I have plenty of pellets, but I have lately been getting inquiries about them that surprise me.
Someone referred a young NC shooter last month who wanted to buy a field target gun. I had a backup rifle, and offered him this tuned Marauder setup, so he immediately came to get it.
I gave him a tin of my favorite JSB Exact Heavy, 10.34 grain in 4.52 (confirmed by sampling). Told him that's what I shot, and the gun was set up for 20 FPE with this weight. I have checked a lot of pellets, and my experience is that if I have consistent sized pellets in the range 4.51-4,53, they are fine. We shot a few pellets at 30 yards, grouped fine, and he left happy. Later, I heard from him that he had ordered four new tins of pellets as I had suggested, and that they were almost all undersized. He said at below 4.51, he had terrible groups. Strange, I thought (and still do).
In wide discussions about pellet sizes, I have the firm concept that most barrels are designed to shoot 4.52 mm pellets. Some are very picky about that, others are not. "Pickiness" means that the gun will be optimal at about +/- 0.01 mm from the best size. Some barrels can do fine with a wider range. Some do best with pellets a little below or above that size.So, I also believe that if you have a barrel that does best with say, 4.51 and it will do fine with 4.50-4.52, you may buy pellets that are nominally 4.52, but the tin has mean size of 4.53 with some 4.54's. Now, you shoot those, and say, "This gun does not 'like' brand X" What you really need are some pellets that are 4-50-4.52. It's getting harder to be sure of getting that.
And I am completely leaving out the possibility that your nominal 4.52 pellet tin has a wide range of sizes, 4.49 up to 4.54. I think some of those may be wild flyers, but it could be that the gun could give you good groups with pellets that are consistently 4.51, and good groups with 4.53 - but shooting them mixed produces a combination of two "groups" that look like one bad group. That's my observation, anyway, and others have told me that they have seen this.
So I have just received an order with three tins of pellets, JSB Heavy 4.52, AA Diabolo Field Heavy 10.3 gr 4.52, and H&N Baracuda Match 10.65 gr 4.52 mm. These all came in the same box from my favorite pellet supplier. The AA and H&N Pellets are labelled as 4.52. The JSB are not specifically labelled.
My intent here is to see whether I would get the size I really wanted. I have begun some sorting, and will report results in posts on this thread.
Someone referred a young NC shooter last month who wanted to buy a field target gun. I had a backup rifle, and offered him this tuned Marauder setup, so he immediately came to get it.
I gave him a tin of my favorite JSB Exact Heavy, 10.34 grain in 4.52 (confirmed by sampling). Told him that's what I shot, and the gun was set up for 20 FPE with this weight. I have checked a lot of pellets, and my experience is that if I have consistent sized pellets in the range 4.51-4,53, they are fine. We shot a few pellets at 30 yards, grouped fine, and he left happy. Later, I heard from him that he had ordered four new tins of pellets as I had suggested, and that they were almost all undersized. He said at below 4.51, he had terrible groups. Strange, I thought (and still do).
In wide discussions about pellet sizes, I have the firm concept that most barrels are designed to shoot 4.52 mm pellets. Some are very picky about that, others are not. "Pickiness" means that the gun will be optimal at about +/- 0.01 mm from the best size. Some barrels can do fine with a wider range. Some do best with pellets a little below or above that size.So, I also believe that if you have a barrel that does best with say, 4.51 and it will do fine with 4.50-4.52, you may buy pellets that are nominally 4.52, but the tin has mean size of 4.53 with some 4.54's. Now, you shoot those, and say, "This gun does not 'like' brand X" What you really need are some pellets that are 4-50-4.52. It's getting harder to be sure of getting that.
And I am completely leaving out the possibility that your nominal 4.52 pellet tin has a wide range of sizes, 4.49 up to 4.54. I think some of those may be wild flyers, but it could be that the gun could give you good groups with pellets that are consistently 4.51, and good groups with 4.53 - but shooting them mixed produces a combination of two "groups" that look like one bad group. That's my observation, anyway, and others have told me that they have seen this.
So I have just received an order with three tins of pellets, JSB Heavy 4.52, AA Diabolo Field Heavy 10.3 gr 4.52, and H&N Baracuda Match 10.65 gr 4.52 mm. These all came in the same box from my favorite pellet supplier. The AA and H&N Pellets are labelled as 4.52. The JSB are not specifically labelled.
My intent here is to see whether I would get the size I really wanted. I have begun some sorting, and will report results in posts on this thread.