markhooper said:

I don't actually know what type of dies they are made on but I thought that type was a swag press.. so a actually what I call 3 piece die.. center pin spring loaded to make the hollow point, outer die and then a press die that pushes the base in the preset depth.. and of course bleed off holes in the outer die that allows the air voids and excess lead to escape..
I'd really like to see pictures of the various different dies.. such as you mentioned one piece vs two piece..
just recently got a add I think it was from AOA but I'm not sure, I think it was made by NSA.. but it had a video link of a hydraulic press and die to make your own slugs.. similar to the Corban or press slug.. but you just dropped in the piece of lead wire and pushed the start button..
seems like a expensive and time consuming way to make ammo..
I remember years ago helping pour lead sinkers and then later babbot bearings and I do distinctly remember that if it's not the correct temperature you can get like air pockets..
always wondered if this happened to anyone trying to cast their own slugs, especially the smaller ones..
Mark

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thomasair said:

Slugs like jsb and h&n are made in a 2 piece body die. Those certainly have the recipe for being out of round just like pellets. I have some knockouts that are horribly out of round.

Slugs made in a single piece body die should be as round as they can get since the dies are turned in one operation.

Altaros should be round as well since the slug itself is turned. hollow point and dish base.. and I have Zan 40 grain slugs, hollow point flat base.. I honestly can't tell any difference between them shooting other than the h&n is $.05 more each

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Kgphotos said:

Is this the Diana Chaser that you have? I’d like to hear more about it. I’m thinking about building up a light carbine for my nephew for his birthday. It’s not until October but I’ve been kicking around the idea. Please tell us about power level, shot count and noise level And general overall opinion. Thanks.
Kenny

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BlueJack said:

Howdy,
New to the site.
I’m shooting GTO Predator 22cal (nonlead) to feed my falcons.
Does anyone have experience with or know of anything new or better?
Also, for those of you who shoot nonlead, what’s been your best FPS, and the fastest speed you’ve been able to use and still be able to shoot respectable groups.
My best to you
Keith

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ArmandoQ said:

Folks. I am stuck using non lead ammo. Has anyone used gto predators out of an Fx in eithe 22 or 25 caliber. What kind of accuracy are you getting and at what speed. I am hoping to shoot out of a Dreamline. I am thinking if I turn down the power I will be able to get a lot of shots. In addition how. Do you think noise will be affected

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davidsng said:

I've been still playing with these GTO ammo and think I found my new SQUIRREL hunting round. I shot the GTO and put a few holes in my floor. I have a 330 page hard cover book that I use for trapping the pellets during a chronograph string. It usually stops lead hollow points easy. I thought that because it is half the weight of others, it would slow fast.-wrong! 12 rounds tore through the book, the carpet, padding then slammed into the concrete floor underneath. When I pulled them out, they were barely damaged! Only noticable damage was the from the barrel groves. Interesting I would say.

View attachment 8505
Heavy lead rounds and hollow points are always nice, but a hard, light round also has its benifits. Here are my thoughts and observations:

1)GTOs do not get chew up from the barrel as much (less of a dirty barrel and seems to help accuracy)
2) flat trajectory. You can pretty hold on zero from 18 to 45 yards (97% of all my shots when squirrel hunting are under 40 years). The flat trajectory also help avoid hitting tree branches.
3) I you have lower power gun, the hard alloy will "crack" skull and "bust" through a squirrel's brain and cause just as much damage as a hp, I think.
4) A gun or animal will not never be contaminated by lead.
5) These GTO have no flyers! I've shot many group 25-35 year this winter and have NONE! Not one shot was from a bad pellet.

The only disadvantage from 11.75gr GTO's are they are very affected by the wind. With a .023 bc, the will be worthless in windy conditions. But if you squirrel hunt in a thick protected woods and at close range, who cares if it is windy? Even if you do want to shoot them at 75-100 in zero wind condtions, they have less than 10 ft/lbs of energy anyway at that point and falling fast. Still worthless in my opinion.

