On lubing pellets

Hornady one shot case lube in a spray can goes on easy and even. I believe its wax based and you spray it on and within 1 min the carrier evaporates and leaves behind a waxy like film that coats evenly.

Springrrrr, as you say, it is hard to get uniform coverage. Like you I use foam protective pads, one underneath and one on top of the pellets in their container.

I place a couple of small drops of 3 in 1 oil on each pad. As the pellets move around in their container they come in contact with the oiled part of the pads.

After washing and drying the pellets i just spray a little pledge in an old pellet tin, put in 30-40 pellets and give a quick spray again and then slowly swish them around til they are coated. Then i pour them out and let them dry or in the winter i use an old hair dryer to speed it up.

Funny i wash and lube all my pellets and it helps a lot but never washed my 25 cal grizzlies because they shot awesome out of my condor ss. But like an idiot i decided to wash 3 tins of them because one tin came really dirty and actually had a 35 cal pellet in it. But now after washing and lubing they are horrendously inaccurate shooting almost 1 foot off at 100 yards when i usually hit golfballs at that distance.

I have only found improved speed and cleaner barrel since lubing. I'm sure rewashing would probably clear your lube problem. Sorting heads, weighing, washing, and lubing sure gets to be a lot of work for a "fun" hobby!

I have 2 guns both using the smooth twist x-system. One .22 fx crown, and one .177 wildcat mk2. On the crown I lube the pellets with some ballistol on the pads (have not tried anything else). If I don`t I have to clean the barrel quiet often. I use the JSB 18 grains. I have so far not needed to clean the barrel after 2-3 tins. I do not believe those pellets are dirty out of the box, so that is why I do not bother to wash them first. On the .177 wildact I do not need to lube the pellets, as the liner have not getting dirty after several thousands of pellets. On that gun I use JSB pellets also.

Slik50 OneLube works good.

Been using TSI for years in springers, PCPs, CO2s and firearms. Spray some on a foam pad, drop it in a pellet pouch and shake it up. Doesn't attract dirt, doesn't detonate, doesn't rot wood and doesn't seem to attack pistons and O-rings. Great gun lube and protectant, too, but hideously expensive.

I use that White lighting dry (wax) bicycle chain lube. Works for me.

I wana say I found acetone one of the best thing for cleaning the pellet. No oxidation will happen and as you know dust, extra lead and other materials stick to pellet by oil which all of that oil will dissolve in acetone. After that acetone vaporize faster than water so after that oxides would not happen.

for lubbing there would be thousands of methods but in my opinion thickest the oil cover fastest the barrel needs cleaning. Ducking pellets in a oily thinner then clean them in towel.

Clean your pellets with Acetone then rinse them with Denatured Alcohol which leaves no residue, air dry them, roll them back and forth on an old soft t-shirt to polish them and remove any remaining lead dust particles, weigh and sort them to one tenth of a grain, lube them with Napier Power Pellet Lube using the spray bottle applicator, roll each pellet between your thumb and fingers to make sure it is evenly coated as you load them into your magazine or single shot tray, shoot them at their optimum velocity out of an FX Rifle with a Smooth Twist barrel, focus on your breathing and trigger control, and then if you can do your part you will see just how accurate an air rifle can truly be.

Like everything else, what you get out of something is directly proportional to what you put into it...You say you want groups the size of one pellet at 50 yards, and 1/2" to 1" groups at 100 yards, but are you really willing to put forth the effort to accomplish it? Or are you just lazily hoping the Good Accuracy Fairy shows up and gives you the accuracy you want for free? In case you haven't heard I will tell you the truth: There are no free rides! You have to go the extra mile if you want groups like I get. Good luck!

All the best, Chuck

Clean your pellets with Acetone then rinse them with Denatured Alcohol which leaves no residue, air dry them, roll them back and forth on an old soft t-shirt to polish them and remove any remaining lead dust particles, weigh and sort them to one tenth of a grain, lube them with Napier Power Pellet Lube using the spray bottle applicator, roll each pellet between your thumb and fingers to make sure it is evenly coated as you load them into your magazine or single shot tray, shoot them at their optimum velocity out of an FX Rifle with a Smooth Twist barrel, focus on your breathing and trigger control, and then if you can do your part you will see just how accurate an air rifle can truly be.

Like everything else, what you get out of something is directly proportional to what you put into it...You say you want groups the size of one pellet at 50 yards, and 1/2" to 1" groups at 100 yards, but are you really willing to put forth the effort to accomplish it? Or are you just lazily hoping the Good Accuracy Fairy shows up and gives you the accuracy you want for free? In case you haven't heard I will tell you the truth: There are no free rides! You have to go the extra mile if you want groups like I get. Good luck!

All the best, Chuck

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Acetone is pretty nasty stuff. I'd see no reason to wash the pellets using anything stronger then warm water and a little dish detergent (dawn). You might run them thru an ultrasonic jewelry cleaner if you feel anything else is necessary (but only a very short time so as not to damage the pellet) . Let them dry after rinsing. To apply the lube I put the pellets in a clean zip lock bag spray a little lube into the bag (I'm using the pellet lube sold by AOA) roll the pellets around in the bag a couple times and then dump them back into the tin they came out of. This takes almost no time at all. If I was going to do anything more I'd run them thru a sizer. But I don't think that's necessary for my use.

Exactly my point...

I have never cleaned my pellets but I think I need to start doing it now. I have recently got a tin of JSB .22 Beast and the lube / release agent on the pellet is so thick that my fingers quickly became very greasy after handling them. The thickness of the lube is also evident by the fact that a fine mist of black stuff is left around the pellet hole on the paper target. My question is after cleaning them by whatever method, is it necessary to re-lube them ? If there is such need, what is the purpose ? prevent the pellet from oxidation ? improve accuracy ? or minimize the need for cleaning the barrel as mentioned by some posters ?

