USA Shooting Air Cylinder Policy UPDATED 03-13-13

[CA Bullseye]

Anyone notice the "USA Shooting Air Cylinder Policy".

03-13-13 UPDATED
"C. USAS will inspect cylinders and inform competitors about the expiration date policy through the USASNC 2013; Expired cylinders will not be allowed in competitions effective December 2013".[/b]

[FredB]

Ron,

Thanks for pointing this out. It makes me wonder if the USAS officials stay up nights thinking of ways to make the sport ever more elitist in the US.

FredB

[Neon21]

This rule is also valid in Germany - for years now.
As I remember correctly, there was an accident with a old cylinder,
it exploded and therefore the german shooting federation don't allow cylinders that are older than 10 years.
It is not controlled at the weapons check, but if you'll be caught during shooting, you have to stop and get a new cylinder..

I don't really care about this.
I don't think that I shoot 10 years with only one gun - and even if, the new cylinder costs about $120 - $1.20 per month use..
E.g. in 10 years, I'm spending $1700 on Diabolos..

[Spencer]

Given that this applies equally to rifle, I have moved it from 'pistol' to 'shooter's lounge'

Spencer

[CA Bullseye]

Fred:

I don't thinks it's a USA Shooting decision, rather an ISSF one. A reference to this issue has been in the rules after the 2008 Beijing Olympics if not before:

"6.2 Safety, 6.2.2.8 It is the shooter's responsibility that any air or Co2 cylinder has been certified as safe and is within the validity date."

Both organizations are following in line with the EU regulations. As described in the recent feeds:

"Steyr Cylinders, How Long Are They Good For?"

"Out of Date AP Cylinders"

I see it more as a liability issue. Which effects local club level competitions too. As a Match Director you allow a competitor to use an outdated cylinder and something happens, could you be held liable? I don't know, but in a sue happy society are you willing to risk your personal assets?

[FredB]

Neon21,

The ISSF airgun scene is very different in the US than it is in Europe and especially Germany. In the US there are very few international airgun shooters, and a good proportion of them use older guns, including CO2 guns, unlike Germany. So enforcing in the US a rule that may make sense in Europe, has different consequences here. The USAS seems to be concerned only with the elite shooters who can win Olympic medals, and with the juniors who have that potential. But they don't seem to care about creating the grass-roots culture from which such shooters will emerge. Enforcing this rule has the effect of further discouraging non-elite shooters.

FredB

P.S. The miniscule degree of danger presented by cylinders has already been discussed many times on TT. As has the financial motivation of the manufacturers.

[CA Bullseye]

Spencer:

I forgot about those guys. Their the one's with the entourage and all that stuff. Thanks for reminding me.

Ron

P.S. Have you applied for a Chinese Visa after the 2011 ISSF Sydney WC.

Given that this applies equally to rifle, I have moved it from 'pistol' to 'shooter's lounge'

Spencer

[jackh]

I wonder if the NRA AP will follow suit. The Portland Sectional is coming soon. Chris. do you know. Is my 480k with out of date tanks ok?

[Spencer]

...P.S. Have you applied for a Chinese Visa after the 2011 ISSF Sydney WC...

Interesting that a number of other team managers were watching and waiting for the decision, and ready to put in a Protest - I did not have a lot of room to move.
It was one of those moments when being THE FoP Jury member at a Final is not fun!
I felt so sorry for the shooter.

[jipe]

Neon21,

The ISSF airgun scene is very different in the US than it is in Europe and especially Germany. In the US there are very few international airgun shooters, and a good proportion of them use older guns, including CO2 guns, unlike Germany. So enforcing in the US a rule that may make sense in Europe, has different consequences here. The USAS seems to be concerned only with the elite shooters who can win Olympic medals, and with the juniors who have that potential. But they don't seem to care about creating the grass-roots culture from which such shooters will emerge. Enforcing this rule has the effect of further discouraging non-elite shooters.

FredB

P.S. The miniscule degree of danger presented by cylinders has already been discussed many times on TT. As has the financial motivation of the manufacturers.

