I thought i would have seen a thread on this by now but seeing as I haven't I thought I would chime in.
Being in the UK i got a little jelous when i saw that Jerry was making and selling these (in the USA) so i emailed him and asked if he shipped to the UK and it looks like he will ship it anywhere.
I ordered one online and it cost me around £12/$12 i cant remember which to get it shipped to the UK which i thought was reasonable. It arrived well within a week! (I was told to expect around 7-10 working days so was happy when it arrived so soon.
As soon as i got home i had to give it a try, obviously!! so i put it all together, a 2 minute job (the instructions on the website are OK but not perfect, I would have liked to have seen a breakdown as it wasn't completely obvious which order to stack the pieces in at first but seems so obvious now that its together. I also think a paper copy of instructions with the delivery would have been good.
once it was together i started measuring the rest of the current tin of lubed JSB 18.1's (5.52 headsize on the tin) i had left on the windowsill (around 300 left in the tin or so i would guess) I would guess that it took me around 10 minutes to measure all of them, maybe a little more.
Hats off to JSB here, the pellets i had were VERY VERY consistent. Almost ALL went through the 5.53mm hole. So, i thought, ok fair enough they are all 0.01mm bigger than advertised but at least they are super consistent. (only about 10 went through the 5.51 hole and about 5 went through the 5.54 hole, all the others through the 5.53 hole) yes i will admit, some were possibly borderline between the holes they would go through and i had to decide what method i wanted to use (i.e. pellet just falls through under its own weight or very slight pressure to help it through). I actually asked Jerry this question and his response was that consistent, light pressure was best.
I have only tested 1 tin of pellets through it so far and will be testing another tin soon to see if my other tins are as consistent. (I did test a sample of about 10 JSB 15.9's that I bought yesterday just to see what they were like and they ALL fell through the 5.53 hole again)
I have to say it is a really easy piece of kit to use, takes very little concentration, i.e. you can do it without looking at numbers on callipers or however others measure them and can be done whilst watching TV, which i imagine may be a little difficult if you are using an air gage.
Based on the fact that i had such consistency out of the tin of pellets its hard to say if there was any difference in accuracy out of my gun. i did shoot a 20 shot group at 50 yards with the (measured) 5.53mm head which was less than 0.5" with 0 flyers - cant complain at that!
I was going to shoot a separate group for the other 2 pellet sizes but changed my mind and shot at the original 20 shot group to see if it opened up at all..... Take a guess what happened.....
NOT ONE FLYER!! POI WAS THE SAME AND EVERY PELLET SNICKED THROUGH THE SAME HOLE AS THE OTHERS!!
I thought to myself "hmmm thats good, lets try the 5.54mm ones and see how they perform" I know from experience that if a pellet feels tight going into the breech it will spiral like a loonatic and go anywhere but where i aim it.... so i stuck a pellet down the pipe and low and behold...STILL NO FLYERS!!
So i guess you could say i have no conclusive evidence either way on the pellet head size argument in my particular gun deu to the small batch of bigger /smaller headsizes i ended up with, but at least i know shouldnt have to do much in the way of faffing about measuring pellets!
I guess some of you may be thinking, if you were getting good accuracy before then why did you bother buying the pellet gage?? Well the short answer is... I just wanted one, I love looking for new ways to squeeze accuracy out of my equipment, and myself and I learnt a big lesson for my £42 (including shipping to UK)
Lesson #1 - If i miss - ITS MY FAULT
Lesson #2 JSB are seriously consistent
Lesson #3 the mental confidence gained from knowing my pellets were super consistent (and i already know my gun is super consistent) helped me to produce brilliant groups with 0 flyers for the whole session.
Worth spending my money on - YES very much so in my opinion, i wont use it all the time as there is no need but I now have it available to test a sample of every tin of pellets and just in case i ever want reminding that i missed because i made a mistake it will sit there waiting to prove it.
I hope i haven't rambled too much here and sent everyone to sleep.
One last thing before i sign off - Jerry emailed all of his customers the a couple of days ago and said that he had used a new piece of equipment to test the hole sizes and had infact made an error, basically the top and bottom of it is, each hole size is actually 0.01mm SMALLER than what is printed onto the plate. So all those "5.53mm" heads that i measured were in fact 5.52 (as the tin suggested they should be.) and before anyone has a moan about it being shipped with wrong numbers on, he has actually offered to swap the plates to a new, correctly printed one, for anyone who wishes to send the old one back with no cost to the customer.
That is good customer service IMHO as it may end up costing him a small fortune to do this. I for one wont be needing a new plate as i can do basic the subtraction and addition of -0.01 and i'm sure everyone else can and wont need a new plate either.
