What would be some optimal slug weight/speed combinations for shooting 22cal slugs in 1:16 twist barrel?
Thanks!
Thanks!
Optimal .22cal Slug Weight and Speed in 1:16 Twist Barrel
- Thread starter Gear_Junkie
- Start date
Kirk, I shoot light weight 17.5-20gr slugs thru my Taipan Vet 2 .22 (CZ non- choked barrel) and my RAW .22 (LW POLY non-choked) and it seems like these lighter/shorter slugs start stabilizing right around 920fps and up. Longer heavier slugs seem to stabilize at slightly slower speeds and are easier to tune for from my observations. My Taipans barrel likes AVS slugs (pure lead) wheras my RAW's barrel likes NSA (slightly harder lead). Hope this helps!
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Thanks!
My current RAW barrel (12gr LW) doesn't really like slugs at any energy up to 40fpe. (I've tried 10+ slugs at different weights and styles from H&N, JSB, Zan, NSA FX, etc.) I would really like to shoot slugs somewhere between 35 - 40fpe. I'm wondering if a faster twist barrel would stabilize 17gr - 23 gr slugs at the speeds that I'm hoping for.
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There's stabilization calculators out there. My 16 twist shoots 23-34 nicely 930-1000 fps. 930 seems to be my magical stabilization number for my barrel.
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My buddy has an lw hmx1000. It loved H&N 23s and mrd on 1 tune just shy of 50 fpe. Every barrel is different and power level is probably going to come into play.
Ex. Current project gun only shot cphp at 18 fpe. Increase power to 20 and it shows promise with another, hit 25 fpe and it's dead nuts with a projectile it formerly disliked. Which i say to relay this. I've always wanted to dictate the projectile and the velocity, it took a couple years to learn that the gun will tell you what you CAN shoot in certain performance regimes.
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If you have strelok, or are willing to seek it out after being banned for political reasons from the app store, it will tell you your stabilization factor and show you the trajectory and velocity loss for projectiles it has all the data for, it even has reticles of most popular optics. It's well worth it, but is harder to get these days. It's still more accurate data that my arken app for my ballistic solving scope.
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Try a few different manufacturers slugs in different diameters because they all use different amounts of antimony. Try AVS, Franco's slugs here on AGN. Both of my barrels diameters are different than others from the same brand. Most CZ barrels in .22 like .218, mine likes .2183's! My RAW's.barrel likes .2175 NSA so finding the right diameter for that specific slug whether it's pure lead or not is the most difficult part about slug shooting in my humble opinion....accuracy will be noticeable right away within just 2-3 shots. You'll get it!
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“Optimal” will depend on your circumstances. For instance, if you have a lower powered airgun, optimal will likely mean lighter slugs. Outside of those other limiting factors, I consider optimal to be 40gr@1060fps.
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my airforce Condor's liked 217 h&n and Zan 40 grain slugs.. wow they were accurate and hit hard.
Mark
Mark
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My barrel is super tight. It prefers .2165 and some companies' .217's. Larger than this and the slugs are too tight to push into the breech.
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As it happened to be my fx likes 217, and my buddy with a transition period Martin-airforce lw barreled hmx1000 bough 217 H&N. It just happened to work well. 23 javelin and the 23 H&N did even better.
I had chronographed and built a table for his gun with a Zulus and took a shot at my pest bird tree 94 yards out the back of my shop. Popped a range find and let it move the reticle and thwop, starling parts.... 1 shot. I put it in the bag and told him to come get it.
In my initial zero I noticed his gun seemed to like increasing pressure for groups with a 15 yard setup range(if it can shoot 1 clean hole it shows promise) . My best estimation is projectile obturarion. I gave it 90 degrees of hammer spring preload and it showed positive correlation. Everything I've relayed was trial and error from my impact that I tried to translate to the raw. Here's a 700mm impact with the raw just to show the chungus twins and how long they are. And my tiny donnyfl is quieter at much higher power levels.
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@ 1:16 even 34 javelin slugs have a stability factor of 1.68 according to strelok at 990 fps. Anything above 1.0 should be sufficiently stabilized iirc. Even then when I had my pellet liner I had things that were at 1 or just under that still, and still shot fair to decent at 100 yards but mathematically weren't sufficiently stabilized. They were squirrel accurate.
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I forgot exactly but they were shooting I think around 960 out of the SS Condor and faster in the regular Condor..
Mark
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