Whatever the scene and whatever the level, from Olympic games to club shooting to shooting in your basement (now, if you shoot alone in your basement, that's your problem, but as soon as there are people besides you, it becomes their problem too), the risk of using obsolete cylinders is the same.

The danger cannot be evaluated by people who don't know the history of the cylinders. Only the owner of the cylinders, assuming he bought the cylinders new, can know if obsolete cylinders are potentially dangerous or not. You cannot be 100% sure of the history of cylinders bought obsolete/used.

It is stupid to think "I am not concerned". If the guy shooting besides you uses an old, obsolete cylinder that went through many many charge/discharge cycles and there is an accident, you will also suffer from this accident.

Club responsible people are also concerned, if something happens, their liability will be engaged and their insurance will probably not cover the damages.

Last point, in France the shooting federation becomes more strict to apply the rule and asked clubs to also apply the rule starting with the PCP weapons they own.

[Gwhite]

The collegiate team I coach has about a dozen Hammerli 480K's we got 2nd hand. ALL of the cylinders are stamped by Hammerli as being good for 20 years, with about 3 or 4 left to go. I have absolutely no reason to believe that these cylinders are in any way unsafe.

We have been planning on replacing them when the time comes, but the financial hit is significant. With the stroke of a pen, USA Shooting has just turned all of those pistols into scrap metal.

If this is their idea of how to help encourage younger shooters to take up the sport, they have a screw loose. An awful lot of junior programs can't afford new equipment, and this just makes it harder for them.

Walther is partly to blame. Hammerli had a conversion system that could be retrofitted to allow using the newer AP40 style cylinders with the 480K pistols, and we had converted several this way. When Walther bought up Hammerli, they stopped making this available.

[Misny]

I wonder if the NRA AP will follow suit. The Portland Sectional is coming soon. Chris. do you know. Is my 480k with out of date tanks ok?

I don't think so. USA Shooting is pretty much bound by ISSF rules, being that they are the official international shooting body of the U.S. The NRA has the flexibility of being able to respond to the needs and wishes of the competitors. If there were any doubt, an NRA match director could simply put a statement in the match program, such as, "CO2 and compressed air cylinders may be used regardless of the date."

Adminstrator Scott Pilkington added comment.

I cannot imagine any Match Director sticking his neck in the liability noose by making such a statement. Nor can I imagine NRA as a whole not falling into line with the essence of safety rules that have been the norm in this country more than 50 years.

[montster]

For older pistols and rifles that do not have replacement cylinders as an option anymore is it permissible for someone to reuse the original cyclinder valves and replace the cylinder body. Stanp the cyclinder with the new date of manufacture. Will this meet the new policy and rules?

Obviously the air gun smith would need to be using quality materials and be experience with design and building air or co2 reservoirs.

[FredB]

The danger cannot be evaluated by people who don't know the history of the cylinders. Only the owner of the cylinders, assuming he bought the cylinders new, can know if obsolete cylinders are potentially dangerous or not. You cannot be 100% sure of the history of cylinders bought obsolete/used.

Absolutely true, and exactly why the "10-year rule" is so stupid. Declaring that cylinders older than 10 years are unsafe also says, in effect, that cylinders younger than 10 years are safe. Would you rather be standing next to a shooter with a 9 year old cylinder that has been cycled many thousands of times and abused, or one with an 11 year old cylinder that has been barely used? Are the club, the national governing body and the ISSF absolved of liability when the 9 year old abused cylinder bursts, just because it complied with their 10-year rule? Or wouldn't that incident call their whole safety program into question, and have more far-reaching ramifications than if there had been no 10-year rule at all?

FredB

Adminstrator Scott Pilkington added comment.

But there is a 10 year rule and it has been in place at the top levels of the sport for years now. If you wish to to speak of "elitism" just think of the field day a lawyer could have with that term in an injury case if a NGB enforced safety rules for its elite athletes but did not require the same level of safety for the beginner level

[rmca]

I don't like the ten year rule any better than most of you...

