"Nibs" sent his back and he wasn't all that happy with the replacement, he's not at all impressed by Crosman either.

It’s such a bummer about your guns. I’d have been disappointed as well. Do you think I interpreted the serial number correctly and that they are still,building these guns in ‘24?

​@thatalaskaguy-airguns it was either Nibs in his first video, or Riddick after that video, that talked about confirmation from Crosman that they haven't built all 2023 guns yet, still being produced.

@@PapaTAdventures interesting! Seems kinda weird that they’d not have made them all in 2023. I’m glad my serial number deciphering was accurate. 😆

​@thatalaskaguy-airguns it does make me want to relook at my serial number to see, if I remember. 😅

Not so far but I’ll know better as I shoot further out at 35 and 50 yds. I still have quite a bit of sight adjustment left so hopefully it’ll work out to 50 yds on pop cans. Thanks for the input on the video. I consciously make an effort to make the videos as short as I can and I’ve wondered if people like to see real time shooting or edited shooting. I can make myself look perfect if I edit the shooting part. Ha ha!

Yeah! It might help improve the sight picture as it might be higher off the receiver. If you end up getting one, I’d recommend getting a higher end model that has screw adjusters that move the windage and elevation. This low end model sucks to do fine movement adjustments. The difference with the wood stock is dramatic. It’s the first thing I noticed on the initial pump and really makes the gun feel solid and well built compared to the standard version. I like it! 😄

@@airgunsofalaska My 362 does feel like it's shifting, twisting, bending a little when I pump it especially compared to the 397, I hadn't really noticed before. Guess that's the price to pay for keeping it so light. Thanks I'll be sure not to cheap out on the peep site, the 397 is already so distinct from my other guns having a quality peep site on it will make it even more different. Does your new 362 seem all good functionally? If it's only a rough stock guys have a problem with that's not actually so bad.

@@yoitired It’s surprising how much different the wood stock feels when pumping compared to the standard plastic stock. Had I not experienced it for myself I’d likely have been skeptical of that claim. So far no issues other than the rough portions on the stock at the grip area. I’ve not even put any Pellgun oil on the gun. Now that I’m thinking about it I better do so as I’ve been shooting it a lot! 😄

@@airgunsofalaska That's good news the gun works all fine, Crosman can be forgiven for not having a wood expert on site he probably retired decades ago😔Yeah it probably really wants some oil lol my 397 is making so much metal slurry with wearing in the new pump. One plus of PCP is putting all that wear and tear on a cheap external pump I won't mind replacing, with pumpers I can't help wondering if I'll be able to fix it in the future.

@@yoitired that’s an interesting take about external pumps. When I got my 1st PCP back in ‘10 Airgun’s of Arizona recommended I buy a Swedish made, high quality FX Air pump rather than the Benjamin pump. They said the Benjamin pumps weren’t reliable. My Swedish pump still works fine. But I’ve never worried about wearing the pumping mechanism out on a pneumatic gun. It quits charging air long before the seal would wear to the point of getting metal on metal contact. Your gun probably just needs a wipe down and the slurry you are seeing will go away? I’m not disappointed in my stock. It not being perfect is a bit of a relief as I’ll scratch and ding it up over time. Had I been given a choice I’d rather it have not come with sanding marks but I can live with them. Keeping guns in collector grade, future sale condition is a pain in the ass if you want to also shoot them. 😆

I very much like my Benjamin guns but I like the 362 platform more as it’s easier to pump and can be modified. I’ve been having a lot of fun learning how to modify my 362’s. I now have three of them! I’ve got similar memories of wandering the fields back in South Dakota as a young kid. I’d spend hours outside with my Daisy 840 and my neighbors dog seeing wild turkeys, pheasants and deer and of course cottontail rabbits and 13 lined ground squirrels. I’d not thought of the downsides to the soldered barrel, very good point. My 397S needed warranty parts and I just had Crosman send them to me as the gun shot so well I didn’t want to send it back and risk them exchanging it for a different gun. It’s been really interesting learning about the production numbers on these guns. I didn’t realize Crosman had even more incentives on these, wow! I suspect it wouldn’t have helped me as last time I tried ordering a gun directly off their website they had to ship it FedEx or UPS and it would have been $100 for shipping to Alaska!

