A Look at a Vintage Sheridan “Silver Streak” Air Rifle

I always find all manner of cool and unusual crap on my occasional run through my local antique store, but it's rare that I actually end up buying anything. This trip was different, and I came home with an air rifle - of all things, and it's a pretty special one at that.

I don't really have any major interest in BB or pellet guns outside of the occasional backyard pest control need or passing desire to shoot up some soda cans. The roughly fifteen year old Crosman 760 Pumpmaster that spends more time collecting dust by my patio door does both sufficiently well. It has plenty of power, feels nice enough in the hands, and the dual ammo capability gives me some flexibility depending on what I'm doing with it. For plinking, copper BBs and two to four pumps gets the job done. Anything I use more than that on probably should have stayed the hell away from my fruit trees.

That said, it is kind of a hokey piece. It's awfully light; being that it's mostly plastic, the sights are hopeless, and it wears your arm out from charging it repeatedly. It's also not a rapid fire gun, so if you miss your vermin on the first shot and spook them, you sure as hell aren't getting a second one off before they scurry off. But for less than $40, you can't really complain too much.

This Sheridan is another animal entirely. Officially dubbed the Model C, it came out in 1949 and originally sold for $24. Adjusted for inflation, that's a bit over $300. Certainly not a cheap air rifle, and this was considered the inexpensive one! The Model A and B preceding it sold for roughly ~$56 and ~$42 respectively. The Model C was produced for far longer though, and it's two available finishes were dubbed "Silver Streak" (nickel) and "Blue Streak" (black oxide) for much of it's run. Production appears to have stopped sometime in the mid-2000s and they now appear to be pretty desirable on the collectors market. I scored mine for $114, but you can expect well conditioned ones to sell for several times that. 

In fact, there is a very comprehensive book detailing all the ins-and-outs of the Sheridan guns called Know Your Sheridan Rifles & Pistols. It also shows you how to date the guns based on their serial number and design details. Based on it's serial, and how it has a rocker-type safety, a notch sight, and a few other notable markings, I was able to identify my "Silver Streak" as a 1983 production gun, made when the company had already been bought out by the Benjamin Air Rifle Company.

The only thing this gun has in common with my cheapo' Crosman 760 is they're both pneumatic. Beyond that, they couldn't be any more different. The Model C has a walnut stock, an aluminum receiver and pump, and a rifled bronze barrel. It weighs a fair amount as a result, and feels extremely solid in the hands, but not so heavy that it's tiresome to haul around. It also has kind of an interesting, stubby look for a rifle with the pump tube extending out a bit further than the barrel. I suspect this helps protect the otherwise relatively thin barrel from accidental frontal drops.

There is no feed system on the Model C. It is purely a single shot bolt action, chambered strictly for the oddball .20 caliber pellet. Apparently it somewhat bridges the gap between the common .177 and .22 calibers in terms of performance; being flatter flying but still having enough mass behind it to do some real damage. There wasn't a single place in town that sold these though, so I had to order them off Amazon. I also opted to experiment with some 3D printed PETG pellets in the interim as well, just to see if they were at all viable.

The sights consist of windage and elevation adjustable notch in rear - which I can't fully utilize because I'm missing the grub screw, and a front blade - which is annoyingly bent slightly to the left as the result of some long forgotten mishap. Otherwise, these sights are okay. They offer a more clear picture and are mounted much more stable than the Crosman 760's arrangement, but the lack of any sort of markings mean they're pretty easy to lose in the light.

Clearly, the answer to this problem is fitting an optic, like a low power scope. Unfortunately the Model C lacks a mounting rail, and original rail adaptors are rare and quite expensive. I do have the snap on plastic upper handguard, so I may be able to fashion something in Inventor without too much trouble - assuming it doesn't already exist.

I don't have any great means of testing this thing's performance (yeah, I know what you're thinking - all those years of reviewing Nerf blasters and he still doesn't own a stupid chronograph) so I just set up some paper targets in my driveway about 50 feet from my shooting position to get some shot groupings with both the 3D printed PETG pellets and the H&N Sport Field Target Trophy pellets. I set the rifle on the back of a chair to keep it steady for consistency's sake and aimed at the center bullseye.

