A gun from Navy Arms came packaged in a rough cardboard box with no padding and looked as though it had come directly from a large outdoor pile in the Egyptian military surplus yard. All four of my guns were packed with sand and old grease. None could be operated until receiving a thorough stripping and cleaning. Fortunately the Hakim is very straightforward and disassembles easily. The underlever is pulled down and back to cock the gun. This action also opens the loading tap. There's no anti-beartrap device, so be careful where you park your fingers while cocking this one! The Rifle A Hakim air rifle is a big airgun-roughly the weight of a Garand and an inch longer. Everything on the outside is wood and steel, and the only synthetic inside is the piston seal. This is a big airgun that appeals to collectors of military rifles. Unlike many military trainers, there is no provision for mounting a bayonet. The full stock is walnut, with a matching upper handguard held in place by one barrel band and the nose cap. The underside is inlet for the cocking mechanism, so it is quite thin at some spots and cracks are common. A crossbolt strengthens the wood at its thinnest point. If kept snug, the stock stays reasonably firm, though it's hardly suitable for the bayonet course. Sometimes, fate smiles and you'll see a rifle stocked with an exceptional piece of wood. Such is the case for the gun shown here. The stripes you see are natural tiger striping in walnut-holographic effect and all. I bet the factory boys cried when that blank was cut! Cocking effort is light and easy if the correct mainspring is installed. There is no anti-beartrap (made in 1954, remember) so keepa your mitts outa da mechanism when the underlever is down, unless you want to trim some fingernails to the second knuckle. The trigger can be adjusted to the point of not holding, so common sense should prevail. Remember that things wear with time, and what is marginally safe today may not be so a year from now. The barrel is all Ansch¸tz and rifled as finely as only they can. The rotating loading tap is fitted as well as an automobile valve, and alignment with the breech was perfect on every gun I examined. To maintain realism, both the air rifle and the .22 rimfire have a strange steel appendage welded to the top of the receiver. It sort of looks like the front of the 8mm Hakim bolt cover. Sort of. For years, this appendage confused U.S. airgunners, many of whom went to the trouble to knock the "thingy" off the gun. That will be their loss when they try to sell it. On the firearm, it holds the wire brass deflectors and is commonly used to cock the action for the first shot. Looking down on the loading tap, we see the flaming death head engraved on every rifle. Good for esprit de corps, one supposes, but it didn't seem to do much good in 1956, 1967 or in 1973. Shooting The Hakim is an underlever spring-piston rifle--what some mistakenly call a "one-pump" rifle, though no pumping is involved. Lowering the cocking lever toward the butt retracts a coiled steel mainspring, cocks the action and opens a rotating loading tap on top of the receiver. The underlever is then returned to its original stored location, where it fits flush with the bottom of the stock. Cont to pg3>>>>