Chuck and I both get 1/2in or less groups at 50yd and 1in-1.5in groups at 100yd with his method of cleaning, sorting, lubing. As well as getting the pellets to fly at their optimum velocity. I find lubing the pellets to keep the barrel cleaner longer and increases my accuracy in my gun. Both Chuck and I have done our fair share of testing pellets right out of the tin and with the method above and you will see results. I just posted some 5 shot groups at 100yd on another thread if you want to check them out. All I am saying is we are getting the results everyone is looking for but a very small amount of people dont want to take the time and effort to go that extra mile that we are expecting the same results. 

Chuck and I both get 1/2in or less groups at 50yd and 1in-1.5in groups at 100yd with his method of cleaning, sorting, lubing. As well as getting the pellets to fly at their optimum velocity. I find lubing the pellets to keep the barrel cleaner longer and increases my accuracy in my gun. Both Chuck and I have done our fair share of testing pellets right out of the tin and with the method above and you will see results. I just posted some 5 shot groups at 100yd on another thread if you want to check them out. All I am saying is we are getting the results everyone is looking for but a very small amount of people dont want to take the time and effort to go that extra mile that we are expecting the same results.

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I'm very new to airguns, and I'm working right now to tune and characterize my first airgun. It's an FX Impact X in .30. Kind of intimidating at first, and some will say it's not what should be your first airgun, but since I came over from competitive Bullseye Pistol where I did my own load development for competition, I gambled that I wasn't biting off more than I could chew. I find the concept/process the same, but the mechanics different. It takes a lot of time and testing to characterize a particular gun and a particular projectile and the load specifics propelling it. I've always looked at target accuracy as a shooting system. Typically, over a reasonable sampling size, the more variability in that system, the bigger the group size. You set your core components and major adjustments as close as you can, and that gets you most of the way. After that, I think it's finding and reducing the variability of the system's various components that hones it in and continues the group size reductions, even though the reductions are much smaller.

System variability is always additive, and generally speaking, more total variability means bigger group size. I think the people we see doing amazing things with their air rifles, and getting amazing groups are the people who have sought out the places where extra variability can be removed from their shooting system. I think washing an weighing pellets is one of those things. There seems to be a couple camps on doing it. At least on paper after testing, it reduces system variability. I can prove that. Is that proof significant? Don't know. I haven't tested it in the real world yet by shooting the groups at distance. I've only tested muzzle velocity. But, muzzle velocity is a component in our shooting system that directly affects where our pellets impact the target. I can show data to state that in my gun, with the pellets I'm testing, by washing, weighing and lubing them, I can reduce the standard deviation of my velocity from 1.9 fps to 1.3 fps. Is that significant? Again, I don't know, but I can't think of any situations where a smaller SD will worsen anything in my shooting system.

If I was to make a speculation, I would say the lion's share of this variability reduction comes from the weighing of the pellets, since my tin of 44.75 gr pellets had a huge range of weights in it. I didn't write it down, but I know I saw pellets from 44.3 gr up to 45.5 gr.

For those interested, here are pics of the data sets. Just remember this is for a pretty small sample size (13 shots), and may not be big enough to present an accurate picture, but I think it's a good illustration:









I think Chuck and GabeRossi might have a lot figured out. I intend to listen and see what I can learn from them around here.

Well I am not either an expert, but I would believe a most would regard a ES difference from 1,9 fps to 1,3 fps insignificant. But I would guess the most important thing is if the accuracy improve or not, with shooting from the tin, or going true the process you describe. And you would know, as it after all is your gun and test

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Edit: Did not read it right, see ES is 5 on both (exluding the first shoot)

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Well I am not either an expert, but I would believe a most would regard a ES difference from 1,9 fps to 1,3 fps insignificant. But I would guess the most important thing is if the accuracy improve or not, with shooting from the tin, or going true the process you describe. And you would know, as it after all is your gun and test

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Edit: Did not read it right, see ES is 5 on both (exluding the first shoot)

Click to expand...

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Yeah, it's slightly more significant when you're talking SD vs ES, but I know what you're getting at. It's very possible that the improvement gained solely by prepping the pellets in my case is not significant. Visible improvement on paper in the form of numbers doesn't always translate to visible improvement on paper in the form of smaller groups. However, if you do two or three different things that provide this small amount of an improvement, it might show up in smaller group size. I was more trying to explain an approach to improving total result with variability reduction. It all comes down to how much improvement vs how much time it requires, and your own sense of worth when evaluating that improvement. However, I do think the people who consistently get slightly better results than most people are consistently paying slightly more attention to little details than most people.

Well I am not either an expert, but I would believe a most would regard a ES difference from 1,9 fps to 1,3 fps insignificant. But I would guess the most important thing is if the accuracy improve or not, with shooting from the tin, or going true the process you describe. And you would know, as it after all is your gun and test

Click to expand...

Edit: Did not read it right, see ES is 5 on both (exluding the first shoot)

Click to expand...

Click to expand...

Yeah, it's slightly more significant when you're talking SD vs ES, but I know what you're getting at. It's very possible that the improvement gained solely by prepping the pellets in my case is not significant. Visible improvement on paper in the form of numbers doesn't always translate to visible improvement on paper in the form of smaller groups. However, if you do two or three different things that provide this small amount of an improvement, it might show up in smaller group size. I was more trying to explain an approach to improving total result with variability reduction. It all comes down to how much improvement vs how much time it requires, and your own sense of worth when evaluating that improvement. However, I do think the people who consistently get slightly better results than most people are consistently paying slightly more attention to little details than most people.