Also, I only charged the rifle up to four pumps for these tests since I didn't see to point in shooting full power at such a short distance. For reference, five pumps will get in the ballpark of 580 FPS, while a full eight will do 680 FPS according to Walnut and Steel on YouTube, though I didn't catch what grain of pellet he got those numbers with as that would certainly make a difference.

The 3D printed PETG pellets weigh in at 1.54 grain (0.10 grams) each, making them just comically light. Even your most bottom of the barrel crap airsoft BBs weigh more than these, so I suspected that even though they'll have ample velocity, they'll be wildly inaccurate, especially at a distance. Sure enough, they were utter crap. The spread was everywhere, and quarter of the shots didn't even fully penetrate the cardboard box I pinned the targets to.

I think there's a few reasons why these pellets sucked so badly. The most immediate thing I noticed was how loosely they fit in the breech. It turns out that actual .20 caliber pellets are not exactly 5mm in diameter; they're closer to 5.2mm. So I didn't quite scale them up enough and they didn't completely fill the bore as a result, and that also means the rifling did absolutely nothing, hence the really bad shot spread. Plus, there's the low weight of the pellet, which even if everything else was perfect, the actual muzzle energy behind these shots is still awfully low. Even then, I think these would be fine for short distance plinking, but for anything else - break out the lead.

The H&N pellets weigh in at about 11.42 grain (0.74 grams) each, so quite a bit weightier than the stupid bits of plastic I tried flinging earlier. Man... these really showed what this rifle is capable of. The box I set up as my pellet catch, which is about 10 inches deep and already filled with some pretty dense pieces of scrap foam, did hardly anything to slow these puppies down. A few of them still embedded themselves deep into my fence. Sheesh.

The real treat here is the grouping - it's pretty tight! I was hitting down to the right, which is certainly a symptom of the sights being a bit out of whack, but it was consistent which is all I really needed to see. My next steps would be to get the grub screw installed for the the rear height adjustment, set the windage and straighten out the front blade, and that should take care of the inaccuracy.

I also did a group with the Crosman 760 at five pumps just to see how it stacks up. There were a few very errant shots, but the loose grouping was mainly in the top-to-middle left. The Crosman is smoothbore so the more iffy accuracy characteristics aren't too surprising, though the clumsy sights - especially the fiber optic front blade didn't help matters too much either.

My biggest gripe with the Sheridan, especially for pest control is that it still takes an age to reload and prime. The long, heavy pump handle still takes a fair amount of force once you get past four pumps and being single shot means your first and only shot needs to count. The Crosman 760 isn't any better, but having the side indexing clip for pellets (at least on my late-2000s version) makes follow-ups at least somewhat more practical. Granted, I can't really imagine what scenarios I'd need more than four pumps after firing this thing, and I do need more practice. I'm already not a great shot from the shoulder, and fixing the sights would make a big difference. Regardless, the Model C really feels like a lot like the "Brown Bess" of air rifles in this aspect. 

That all said, the Model C is just so much more satisfying to shoot than the Crosman. It handles extremely well, the trigger is crisp with no lead-in, and it packs a real punch while staying very accurate - at least within the confines of my backyard. It's just an extremely well built and gorgeous piece of engineering. I don't know if my "Silver Streak" was ever serviced in it's life, but nothing about how it feels or performs would make me guess that this air rifle is actually 41 years old, let alone of a 75 year old design. It's absolutely timeless, and a lot of fun.

If you want a Model C for yourself, working examples can run anywhere from $300 to $800 depending on the condition and vintage. An easier and more affordable route would be to pick up a Benjamin Variable Pump Air Rifle, also known as the Benjamin 397 for it's .177 caliber version, or the Benjamin 392 for the .22 caliber version. Other than the more common chamberings, it's effectively the same rifle as the old Sheridan. The current version is fitted with a black polymer stock, but older models with a wood stock can still be picked up on eBay for generally a bit less than an actual Sheridan Model C. Whatever you choose, you get one heck of an air rifle.