Being in the UK i got a little jelous when i saw that Jerry was making and selling these (in the USA) so i emailed him and asked if he shipped to the UK and it looks like he will ship it anywhere.
I ordered one online and it cost me around £12/$12 i cant remember which to get it shipped to the UK which i thought was reasonable. It arrived well within a week! (I was told to expect around 7-10 working days so was happy when it arrived so soon.
As soon as i got home i had to give it a try, obviously!! so i put it all together, a 2 minute job (the instructions on the website are OK but not perfect, I would have liked to have seen a breakdown as it wasn't completely obvious which order to stack the pieces in at first but seems so obvious now that its together. I also think a paper copy of instructions with the delivery would have been good.
once it was together i started measuring the rest of the current tin of lubed JSB 18.1's (5.52 headsize on the tin) i had left on the windowsill (around 300 left in the tin or so i would guess) I would guess that it took me around 10 minutes to measure all of them, maybe a little more.
Hats off to JSB here, the pellets i had were VERY VERY consistent. Almost ALL went through the 5.53mm hole. So, i thought, ok fair enough they are all 0.01mm bigger than advertised but at least they are super consistent. (only about 10 went through the 5.51 hole and about 5 went through the 5.54 hole, all the others through the 5.53 hole) yes i will admit, some were possibly borderline between the holes they would go through and i had to decide what method i wanted to use (i.e. pellet just falls through under its own weight or very slight pressure to help it through). I actually asked Jerry this question and his response was that consistent, light pressure was best.
I have only tested 1 tin of pellets through it so far and will be testing another tin soon to see if my other tins are as consistent. (I did test a sample of about 10 JSB 15.9's that I bought yesterday just to see what they were like and they ALL fell through the 5.53 hole again)
I have to say it is a really easy piece of kit to use, takes very little concentration, i.e. you can do it without looking at numbers on callipers or however others measure them and can be done whilst watching TV, which i imagine may be a little difficult if you are using an air gage.
Based on the fact that i had such consistency out of the tin of pellets its hard to say if there was any difference in accuracy out of my gun. i did shoot a 20 shot group at 50 yards with the (measured) 5.53mm head which was less than 0.5" with 0 flyers - cant complain at that!
I was going to shoot a separate group for the other 2 pellet sizes but changed my mind and shot at the original 20 shot group to see if it opened up at all..... Take a guess what happened.....
NOT ONE FLYER!! POI WAS THE SAME AND EVERY PELLET SNICKED THROUGH THE SAME HOLE AS THE OTHERS!!
I thought to myself "hmmm thats good, lets try the 5.54mm ones and see how they perform" I know from experience that if a pellet feels tight going into the breech it will spiral like a loonatic and go anywhere but where i aim it.... so i stuck a pellet down the pipe and low and behold...STILL NO FLYERS!!
So i guess you could say i have no conclusive evidence either way on the pellet head size argument in my particular gun deu to the small batch of bigger /smaller headsizes i ended up with, but at least i know shouldnt have to do much in the way of faffing about measuring pellets!
I guess some of you may be thinking, if you were getting good accuracy before then why did you bother buying the pellet gage?? Well the short answer is... I just wanted one, I love looking for new ways to squeeze accuracy out of my equipment, and myself and I learnt a big lesson for my £42 (including shipping to UK)
Lesson #1 - If i miss - ITS MY FAULT
Lesson #2 JSB are seriously consistent
Lesson #3 the mental confidence gained from knowing my pellets were super consistent (and i already know my gun is super consistent) helped me to produce brilliant groups with 0 flyers for the whole session.
Worth spending my money on - YES very much so in my opinion, i wont use it all the time as there is no need but I now have it available to test a sample of every tin of pellets and just in case i ever want reminding that i missed because i made a mistake it will sit there waiting to prove it.
I hope i haven't rambled too much here and sent everyone to sleep.
One last thing before i sign off - Jerry emailed all of his customers the a couple of days ago and said that he had used a new piece of equipment to test the hole sizes and had infact made an error, basically the top and bottom of it is, each hole size is actually 0.01mm SMALLER than what is printed onto the plate. So all those "5.53mm" heads that i measured were in fact 5.52 (as the tin suggested they should be.) and before anyone has a moan about it being shipped with wrong numbers on, he has actually offered to swap the plates to a new, correctly printed one, for anyone who wishes to send the old one back with no cost to the customer.
That is good customer service IMHO as it may end up costing him a small fortune to do this. I for one wont be needing a new plate as i can do basic the subtraction and addition of -0.01 and i'm sure everyone else can and wont need a new plate either.