@@airgunsofalaska They claim free shipping over 49.00. I guess that doesn't include Alaska lol.

@@charlesoutdoors2424 that was my experience last spring in ‘23. Unless their policy changed (which I doubt) getting screwed on shipping is just one of those things we deal with living in Alaska.

Congratulations and wow! Thats a low production number. 😀👍

You got an early one! Did yours have any of the issues with the stock?

Thank you! Cheers!

That’s a really good point I’d not considered. I was shocked at the eBay prices for wood stock Benjamins. Vintage wood stock Daisy 822’s are ridiculously expensive as well. The other thing is the 362 is modular and a guy can modify it till their hearts content. That is really cool! That’s really unfortunate about your gun, Duke Nukem had a major issue with the linkage bending on his 392 last year. Hopefully Crosman gets their QC figured out. This is my 3rd 362 in three years and so far they’ve all be good. I don’t know why they all squeak but all three sound the same. It’ll be fun when you get your gun back, I really like mine.

@@airgunsofalaska I found a 822 on Ebay for a fraction of the price of the 362 . Most of these are beaten up , but this one was pretty nice . The stock and forearm had taken some abuse so I refinished them . Its getting harder to find these in decent shape . Mine has the newer valve set-up and is super easy to repair . Although mine worked flawlessly . I replaced the plastic pump arm with metal one , now no plastic on board . I have two of 342's and really like them . I really miss the 392 , 342 platform . I like the 20 caliber of the Silver Streak . Also my Airforce Talon-SS is in 20 caliber and very accurate .

@@joedokes8641 nice find and upgrades with the 822! I find I like the older 342 more than the 392. My 342 is more accurate than my 392, I’m not sure why?

@@joedokes8641 I like Benjamin pumpers. The 342 and Racine 392 are higher quality than the Bloomfield 392. Problem is my farm is in NY (established, not moving). Sitting on Gov. Hochul’s desk is the state land lead ammo ban, passed by both houses (in a research committee whatever that is). I do much of my frog hunting on state land and don’t want to shoot alloy pellets out of my brass benjamins…. So planning ahead, I like the nostalgia of pumpers (you get that way in your 60’s) and got me a couple of steel barrel Crosmans.

@@markst.pierre9731 I feel for you brother , out west the great Newscum is just as bad trying to ban everything under the sun . He's like a great fighter pilot who keeps gets shot down because the constitution keeps getting in the way . I say read my lips ( shall not be infringed ) . I also went went frog hunting with my friends , I miss those good times . Most times I used my Sears 880 and if more power was needed I brought my 342 . Back then a person could walk down the street with a pellet gun and no one had a cow . I have a Racine Silver Streak , super sweet . Stay strong brother.

If you can get one on sale, plus whatever incentives a vendor or the even the Crosman website offers, I think it’s worthwhile. I really like mine and now that the novelty has worn off I don’t look back being bummed at paying what I did for the gun. I’d be more bummed out had I missed out on getting one (even though I think they’ll be available for a while).

I noticed the difference too, I like it better.

It seemed like it has an oiled rather than varnish type finish. I bet yours turned out well! 👍 I’m just going to live with mine as it’ll undoubtedly get a few bumps and nicks with use over the years.

Yup. the bean counters go over the books and look at the profits, then say how can we make it even more profitable?. Instead of investing money in R&D, bettering or even maintaining quality and new products, they take the existing best sellers and shave dollars & pennies in production costs and materials, turning what was once an excellent product into a POS. Repeat this formula for just about everything from air guns to appliances. Consumer items that lasted 20 years or longer are a thing of the past......

