By way of an introduction:
My name is Patrick Rowling and I have been a competitive shooter for my entire life. For the past dozen years or so I have competed in the 10m air pistol discipline. Waaaaaay back in 1996, I started a little webpage about air pistols titled, oddly enough, The Air Pistol Home Page. After years of keeping the page up and creating a BBS for airpistol shooters, I gave it up and Scott Pilkington took it over, turning my Scoreboard BBS into the current BBS on his site, Target Talk. I switched my focus to action pistol shooting and the like. After a break of a few years, I am coming back to competitive air pistol shooting and decided that I want to try competing with an older springer design as opposed to an expensive CA pistol. I placed ads in different sites asking if anybody had a 65 or Model 10 that they were willing to part with, which leads me to this post.

I am purchasing a Diana Model 10 and I am wondering a few things, the primary one is this: is there a way to dry fire the M10? Does anyone know of a way to modify the mechanism so that just the trigger can be reset to allow for dry fire?

Also, if anyone has an original Diana Model 10 instruction booklet that they would be willing to photocopy for me, I will gladly send funds for the copies and postage to have it mailed to me. Better still would be scanning it and making PDFs so that it could be attached to an email or downloaded from a site.

Thanks in advance for any and all help.

Glad to be aboard,

Patrick

Patrick, there is no way to dry-fire the model 10 "built in" to the gun. As to whether it could be modified to do so, would require someone whose gunsmithing skills far, far exceed mine.

This is typical of spring-piston match guns of that era. The FWB models 65 and 80 can't be dryfired either.

 Patrick,

 Glad to have ya abord, back to getting active in shooting, and in this forum! I've been to both of your "start-up's" and both were and are very well organized! You see this one is much simpler, but everyone here is at their top behavior and helpfulness to eachother, they're a great bunch!

 Please feel free to interject or discuss any your vast competition experience at any time, we're all very intrested! Personally, I love plinking, and I've found the air pistol to be one of the most relaxing and enjoyable segments of the hobby. I use it often...

 Here's to hoping that you enjoy visiting and posting often!

 ZVP

Thanks for the kind words! I did take a few years off (like six?!?) from air pistol competition and shooting, primarily to concentrate on IDPA-style work with my "bang" guns, but that was getting REALLY expensive ... just the ammo costs when you are firing 300+ rounds a week are enough to prevent most working folks from doing it. So, I am coming back to the air pistol fold and itching to compete with an "old" springer against all of the new-fangled, high-priced pistols that are the current rage. I KNOW that I can be competitive with the Model 10, I just can't wait to prove it!

So, regarding the dry-fire question: Who, in the opinion of our board members, do you think would be qualified to make this type of modification to the Model 10? It really is more of an engineering problem than a simple metal work issue, so it would need to be somebody who knows the model inside and out, 100%.

Any thoughts or suggestions glady received.

Cheers,

Patrick

 Patrick,

 I know both Lewis Reinhold (Owner Beemans Au.), lewisbelinda@yahoo.com and Randy Bimrose, barrelbender@earthlink.net  are still working on these complex pistols.  Ed Krzynowerk, edward73@sbcglobal.net may still be working on these also. You should contact these guys to discover if the mod is feasable.

 HTH,

 ZVP

You should never dry fire any spring piston airgun and the Model 10 is no exception.It will do fearful and expensive damage inside.A Model 10 will not tolerate any abuse like this and is probably the one most likely to spit the dummy first.There is so much inside there to go wrong.
If you want a pistol you can dry fire,get a PCP or CO2 model with DF provision.

So, I sent an email off to Diana yesterday, asking for any and all information on the Model 10 if still available. I just got this reply:

"Dear Sir,

Instruction manual and expl. view are following by letter post in the next few days.

Regards
DIANAWERK/Germany"

THAT, my friends, is customer service!

Patrick

By the way, I will scan and make a PDF of the Model 10 info so that others can get it online.

Regarding the dry firing: I am referring to modifying the mechanism to allow for trigger actuation only, bypassing the cocking of the springs all together. I realise that airguns should not be fired without a pellet or a few cleaning pellets in the barrel, hence why I was asking about modifications to the pistol.

Regarding the Diana instructions: They did indeed send me a mint original user's manual, very pretty in bright yellow and red ink on very nice texured paper ... unfortunately, all in German. If anyone has ever seen a technical manual in German, you will know that some of the individual words end up as paragraphs. The illustrations are very good though, so I am able to figure out from them, and the use of an online translation site, some basic idea of operation. I am going to scan and post as a PDF on a site and will post the link here, hoping that some kindly bilingual luftpistole shooter will lend a hand in figuring out the adjustments, operation, etc.

Stay tuned ...

http://www.potfire.com.au/compend/spgec10.htm

Please forgive me for not remembering this one earlier. This link will take you to a nice diagram of the gun's trigger adjustments. Every other match air pistol known to man has its trigger and sight adjustments explained on this site, too.

THANKS! That Aussie link you sent was just the ticket!