Benifets clearly outway the disadvantage for me. I think GTOs will be my new round for close range. Thoughts?

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EquivalentDelta said:

I would love to compete in something resembling Hunter Field Target in Finland. But I have been completely unable to find any such air gun competitions that aren’t just 10m.

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kwaping said:

So I built a rubber mulch pellet trap this morning and messed around with my Blackwolf a bit. I had some luck with group improvements with the regulator at 130 and power around 16. I only have room for a 20 yard range so I'm not reading too much into it until I can get back to 50 yards at the range. But at least I'm getting more shots per fill, and having fun as well.

I took the gun apart to degas the bottle. I don't think I had to but the manual said to, so I did. I also took the barrel off just to check things out. I couldn't get the shroud completely off because I didn't have a tool for the end cap.

One big surprise was that the laminate stock was very light when I took it off. Shocking, really. I didn't weigh it though.

I'm going to leave the regulator setting in place until I get a chronometer, and just experiment with different power wheel settings for fun.

One question that I have, maybe someone here can help me with...

I took the fill valve all the way off after degassing the bottle, just to make sure all the air was out. After I was done messing around and filled it back up, it makes a little balloon-like squeaking sound while gassing up. Everything else seems fine, operationally, just that sound. Did I screw something up?

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fishgod said:

Sorry for taking a while to get a proper update. I wanted to get any issues sorted before posting

I'm in Canada so I bought the Zelos .22 through Wes at Airgun Archery Fun, as well as a bottle adapter. Stand up guy, no problems there. The gun itself was flawless, however the bottle adapter was leaking at 2 out of 3 orings. The adapter to bottle connection oring was too small and unable to make a seal. (2.4mm thickness instead of the 3.1mm which I replaced it with). Also the fill valve oring had a large gash in it so I replaced it with a new identical one. Managed to get both at a local hydraulic store who didn't even bother to charge me for them since they were such small items.

After a thorough barrel cleaning, the gun is shooting excellent. As I want a fairly high shot count, I turned the pressure down to about 1600psi which had the JSB 18.13 (the most accurate pellet out of the ones I tried) shooting extremely accurately at 895-900fps.

Tuning it was a bit trickier as it seems the stock hammer spring was too stiff to have any usable adjustment at this lower pressure. Increasing spring turns was not giving any adjustment, in fact, it was slightly decreasing fps as the spring increased. I read about this on a different thread about the zelos and copied the shorter replacement spring suggested. This gave me adjustability from 500fps to well past the peak curve. I managed to tune it properly and the consistency of the fps increased, as well as the efficiency.

Shot count is excellent for me. After tuning, I get around 80 shots at full pressure, and the 700cc bottle I swap to afterwards gives me at least 200 more shots. So I am able to have close to 300 shots total at 900fps.

Accuracy is also excellent in my opinion. At 30 yards, a grouping of 5 shots makes one larger hole, about twice the size as the diameter of the pellets. I'd be pretty confident in being able to hit a literal pea or corn kernel 9/10 times at that distance. At 50 yards, they are less than 1/2 inch center to center. At 75 yards I get about 1 inch center to center. Anything beyond that distance and the wind played too much of a factor to give a fair rating.

Final thoughts: I'm extremely pleased with the gun once I got everything sorted out. The shot count is much better than I had hoped, so I may play around with increasing the pressure a little bit more. Accuracy has been great even in a light breeze, although I haven't had a dead calm day to try 100+ yard shots for fun. The trigger after adjustment is also very nice and light with in my opinion, a short and crisp second stage.

Happy to discuss anything else about it more, thanks again everyone for all the input!

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Matt7467 said:

Upon looking at it closer, not only does the probe move, but it is bent upward towards the tip. Makes sense since you can clearly see with the single shot tray it presses the top of the skirt on the pellets and the maple mag it messed up was also in that upper portion.

Looking for a new probe now and straighten this one out and see if it helps for now.

Not sure if this pic angle shows it as well, but it shows itself a lot more in person.View attachment 557102

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