I can empathize with you, I’ve read the Sheridans were very well built guns and held in very high regard. I hope the sale to Daisy doesn’t completely ruin Crosman as I think Daisy hasn’t done squat with innovation in airguns for the past 30 years. I don’t like what I’ve read about Gamo not making parts available for their guns. Overall I think what is possible with the 362 is a good compromise to the labor intensive construction of the older brass model guns. As nice as the Sheridans were they used a weird caliber pellet that was expensive and hard to find. They were difficult to mount a scope to and a bear to pump. As a kid in the 80’s I never lusted after a Sheridan or a Benjamin as they were hard to pump and very expensive. I have not gained a new appreciation for those guns and own three Benjamin models. But thinking back, as a kid I always viewed them as “Grandpa” guns as my Grandpa owned one and that was the first one I shot. I didn’t like it back then but I was very content with my Crosman 760. Not that reminds me, my 760 had a Coleman logo on the buttplate and they survived being owned by that company among many others. Perhaps this will be no different? I’m excited by what they can offer with the 362 and am stoked they are still selling a nice pneumatic from an American company.

@@airgunsofalaskaBy the early 80's Sheridan’s did get a little too pricey in my opinion. However, back in the 70's when I got my 1st one(still have that 1) they were the most powerful and by far the highest quality (no plastic, and excellent workmanship) pump air rifle you could buy. They were meant to last and be handed down to the next person. The old clamp scope mount never gave me any trouble on the 2 of them I've owned. If there was ever a problem with a gun Sheridan normally fixed them free even if the owner induced the problem. When I was 10 I decided to load 2 pellet instead of 1 for duplex loads and it worked so I kept adding pellets until they got stuck in the bore. Sheridan pulled I believe 4 pellets out of the barrel and sent a letter stating never to do that again. They had removed the pellets and installed new seals. All of this was free. Yes, they were far harder to pump than a Daisy or Crosman but in a kid this just builds muscle, I got mine at 8yrs old and could pump it to max (8 pumps) withing the 1st year I owned it. After that it only took me a few seconds longer to pump my gun than my friends guns. All that weight in the pump provided that extra power it had. I lived in the west area of Kenosha, WI about 10 minutes from the Racine Sheridan plant so I had no trouble finding 5mm pellets as they were readily available in my area. The 5mm pellets weighed about 15 grains so about the same as a lighter weight 22 cal. The big difference was the pellets back then were actually made by Sheridan, so the quality was fantastic, and the pellets were basically slugs with a tiny driving band, This made for very deep penetration. When Beeman brought out 5mm pellet offerings from other companies they were traditional type waisted pellets like the .177 & 22 cal of the day and I was excited to try them. I bought Pointed Silver Jets and a couple others. They were all inferior in accuracy and penetration. The original Sheridan pellets were far better for hunting. The guns were exceptionally accurate. I regularly killed squirrels with head shots at 50 yards and this was unheard of with most any pump air gun of the time. Grandpas gun? Yes they were walnut stocked guns. No plastic and the cap where the safety is was made of aluminum. The rest of the gun was brass and steel so they were built like an older styled gun but that meant they were far better in durability and crafted to a higher degree.

@@frankbrowning328 thanks for providing such a detailed write up! I wasn’t familiar with the details of the Sheridan and what made them different from the Benjamin guns of the time. They looked similar to each other and I think when I became aware of them in the 80’s Benjamin had bought Sheridan? I was thinking the company was called Benjamin/Sheridan for a while before Crosman bought them? I remember the Sheridan pellets, they came in the pop top yellow box and it seemed like only our local gun shop carried them and they were expensive. I could buy Crosman and Daisy pellets at the hardware store, K-Mart, sporting goods stores, etc. As a kid I remember shooting a lot more BB’s than pellets and BB’s were what pretty much all my friends and other kids shot. I had no appreciation for what the Sheridan was. One of my friends would shoot his Dad’s gun and for what we were doing it was just a hard to pump, heavy, slow firing and expensive airgun to plink with. Definitely overkill for what we did with airguns at the time. I suspect those original Sheridan bullet shaped pellets are worth a fortune nowadays?

