powered air rifles, and seems to be very durable. However, to move on and purchase a TF 99 in .22 caliber or some PCP model seems quite logical to me.