Do your old 1377s have the plastic or steel breech? The designs have changed even in the past few years.The new ones are all plastic, many tend to leak around the transfer port seal, and the plastic can and will wear and warp with time. The HBs are of much higher quality, and tend to last almost forever. The construction is Phosphor bronze. Bronze and brass are both copper alloys, bronze being alloyed with tin, and brass with zinc. The copper/zinc alloy is soft, the copper/tin alloy is much harder and more durable. The phosphor content is what gives it the brassy yellow color,and is used for improved machineability. I think the confusion comes from the term "red brass" thats often applied to bronze alloys. As for the "steel" barrels, that means nothing. Since the Crosman barrels are mild steel in its unhardened state its not much harder than the quality bronze used in the B/S guns. The depth of the rifling in the Crosman guns is almost microscopic, and is very easily worn/damaged, unlike the B/S guns that have nice deep rifling. I have seen plenty of bronze Benji, Sheridan, and Crosman barrels that are decades old, some 70+ years, with little wear in the rifling. I have also had my share of the cheap late model modular guns, the 22xx and 13xx. The barrels aren't bad at all, and can with some work be pretty accurate. But,almost every new one I have seen was defective in some way due to poor quality control. Burrs in the breech end, burrs in the port, off center and sloppy crowns, etc. No such thing with the HBs.