@@airgunsofalaska Yes, back in the 70's (They started out in the 40's) Sheridan was still Sheridan but by the 80's Benjamin had bought them and quality had slipped in metal finish, wood selection & finish, a shorter different contour pump handle and probably more that I've missed. Then Crosman bough Benjamin/Sheridan and the guns got plastic trigger guards and a host of other items to cheapen production of both Benjamin and Sheridan. It was a shame as both Benjamin and Sheridan had been premium brands and once absorbed they faded away. Yes, the original pellets came in the old 500 per container yellow plastic box. They were more than twice the cost of something like a Crosman .177 pellet. Today when you are able to find a full box of original 5mm they are generally 50.00-80.00 per 500 round box. They were kinda overkill for a young kid like I was. However, they were made to last. Mine is still functional today but it could use new seals. I used to take a lot of crap about mine because kids with Crossman’s, Daisys and Powerlines looked far more like a real gun, were much easier to pump and weighed 1/2 as much. Then we would set up targets at 50feet and continue to move the target back with every group and whether it was me or a friend the Sheridan was always more accurate. We would set up pop cans in a row to see how many each gun could shoot through and again the Sheridan won every time. However, still the other kids would pick on my gun for the reasons above. The guns were a little more than double the price of a mid to high end Crosman back in the early 70's but today one in very good condition is worth about 350 vs very little for a Crosman, Daisy or Powerline of the same time frame.

I’m definitely partial to the look and feel of the Crosman.

I’m not familiar enough with 342’s to know if it was custom checkered or factory? It was my father-in-laws and he was a hobbyists gun smith who had the checkering tools. He may have done the work himself. I think he did work on the trigger because it has an awesome feel.

I’m hoping for the best but fearing the worst of the sale. On the bright side I’ve read positive things in the comments of other channels that it will improve Crosman so hopefully that’s true. In an ideal world they would do as you suggested.👍

Mine was off, easy to adjust though. The elevation adjustment is the tiny screw on top left side of sight. And windage is the 2 bigger screws on top. Move the rear sight in the direction you want to move the pellet impact point. Also make sure to tighten the 2 bigger screws on the left side, these just hold the sight to the gun...they can be loose from the factory

@timmygilbert1371 My rear sight had to be adjusted as it was shooting way too low and to the left. I thought and still think it’s a pain in the ass to adjust because the screw slots are very narrow and it’s difficult to do fine adjustments you have to loosen the mounting screws. Bear in mind I was under the assumption it’d have screw type adjusters for the fine movement. My elevation screw is too short and already ran out of length for elevation to hold it in place. None of this is the fault of the sight, it’s just a basic low end model that isn’t very user friendly.

@@shaunoftheguads I was under the assumption this sight would be easier to adjust for fine movement. I guess for all the hype I’ve read about Williams sights, I was disappointed in the time and effort needed to adjust it. It’s just a very basic sight that could be more user friendly but it sounds like the models with those features run $100?

@@airgunsofalaska Good to know , thanks for the reply .

It was fun to compare them 😄

@@airgunsofalaska yes i believe you.have a great weekend 👍😉

I guess I was thinking of the $220 Benjamin 392/397S and the $215 Seneca Dragonfly Mk2 they could have offered a similar version of the 362. It wouldn’t need a Walnut stock, but use a cheaper wood. The Williams peep sight retails for $40 on Amazon and the Crosman steel breech is around that same price. I think it can still be done but perhaps they don’t see a market for it?

@@airgunsofalaska I think that's it in a nutshell. Spring guns and variable pump guns are no longer the in thing. All the cool guys are shooting four figure PCP's. I think that's where the market is going. These yesterday's tech guns are for those who are just starting out or need something for pest control and don't want to spend a whole lot of money. So for the first timers or casual users, there likely isn't enough profit in it to pursue. So polymers and alloy's rule.

I also forgot to mention I have one on the way. Interested to see if mine was made in 2024. Should be here next week from Pyramid.

@@leewoiteshek4192 Very nice! I think you’ll like it. 😀

I often wonder about that as it seems like only expensive, high end PCP’s are featured on the majority of Airgun channels. I’d think the greatest number of sales take place in the big box stores with much lower priced guns.