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Anyone having success with the new NSA slugs?

The .177 NSA 12.5's are AWESOME in a LW standard rifled W/ choke at 980 -1040 fps.

Slugs in most barrels, guns etc seldom do that well at 900 or less FPS relative to a pellet inside 60-75 yards



In .22 the 20.5 and 23's at 1040-1060 fps are very very accurate as well.



Again NOT a pellet replacement and certainly not being shot at established best accuracy pellet velocity
 
I bought some of the new NSA swaged slugs in .177. To my knowledge, first time .177 has been made at a realistic price per pellet. They shoot okay in a couple of my FT guns, but just seem a bit inconsistent. Curious if anyone is having success with them and thinks they’re better than a JSB pellet. If so, what gun are you having success with?

I would contact TOM HOLLAND (NOT Spiderman) Field Target Tech he makes his own slugs for his FT guns. I have not yet ventured outside of my own 22 NSA STYLE slug making yet so I too am still at the mercy of pellet and slug manufacturers in 177 caliber for pray they are ok in accuracy (FOR NOW).
 
That’s good info to have about the effective speed, thanks. Unfortunately 1000 fps for that weight puts me way over 20 ft lb, so use for FT won’t likely be possible. I was hoping it would be an improvement over pellets for that purpose. Looks like I’ll be sticking to JSB pellets.


As a FT shooter myself PELLETS over slugs at these closer ranges.
 
Bit of an update ...

Recently received some NSA .177 in 10.5 grains ... hell yes a Field target doable weight for sure !!

Shot threw an M-rod at @ 890 fps .... RAW TM-1000 at @ 910 fps .... Taipan Vet @ 850 fps



None shot they that well being at 50 yards and inch or so with none exhibiting potential enough to explore further for the FT game.



Now AMPED UP the NSA 15 grain at @ 960 fps at 50 is something special !!

Thats 10 shots easily covered with a dime. right side the 12.5 weight going a tad faster and NOT happy at all.



DSCF0944_35.1607493351.jpg

 
Nation, 

Odoyle, I AM Spiderman!!!! Haha....

Pertaining to slugs @ 12 ft.lbs or a little bit less, I've ALMOST got it. As I might've mentioned before, and as Scott has above, slugs, even properly "fitted" slugs like I'm creating, don't like slower velocities. Thus, the reasoning of trying out a couple of poly barrels, choked, as well as not choked.

I'm thick headed. Everyone says that a slug WILL NOT work in a sub 12 ft.lb gun. Out of the 150+ different designs that I can make, along with several dozen viable weights per design, I can get into the thousands. I haven't even touched the tip of the iceberg yet.........that being said,......

Through all of the testing that I have done, albeit this year really sucked, and long range testing for me was greatly reduced due to cooties, I HAVE discovered that it's a matter of time before I find a happy medium. I believe that it has a lot to do with finding the perfect balance of weight to a given design. Here's 2 examples. 

I've tested a 3/4 ogive hollowpoint with a hollow base at 30 yards, out of my TM1000. 9.25 grains. Best group---------around 8 inches.....useless.

Keep everything the same, except change to a cup base, 3/8" group at same distance. 

I believe it's a center of gravity and balance thing.

I took a 2S nose shape, hollowpoint, at 9.25 grains and hollow base, flat base, and cup base. Shot all 3 at 30yds.

The hollow base, again, useless. At 30 yds, couldn't hit an 8x11 piece of paper more than 6 times out of 10 shots. Would've been better throwing rocks at it.

Tried the flat base. Different world. 1/2" group, but still not up to par what I'm trying to achieve in accuracy. 

Cup base. One ragged hole at 30. Promising. Tried at 55 in a sick 15 mph right to left wind, and got an excellent group, that I have pictures of in a previous thread on this forum. Now, what I need to do, is take that design, and go up in weight (maybe down a little as well), and see if I can tighten that up. I know that I can't go too much lighter than that, because the length of the slug in a lighter weight will end up on the curve of the ogive. I think 8.95 or so is the lightest I can make. 

I do think there is a fine line of design, weight, and speed, that CAN be successful in the perfect barrel, but it's a matter of FINDING it. As I said, given the amount of different combinations I have, I will find something that will work for the sub 12 ft.lb game.

I just got into my hands today, NSA 12.5, and 15 grain slugs. His slugs are .1780 in diameter, mine are .1775 in diameter. If all goes well with the weather, I can test them next to mine of the same design. If they shoot either better, or worse than mine, I can attribute that to the diameter difference. We'll see.....

Tom Holland 

Field Target Tech 

Fieldtargettech.com 




 
Thanks for the update Motörhead. Are the 10.5 NSA slugs the old ones he was hand swaging? I can only find the new machine made ones in 12.5 gr and 15 gr on the NSA site and I bought both to test. But yeah, looks like your results were similar to mine. I was keeping them under 20 ft lb and I was getting larger groups at 55 yards than with JSB pellets and no consistency whatsoever. So, they’re not looking like a good option for FT yet. I also saw Tom Holland’s response about his experiments with the shape. Great info and gives me some hope that we may eventually see good results with slugs in FT. Just need to be able to have all of the shape options available to test and find the ones that work as well as be able to source them at a reasonable price/quantity. 
 
Thanks for the update Motörhead. Are the 10.5 NSA slugs the old ones he was hand swaging? I can only find the new machine made ones in 12.5 gr and 15 gr on the NSA site and I bought both to test. But yeah, looks like your results were similar to mine. I was keeping them under 20 ft lb and I was getting larger groups at 55 yards than with JSB pellets and no consistency whatsoever. So, they’re not looking like a good option for FT yet. I also saw Tom Holland’s response about his experiments with the shape. Great info and gives me some hope that we may eventually see good results with slugs in FT. Just need to be able to have all of the shape options available to test and find the ones that work as well as be able to source them at a reasonable price/quantity.


The tested 10.5's are NEW off the high speed machines as a Pre-production test run. A few of us were sent some for testing purposes.

Being so short there going to need some tweaking of .. IMO a deeper base dish to increase the bearing surface length and bias a tad more weight forward.