"4.52mm" 8.4 grain Exacts sorted "holes in a plate" vs digital caliper.

Well....since my sorting of 4,500 JSB Exacts was similar to the sorting of 48 Exacts using "holes in a plate", I really think it's a moot point when pellet heads are often "oval". Even if a pellet head is 4.48mm in one direction and 4.52mm in the other direction the "holes in a plate" will sort it as a 4.52mm pellet. LOL....when I find this using my digital caliper I simply toss the pellet rather than "mess with it".

Anywhoo...both the "holes in a plate" and digital caliper sort most Exacts from tins labelled were sorted into the "4.50mm lot". There were few that measured 4.52mm using both methods and both methods show that the majority of supposedly 4.52mm pellets were actually 4.50mm & 4.51mm.

LOL...think I'll keep using my digital caliper for pellet head measuring when needed!

Are there time savings with pellet gage vs caliper? To what extent?

"Holes in a plate" makes me laugh and wonder.

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I think that it's easy to simply dump some pellets on the "holes in a plate", shake the plate a bit and the respective pellet head sizes will fall into their matching hole sizes, however it does seem that the pellet head would have to be smaller than the hole or it wouldn't fall through. Are there time savings you ask....well, I would think so! Measuring a pellet head in two directions is indeed rather tedious, however the following videos seem that the "holes in a plate" can rather tedious too............

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lbacOhMREB8

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U-IYa7mWPCg

Did that when Yarrah posted it several years ago. Personally I don't see the point because all the "roll" accomplishes is proving that different pellets roll the same way based on the diameter of the pellet skirt relative to the diameter of the pellet head.



Anywhoo.......my sorting does seem to work of for THIS "bucket sitting gun on cross stick" shooter...........













Actually, with the 8.4 grain 4.52mm AA domes and 7.9 grain Crosman Premiers from the 1250 count I only head size, I don't even sort.

The glass sorting method.I got out of it was that you were able to hear if it were out of round. Those r seriously good groups.

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As mentioned, as long as the pellet head/skirt are large enough to be "sized" in the leade when loading the "outta round areas" become as round as the leade (obviously there are limits to this). If the pellet head/skirt is so small that they aren't "rounded" the issue isn't if they do or don't "clickety clack" across glass.

Thanks for the complement, however the groups posted aren't my normal groups which are larger. I've shot enough "seriously good (or lucky) groups" to believe that most "wide fliers" from my home tuned break barrels are due to this shooter swaying on a bucket while resting the gun on cross sticks! Here are some "more normal groups" shot with my .177 R9 & HW95..........

15 out of 20 CPLs through a 3/4" killzone at 50 yards...........





5 CPLs at 50 yards "bucket and sticks" group............



The next 5 shots at 50 yards, on paper, after the above group..........

LOL....ME TOO! After hours of sorting pellets by weighing and measuring I've come to the conclusion that for my "bucket and sticks" shooting it was time well WASTED! I've found some pretty good pellets for my R9 and HW95 which are consistent enough that it doesn't matter. I do like to run my AA domes and CPLs through a homemade pellet sizer to make all pellets the same size.

Pellets sorted by weight.............





Pellets sorted by size..........







LOL....in general, the 4.52mm 8.4 grain AA domes and the 7.9 grain Crosman Premiers from the 1250 count cardboard boxes don't NEED sorting from the box or tin with my skill level, however the JSB Exacts and H&N FTTs were/are a different story when shot from my .177 R9 or .177 HW95.



Here are a couple "bucket and sticks" 18 yard groups shot with my .177 HW95 and 4.52mm 8.4 grain AA domes, one group unsized and another group sized with a home made 4.50mm sizer............



Hummm....was the tighter "sized pellet group" due to the sizing or simply "luck of the draw", I can't say one way or another?

I never realized how precise 1/100 th of a mm was till I tried to machine my own pellet sizer (.01mm= 0.00039in)

To make a usable pellet head sizer I first had to make a "D reamer" that with a 4mm sizing ring..........



Then I drilled a 4mm hole through a piece of O1 tool steel and used the reamer to ream out the drilled hole to rough dimensions..........



To achieve the final pellet head size I had to lap the sizing ring till a sized pellet was the correct dimension as determined by the fit in the barrel leade.



The 4.48mm sizer was for my .177 HW95 and the 4.52mm sizer was for my .177 Beeman R9. I later found that lapping the 4.48mm sizer to produce a 4.50mm pellet head produced a pellet that was accurate in both the HW95 & R9 without the excessive "sore loading finger pressure" of pushing an unsized die lot marked and dated boxed 7.9 grain die "B" Crosman Premier which have pellet heads ranging from 4.53mm to 4.55mm.

Unsized CPLs from my stash of die "B"s dated Feb 3 2014..........







Anywhoo....after making a few pellet head sizers I give some slack to pellet head sizes straight from the tin! I've even come to the conclusion that as long as the smallest pellet head in the tin is large enough to be "sized slightly" when loading into the leade, all pellets that follow will be a consistent fit in the bore regardless of the size variation in the tin. The problem comes when some tins of pellets are labeled 4.52mm but the majority are smaller than the leade so they aren't "sized slightly" when pushed into the leade.

A perfect example of this is trying to use supposedly 4.52mm JSB Exacts in my looser leade .177 Beeman R9 because very few of the Exacts had 4.52mm pellet heads. LOL.....trying to size a tin of the supposedly 4.52mm Exacts using a 4.50mm die simply gave most pellets dropping past the sizing ring without sizing at all. As mentioned previously, I recently bought 4 tins of 8.4 grain .177 Air Arms Domes marked 4.52mm and all but a few were actually sized using my 4.50mm die. One tin was dented before packing and it did have a few pellets with deformed skirts...........