Regarding weighing pellets - The scale matters.....

I agree with all of this, primarily for ease of weight sorting. Nothing worse than doing a half-hour of sorting and then realizing that the zero has drifted off and you don't know when in that half-hour that it happened.

While I have found that weighing can single out oddly light or heavy pellets are defective in some way and shoot as flyers, I have not yet found a case where weighing and sorting into groups (say, 4 groups of keepers and a too light and too heavy group) that those keeper groups performed any better. But if you're competing and willing to put work into various activities that *might* help, this can be on your list. For me, a quick weight sort to cull weirdos and group the keepers into light/medium/heavy piles is plenty, with my remaining time investment going into visual inspection or head diameter measurements.

I agree to have a check weight that is in the working range for your application. I have a 2 gram check weight that comes in at 30ish grains and I think it was $25. It is far more relevant than the 50g and 100g weights that came with the scale I had at the time. That said, we're sorting so it doesn't actually matter if the weights all come in slightly heavy or slightly light because we're doing relative comparisons. But I think it helps because relying on return to zero can be maddening in a different way.

Make sure the scale is level, on a surface free of vibration or wobble, and has good clean power. Battery powered scales, interestingly, can be more stable than AC plug-in types due to their physical isolation. Likewise, fluorescent lights can cause some interference but I haven't observed that myself.

It's important to verify zero frequently, as less expensive scales do drift from zero. My Sartorius** does not drift from zero but it can spend time wandering above/below zero whenever there is a disturbance to the air or the pan (like switching pellets to be weighed). Static electric charges can cause more drifting, so wipe down with a dryer sheet to reduce static. And some scales drift regardless, forcing you to re-zero regularly.

** no you don't need a Sartorius to weight sort pellets. It's not even truly necessary for long range handloading, which is what I bought it for. But it does work great.

I suppose I’m fine with all that but I still recommend testing your sorted pellets at 100y to see how much (if any) the weights and velocity variations cause vertical on the target.

There are many factors that tend to add up and amplify error on a long range target, but reasonable weight and muzzle velocity variations have a tendency to cancel somewhat and give you much less vertical dispersion. I do not recommend aggressively pursuing weight while only assuming it’s improving the vertical on target. Take the heaviest keeper weight and shoot it next to the lightest keeper weight. The difference on target may be nothing. That’s been my experience.

i have a set of these for calibration

Geneeus said:

I appreciate your response. Please note that I'm not advocating weighing pellets only to shoot closely matched weights, but also as a way to remove outliers. In fact, I'm not advocating weighing pellets for anyone except myself. What I'm saying is "If you're going to do it, understand what you're doing, and do it right."

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I certainly agree. In business they often brag about following the data. What they often ignore (the question pops their brains) is to consider if the data is good or not. It’s easy to make bad data and harder to make good data. So if that question comes as a surprise, you likely don’t have good data.

FWIW I got my calibration weight from McMaster Carr

I am measuring my pellets in grains, single decimal place.
I realized long ago if I wear a - stupid covid mask - I am not irritating my scale as much.

You guys sort of allude to what I thought from the very first day I starting weighing .177 pellets - what weight pellet was the gun shooting the day it was tested? I am reasonably sure AoA did not first find five, 10.34gr pellets when they set my BRK up to 20ftlbs. They likely grabbed whatever was in the can of 10.34's, loaded the clip, and grouped up shots on a card until they were happy with the results.

What I found after weighing my first 500 pellet can of JMB's is only 6% were at the stated 10.34gr weight. This lead me to surmise that as long as the gun is tuned to say, pellets from 10.32 to 10.42 grains, your shots will likely be more effected by the gun & shooter. So now I just want to learn which pellets go in the plinking bucket and which ones can go to a FT match. I am particular about all the same points made by Geneeus wrt the scale accuracy and repeatability over the course of what turns out to be a couple hours at a time sorting. I feel a scale must read accurately to 0.001 grams to be useful at 0.02 grains resolution. Appreciate your input!

I find head size consistency makes more difference in how pellets shoot. I still sort by weight sometimes but I shoot them all and they seem to shoot about the same. But when I have a tin of pellets with widely varying head size they don't shoot well. It may not be the head size either, it may just be a more subtle indicator of factors harder to measure that actually determine accuracy. It may be inconsistency in the "other factors" which also causes head size variability.

One reason I think weight is not a great indicator is JSB pellets often have pretty wide ranging weight variability but in guns that like them, they shoot great. But I've never had a tin of pellets that varied widely in head size shoot well regardless of the manufacturer. This seems to only occur in my experience in Crosman pellets, however. Variability in H&N and JSB seems to be low but the Crosman's I've measured have varied much more. Some tins are pretty consistent and shoot well. Other tins have had pellets of every size on my head size gauge and beyond. Right now I have two partial tins of domed Crosman 14.3s that are pretty consistent in head size and shoot well. I have a tin of hollow points, also 14.3 grain Crosmans, that is much more variable and shoot significantly bigger groups. I tried sorting them into big and small head size and it did not help. If I picked a tighter range of head sizes it might. But if head size is only an indirect indicator it probably won't.

Air movement such as fans and air conditioners will affect the scale.