This compressor packages propellant for air rifles.
Some of those rifles are small and throw 10 grains at 575fps.
Others, slugs up to 411 grains at 800fps.
I’ve used a hand pump for my Crosman Marauder, but it cannot produce the pressure required for higher end air guns. My stopgap solution is filling a large carbon fiber tank whenever access to a compressor happens. In terms of usefulness, air guns are a lot like percussion guns, only without quite as much noise, with no smoke or soot, and without powder, cap or wad expense.
“In terms of usefulness, air guns are a lot like percussion guns, only without quite as much noise, with no smoke or soot, and without powder, cap or wad expense.”
True, but you don’t have to haul around an air pump for a percussion gun. So long as you have re-supply of lead, powder and caps then, the percussion gun is more “field efficient”, especially when fed with paper cartridges.
The advantage to an air gun is that the lead (and maybe a little grease?) is your only re-supply concern. For most people, the lead would be slightly easier to find than the powder and caps for the firearm.
For other people, right now, it’s the other way around though. It’s easier to walk in to a store and walk out with gun powder than to walk out with lead ingots.
To me, the small bore air gun has the advantage of being useable in town in one’s garage, for practice, or for chasing deer away from the garden, making a barking dog shut up, or harvesting the occasional squirrel for the crockpot.
Maybe I haven’t worked with a large bore air gun enough to appreciate the advantages, but for now, if it were a choice between the two, I would prefer the percussion rifle or pistol for its simplicity and…”joules per pound carried afield”?
As with automobiles, et al, it’s pretty hard (yet impossible in fact) to beat the energy density of chemical propellants, if that’s the concern. If it’s not the primary concern, then of course a large bore air rifle has it’s place.
Those are all good arguments.
OTOH if your air pump is hand-operated and reasonable in size the comparison is much closer. Lewis and Clark’s Girandoni had the advantage of being a 20-shot .46 cal. repeater sufficient for deer and self-defense. My lever-pump .177 cal. will take small rabbit-size critters, and reloads faster than a percussion.
Too each his own.