Beeman Tempest .177 cal. Review

Overall Rating

Fun, dependable, rugged, just challenging enough to stay interesting.

Can be a challenge to shoot well.

The Webley Tempest came from an old line of overlever spring-piston pistols, like the Senior and Junior. Functionally, little changed, but styling was upgraded for the Tempest.

Essentially, what you've got is a large diameter, short-stroke piston and compression chamber sitting underneath a short rifled barrel. Interestingly, the piston recoils "backwards", toward your hand, which takes a little getting used to, even if you have fired spring piston guns before.

In .177, the Tempest generates velocities in the 450-500 fps range (with 7 grain pellets). This is pretty decent for a pistol this compact. A .22 caliber option was available (I have not owned the .22).

There are few frills on the Tempest. The grips are black plastic (wooden aftermarket grips are available), with a checkering texture molded in. The barrel latching system is simply a strap of steel that pivots forward to hold the barrel down. The manual safety is a Bakelite lever that is operated by the thumb of a right-handed shooter, and is located just behind the trigger guard on the left side of the frame.

The barrel is not blued (mine wasn't, anyway) and has a kind of "cast-iron" finish. Honestly, except for the plasticky bits, the whole thing sort of looks like it was made out of an old cast iron skillet. That's not bad, in fact it looks "right" on this gun.

Accuracy is so-so. Maybe that's my fault, and I haven't adapted to my Tempest yet but I have owned it for about 20 years, so... The trigger pull is adjustable but never gets very light, or easy. Added to that, the recoil of the piston makes it a little tough to hold the sights on target when shooting. And the sights...what can I say...they are terrible, at best. The front sight is a "barely there" blade (honestly, it's only 2 or 3 mm high!) and the rear sight is almost non-adjustable for windage. The rear does adjust for elevation, but this is achieved by loosening a screw, sliding the rear sight blade up or down, tightening the screw, checking your POI, and repeat ad nauseum. There is practically no way to mount a scope, although I'm sure some people have done so impractically.

All this makes it sound like I don't like the Tempest, but honestly, I love it! This is such a satisfying gun to shoot. Firing produces a heavy "CH-unk" that you feel all the way up your arm, and the fit and feel of the Tempest is spot on. This was developed back when most people thought "ergonomics" was nothing but a misspelling for something else, yet it feels like it is on target; point your fist at what you're aiming at, bang, you're aiming at it...maybe you'll hit it (but probably not...)

But when you do score a decent hit on your target, Oh, the joy! This isn't a 10-meter target pistol, carried to a match in a silk lined briefcase by Olympic level athletes with Umlauts in their names! It's a "pull it out of the tackle box and see if you can hit that lillypad!" kind of pistol. And it looks great, too.

The Webley Tempest is built to take a lifetime of abuse. In almost 20 years, I've never had a problem. I've replaced the breech seal a couple times, and put a couple drops of oil on the piston seal, but that's about it.

As mentioned before, there are wooden grips available, if you check your search engine they're bound to pop up. There also was a leather holster shaped to fit the Tempest's contours, I never owned that bit of kit.

The Tempest is pretty quiet to operate, and can be used in backyards or indoors, with a safe backstop or pellet trap. If you can get someone to part with their's, pick one up. Definitely a keeper.