Weighing pellets

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I agree, to much work for little to no gain. As ling as your using a good quality pellet you should not have an issue. When checking my JSB and AA pellets, they have been within .2 gn not enough to cause a problem. Now if your using cheap or offbrand quality pellets then it might be worth the trouble. Most find size to be more critical for accuracy.
 
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I recently sorted a few 350 count tins of .22 FX RD Monsters. The pellets ran from 25.1 to 25.7 grains and head size from 5.52 to 5.56 mm. The vast majority were in the 25.4 to 25.5 grain and 5.54 to 5.55 mm head diameter. There were about 35 to 40 out of each tin that were outside those parameters.

I used to be totally against sorting, but have been burned pretty bad recently by "stray" fliers that I have no explanation for. I'm talking about targets at 100 yards. So even if its only for piece of mind, for big tournaments I'll be going through the sorting routine and keeping ones that look good with no defects and are in the 25.4 to 25.5 grains and 5.54 to 5.55mm head size. 

I was a few weeks ago shooting in the finals of a fairly large tournament and had one RDM for no apparent reason go low below the 4 ring in an EBR type target, resulting in a 3 (the other 4 targets in the row were 9, 9, 10, 8). Had that not happened and I'd have shot a 9, I would have finished 2nd. As it is, I was 8th. The difference between 2nd and 8th at RMAC is $9,500. :)
 
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How close do others group their pellet weights? I was thinking + or - .1 grains.
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It is highly unlikely you will be able to discern 0.10 grain successfully unless you have a scale that cost many times the airgun located in a room where there is no wind or heavy breathing. You would have an easier go at it with lowering your standards to 0.20 to 0.30 grains, which is what I do. 0.5 grains works well, too. The idea of weighing is to find the ones that are way out of spec compared to the norms for the tin being sorted. I have seen weight differences of up to 5 grains for a few in a tin. 2 to 3 grain spreads are very common in the premium brands. I sort all of my projectiles .25 caliber and up. I also size all of the heads which are all over the place, too. I like to size the heads first before weighing them using my NOE bushing in a Lee press. It is really easy and quick to do, kinda.

I appreciate all of the different views, but for me I do what I can because I enjoy precision shooting more than accurate shooting. Shooting 1/4 inch dots at 50 yards is more fun to me than shooting a 2" steel plate at 50. I also appreciate not having flyers screwing up my groups. Flyers are extremely rare for me. That was not the case before putting in the extra efforts of sizing, weight sorting, and lubing. It really paid off when I won my first PCP competition, but reading the wind better than the others really was the reason, but no flyers messing me up either. 
 
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I don’t know how accurate my old Lyman electronic powder scale is, but out of curiosity I recalibrated it and weighed the last 13 30 caliber NSA 54.5 grain slugs I had. Every one showed 54.5 gr on the dot..
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How accurate is that scale? Many are +/- a certain amount of grains/grams. Either way, with a decent scale sorting down to 0.20 or 0.30 grains, you will yield better quantities in fewer piles and you won't be able to tell the difference compared to 0.10 grain sorting when shooting.
 
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I don’t know how accurate my old Lyman electronic powder scale is, but out of curiosity I recalibrated it and weighed the last 13 30 caliber NSA 54.5 grain slugs I had. Every one showed 54.5 gr on the dot..
Click to expand...

You will not find much, if any variation in weight in NSA slugs. I weigh sort my pellets if there is a larger grain weight discrepancy there. I found that shooting long range groups were much tighter with weight-sorted pellets, along with the speeds being more consistent and a tighter FPS spread.
 
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I don’t know how accurate my old Lyman electronic powder scale is, but out of curiosity I recalibrated it and weighed the last 13 30 caliber NSA 54.5 grain slugs I had. Every one showed 54.5 gr on the dot..
Click to expand...

How accurate is that scale? Many are +/- a certain amount of grains/grams.  Either way, with a decent scale sorting down to 0.20 or 0.30 grains, you will yield better quantities in fewer piles and you won't be able to tell the difference compared to 0.10 grain sorting when shooting.
Click to expand...

No. One gram is 15.4 grains.

I have an old Hornady analog scale that is marked to 1/10 grain. It can weigh 500 grains (just over an ounce) I suspect it is probably accurate (when used as a comparator) to very close to 1/10 grain. It cost about a hundred bucks if I recall correctly, I really don't remember.
 
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Aloha,

Here's my take on weighing pellets. I mainly shoot .25 cal. jsb king heavy. I used to sort and weigh my pellets, separating them in weight by .2 I have a shelf of containers with all of the different weights. I learned that it didn't really make a difference on accuracy under 50 yards that's as far as I shoot when hunting. But like CCut have stated when shooting paper out to a 100 yards I would get 1 or 2 fliers. We don't have shooting competitions on my island here in Hawaii so I don't weigh my pellets anymore but I do have to find a remedy for the problem of a couple of my guns that don't like jsb MK2 pellets, even under 50 yards the MK2 accuracy is not hole on hole.

Aloha, Keone
 
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I don’t know how accurate my old Lyman electronic powder scale is, but out of curiosity I recalibrated it and weighed the last 13 30 caliber NSA 54.5 grain slugs I had. Every one showed 54.5 gr on the dot..
Click to expand...

How accurate is that scale? Many are +/- a certain amount of grains/grams.  Either way, with a decent scale sorting down to 0.20 or 0.30 grains, you will yield better quantities in fewer piles and you won't be able to tell the difference compared to 0.10 grain sorting when shooting.
Click to expand...

No. One gram is 15.4 grains.

