New .22 Peletgage

Interesting, what gun are you using?

Been there, done that. I'll be surprised if you find much of a difference at 50 yards. I didn't but have fun.

Helimech, I have the same set up except for .177. Plus I use their Pellet Inspector prior to head sizing. I have been sorting Crosman Premier 10.5 gr. that I use in my Steyr LG110 for FT. I have been buying the boxed CPs because they are supposed to be better sorted & more consistent. Well the first box I did was from 2012 & the sizes were all over the place. I had from 4.46 to over 4.55( that's the largest hole & some wouldn't fit). Plus a lot of skirt deformities( flat sides, casting flash in the skirt, etc.)& head deformities. I just finished a second box dated 12-14 & they're not quite as bad. Not any head deformities & less skirt deformities.Most are undersize. I'm only keeping 4.51, 4.52, & 4.53's. I did some testing and any smaller or larger & the groups really open up. I've only kept about 40% of the pellets from a 1250 round box. That's not good.I want to do more testing with the JSB 10.34s. I have sorted about 100 pellets. they are supposed to be 4.52 but they all were either 4.50 or 4.51. Skirts & heads look better than the Crosmans. Go figure right??



Oh yeah, cold Blue Moons really help with this tedious & boring job. LOL!!!

But did you weigh them? I bought a tin of JSB Match Exact .177 pellets, which were listed as 8.44 grains. I could not get them to hold any sort of grouping, even at 10 yards. Then I gauged a batch of 25. The variance in head and skirt size was over 5 thousands, and a lot of them were out of round by nearly that much! Then I weighed them. Out of the 25, only 4 weighed 8.44 grains. Most were lighter, and one was well over at 8.56 grains. 

My most accurate pellet is the Gamo Red Fires which weigh 7.8 grains. I get consistent 1/2 inch groups at 25 yards. They gauge much closer than the JSBs, but still vary as much as 2 thousands, and a lot less variance in weight at less than .2 grains.

Now it would stand to reason, that larger pellets would hold a better tolerance than smaller ones. From your findings, apparently not. 

But in spite of everything, they group! At least at 25 yards in my case.

I bought a scale from Amazon very similar to this one, last July. ​I think I paid $24. 

http://www.amazon.com/Frankford-205205-Arsenal-Reloading-Scale/dp/B002BDOHNA/ref=sr_1_1?s=hunting-fishing&ie=UTF8&qid=1451505721&sr=1-1&keywords=powder+scale

Alan, what gun are you using in .177 that has given you so much trouble?

 The boxed crosman can be good esp. if you always wash, sort, lube and have a barrel that likes the harder alloy.
Crosman boxed .177's got a well desired rap as being an excellent pellet back in the die #2 day's, that was a long time ago. If they would make a pellet that good again ( and why can they not?) they could give JSB a run for the money. I've never heard of the .22 boxed crosman's being first pic in competition. 
Nice to have airgun things to do when the Snow is deep though.



John

Where do you get these Pellet gauges? I can't seem to find them down here in Oz.

It is a Benjamin 397. I have 20 different brands and weights, and nothing shoots in it as good as the Red Fires (1/2 inch groups at 25 yards). A couple come close, but no cigar. For example, several folks have suggested using Crosman's 10.5 grainers, but they won't hold a group smaller than 2 inches at 10 yards! Oddly enough, a tin of circa 1950 pellets which weigh 6.7 grains, shoot almost as good as the Red Fires (3/4 inch groups). I suspect Spysir is correct.

I got a pellet gage for Christmas and only had a bit of time to play "she loves me - she loves me not" with some JSBs. Still figuring out the best technique for using the gage, been working from smallest to largest aperture.

How are you guys using your gage?

I tried dropping the pellet in and "tapping" it up from underneath to see if it will drop in - that takes some time. Plan "B" is that I drop the pellet in place and it should settle immediately or with a little shake of the gauge and this is much faster.

I am guessing that if I am consistent in how I sort then the results will be valid. Curious if the pellet weight will track with the head size.

Winter here in Canada so I have 4 months to kill before the outdoor shooting season starts, might as well sort some pellets eh.

Go to www.airgunproducts.com They sell the Pellet Gage & Pellet Inspector

My technique with a PelletGage is to rest a 17hmr cartridge spacer on the plate, drop a pellet into a hole in the spacer, then shake back and fore.