But I'll be the bad guy for a minute.

Can anyone come up with a way to efficiently test a cylinder, that is both practical and economically viable, in order to dispense with the ten year rule?
Something that can be done at equipment control in international competitions AND at club matches?

Because if you can't, at least this way, the older cylinders (and more prone to failure) will be ruled out...

[pilkguns]

This has been pointed out several times before, but I will say it again.

Apply the same rules to your air cylinder that applies to your SCUBA tank. In the course of 10 years you would have 9 visual inspections and 2 hydrostatic tests. A visual inspection costs 15-35 depending on your local market. A hydro test is 45-65. Add those numbers up and you are easily into the price range of a new cylinder. Not to mention the costs or hassle of having to transport your SCUBA tank to location for those 11 tests. 9 really, since two visuals could be combined with the hydros.

Now you need to consider that a SCUBA tank is one solid piece of metal , and the single threaded fitting will interchange with every other threaded fitting for every other SCUBA tank. A rubber mallet that costs 5 or 6 dollars at any Wal-mart is all you need to dissassemble a SCUBA tank. Contrast that with an airgun cylinder, made by a number of different manufacturers, each with proprietary threads on BOTH ends, including a gauge which has its on mechanical life, and complexities for disassembling . When you factor those requirements into 9 visual inspections and 2 hydros, it becomes obvious that buying a new cylinder every 10 years is CHEAP.

I'm sorry, but this is a necessary expense if we wish to pursue CA technology in our sport. If I was king, then heads would roll and 10 meter shooting would be a sport that used a totally self sufficent power plant, i.e., everybody would be using RSP or SSP guns. But the times have changed and technoglogy has moved on to CA guns, and we need to have safety rules that reflect that. End of Story

[ModestoPete]

I know that Fire Extinguishers and Scuba air tanks are pressure tested before reloading.

I don't know if CO2 or Air cylinders can be done by the same people.

I have a FWB Model 2 which has to be at least 20 years old. I stopped shooting for a number of years but recently got back into it. It seems to be working fine.

I would think that it would be the gaskets and not the metal which would give out first.

[pilkguns]

If you don"t believe there is a danger with old tanks then check the photos out at the bottom of this link.
http://biobug.org/scuba/scubatank/

[ModestoPete]

Now I'm nervous.

I realize that CO2 cylinders only use about 1/3 the pressure of Air but I will have to have mine checked out soon.

[jipe]

The danger cannot be evaluated by people who don't know the history of the cylinders. Only the owner of the cylinders, assuming he bought the cylinders new, can know if obsolete cylinders are potentially dangerous or not. You cannot be 100% sure of the history of cylinders bought obsolete/used.

Absolutely true, and exactly why the "10-year rule" is so stupid. Declaring that cylinders older than 10 years are unsafe also says, in effect, that cylinders younger than 10 years are safe. Would you rather be standing next to a shooter with a 9 year old cylinder that has been cycled many thousands of times

You should read the complete sentence, ISSF says that the cylinders should be valid according to the manufacturer validity duration with an upper limit of 10 years.

To define the validity duration, I guess that the manufacturers computed this duration based on a worst case, i.e. for a lot of charge/discharge cycles, the maximum reasonably possible. So, yes, no problem for me to use a cylinder close to the limit of its validity duration, for instance 9 years for cylinder valid for 10 years.

Now, I must say that I don't understand why ISSF added explicitly the 10 years maximum limit in the 2013 edition. ISSF doesn't know nor control the manufacturing of the several cylinders.

In the previous version ISSF was saying that the cylinders had to be valid according to the manufacturer rules.

It is actually up to the manufacturers to define the duration of validity for their products, they probably could make cylinders valid for more than 10 years.

There were manufacturers who gave a longer validity, the Hammerli 480 is an example, Morini also had a 20 years validity. By giving a maximum of 10 years, ISSF says that these manufacturers were wrong when they defined a 20 years validity duration.