I have an old Hornady analog scale that is marked to 1/10 grain. It can weigh 500 grains (just over an ounce) I suspect it is probably accurate (when used as a comparator) to very close to 1/10 grain. It cost about a hundred bucks if I recall correctly, I really don't remember.
Click to expand...

Well, I feel like you may have missed my point a bit. I use a Brifit 50 gram scale which has an accuracy of +/- 0.05 grams and reads grams down to 0.001. It reads grains down to 0.01. If I wanted to sort down to say 0.20 grain I can easily do that having the extra zero past the decimal point. Having one that only sorts down to 0.1 would be hard to do the same. This Brifit Digital Mini Scale I use is very decent and stable with easy to read numbers unlike others I have tried, so I will endorse it. I picked it up on AMZ for around $20.

@A-H...A good point about the NSAs not needing any sorting, being they are swaged. I discovered the same when checking my box of them.
 
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I recently sorted a few 350 count tins of .22 FX RD Monsters. The pellets ran from 25.1 to 25.7 grains and head size from 5.52 to 5.56 mm. The vast majority were in the 25.4 to 25.5 grain and 5.54 to 5.55 mm head diameter. There were about 35 to 40 out of each tin that were outside those parameters.

I used to be totally against sorting, but have been burned pretty bad recently by "stray" fliers that I have no explanation for. I'm talking about targets at 100 yards. So even if its only for piece of mind, for big tournaments I'll be going through the sorting routine and keeping ones that look good with no defects and are in the 25.4 to 25.5 grains and 5.54 to 5.55mm head size. 

I was a few weeks ago shooting in the finals of a fairly large tournament and had one RDM for no apparent reason go low below the 4 ring in an EBR type target, resulting in a 3 (the other 4 targets in the row were 9, 9, 10, 8). Had that not happened and I'd have shot a 9, I would have finished 2nd. As it is, I was 8th. The difference between 2nd and 8th at RMAC is $9,500. :)
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if you sort 3 tins do you mix the pellets from each tin or keep them separate? 

I'm sure you discussed it before but what do you use to sort the head diameter?

Thanks

Pat
 
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This is eight tins of JSB 33.95gr MKII's sorted out (2,407pellets). These didn't have too big of a spread as I have seen on some others. Still, a 2.66 grain spread overall would not be reliable at 100 yards, IMHO. Yes, I got a little anal with my sorting when creating this spreadsheet. The spreadsheet is much more refined these days and looks much different today. I just need some pellets now, LOL. I actually made this spreadsheet for sorting my cast pellets and slugs and am glad I made the investment in some NOE molds/moulds.

Eight-JSB-MKII-300-count-sorted-and-combined-5-18-20.jpg
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A friend of mine uses an air gauge. The gauge measures the pressure behind the pellet. The more pressure, the bigger the pellet head. He sorts them in a range of pressure settings (ie 30lb - 40lb, etc). The higher the pressure the faster the fps since more air is behind the pellet. I gauged a tin and my accuracy improved. It didn't matter if I used a larger or smaller head size as long as the head size used is consistent. He doesn't weigh but I think I might be weighing them. I'll probably weigh a sample to see if it makes a difference. So for competition shooting it's wash, lube, gauge, weigh and do a good visual on the skirts.
 
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A friend of mine uses an air gauge. The gauge measures the pressure behind the pellet. The more pressure, the bigger the pellet head. He sorts them in a range of pressure settings (ie 30lb - 40lb, etc). The higher the pressure the faster the fps since more air is behind the pellet. I gauged a tin and my accuracy improved. It didn't matter if I used a larger or smaller head size as long as the head size used is consistent. He doesn't weigh but I think I might be weighing them. I'll probably weigh a sample to see if it makes a difference. So for competition shooting it's wash, lube, gauge, weigh and do a good visual on the skirts.
Click to expand...

How exactly is the gauge connected to the rifle?

Will
 
Upvote 0
I don’t know how accurate my old Lyman electronic powder scale is, but out of curiosity I recalibrated it and weighed the last 13 30 caliber NSA 54.5 grain slugs I had. Every one showed 54.5 gr on the dot..
Click to expand...

How accurate is that scale? Many are +/- a certain amount of grains/grams.  Either way, with a decent scale sorting down to 0.20 or 0.30 grains, you will yield better quantities in fewer piles and you won't be able to tell the difference compared to 0.10 grain sorting when shooting.
Click to expand...

No. One gram is 15.4 grains.

I have an old Hornady analog scale that is marked to 1/10 grain. It can weigh 500 grains (just over an ounce) I suspect it is probably accurate (when used as a comparator) to very close to 1/10 grain. It cost about a hundred bucks if I recall correctly, I really don't remember.
Click to expand...

Well, I feel like you may have missed my point a bit.  I use a Brifit 50 gram scale which has an accuracy of +/- 0.05 grams and reads grams down to 0.001. It reads grains down to 0.01. If I wanted to sort down to say 0.20 grain I can easily do that having the extra zero past the decimal point. Having one that only sorts down to 0.1 would be hard to do the same. This Brifit Digital Mini Scale I use is very decent and stable with easy to read numbers unlike others I have tried, so I will endorse it. I picked it up on AMZ for around $20.

@A-H...A good point about the NSAs not needing any sorting, being they are swaged. I discovered the same when checking my box of them.
Click to expand...

Clearly I did miss your point by more than a bit. Thanks for straightening me out. Those digital scales are nice and the price is right. I had one for a while but just didn't like measuring powder charges on it. I think it was accurate but it was weird seeing that digit change in whole increments. Just me and old habits.
 
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