Smooth twist difference?

[hawkeye69]

I cleaned my Renegade barrel yesterday which I bought March 1st. Very dirty. This morning I decided to clean my Wildcat barrel which is several months older so obviously has had more pellets through it. Hardly even dirty at all. A remarkable difference from the Renegade. I'm using the same JSBs in each rifle. I'm wondering, does the smooth twist make that much difference?

 

[cahil_2]

I have not cleaned any of my 3 fx rifles and they all shoot great.

 

[hawkeye69]

That was a first for me too. Just curious.

 

[Brian10956]

The grooves there are in a FX barrel are more like shallow hills that guide the pellet to spin without sharp edges to cut into them

 

[Macros]

It makes sense that a normally rifled barrel would get more lead in the grooves. It also stands to reason that they can handle more lead build up without accuracy loss as the lands stand proud of the grooves, and at equilibrium there will be more lead in the barrel than a smooth twist/X, which just serves to lubricate and seal the bore. 
Of course every barrel is different and you'll get normal LW/CZ barrels that never need cleaning and those that need cleaning every 200 shots.
I've seen threads here about some crowns etc needing their x barrels cleaned regularly too- but I'll bet it's a lot less lead causing the inaccuracy in them as the polygonal nature of the barrel leaves the lead nowhere to 'hide'. Similar story with LW poly barrels.
Just design differences - not necessarily a 'more lead = worse'

 

[jking]

Macros, good points you made. Makes sense to me. With my new Crown, it's been probably 300 pellets through it and it just seems to be getting better. I found the same thing with the RAW I owned. I was trying to get it's best accuracy by frequent cleanings but that had me going in circles. Once I stopped that the accuracy was like it should be.
R+ to ya,
JK

 

[sonny]

"Brian10956"The grooves there are in a FX barrel are more like shallow hills that guide the pellet to spin without sharp edges to cut into them

agreed

 

[Springrrrr]

I like the concept of the smooth twist barrel, but I have been told and read, that they don't work as well with 177 pellets as they do with larger calibers. I don't know the reason for that. It could be something to do with the ballistic coefficient of the smaller pellet.

 

[hegshen]

From my experience it seems the ST barrels are better suited for the 25 caliber. I noticed with my streamline in .22 that using the lower power settings the accuracy really suffered. It was way too pellet and velocity fussy for me. I’m anticipating that will change with the STX system. Looking forward to the dreamline. :yes:

 

[Macros]

"jking"Macros, good points you made. Makes sense to me. With my new Crown, it's been probably 300 pellets through it and it just seems to be getting better. I found the same thing with the RAW I owned. I was trying to get it's best accuracy by frequent cleanings but that had me going in circles. Once I stopped that the accuracy was like it should be.
R+ to ya,
JK

Thanks Jking!
Yup, I was in the same boat -cleaned my Airwolf until I was blue in the face and frustrated that things weren’t as good as the first month or two of having the gun. Gave up and after 150 or so shots - perfect again. Go figure! Got to learn these things the hard way sometimes!

 

[spinj]

Here is a post I created a couple of days ago, hopefully, to shed some light on this matter:





Here are a couple of photos that illustrate how specks of lead can embed themselves onto steel. For those of you who use or have used Crosman pellets before, you know how dirty they are. As illustrated in the pictures, the smeared lead--caused by the constant opening and closing cycle of the compression chamber of my TX200 while bearing down on the lead particles against the steel surface--is impossible to remove even when using a bronze brush and lead remover, unless a significant amount of pressure is used. Nylon bristles will not work at all! 

Anyway, I'll just let the pictures do the explaining and leave you to connect the dots that will lead you into making the conclusion as to what happens inside your airgun barrel when using these pellets. Wink-wink!