Slugs in Springer?

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They will function in the gun but I personally wouldn't use them in any of my springers.

Pellets that are too heavy can damage the spring, so slugs have the potential to do the same. If it's a gas ram I'm pretty sure you'd be okay but if it's a conventional coiled spring I would avoid using the slugs.

Nico
 
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Any experience with them in a nitro piston?
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I shot H&N Barracuda Magnums (VERY heavy pellets) and Eun Jins (also some pretty THICK pellets) in my Hatsan 125 and they shot horribly. It was also very difficult to fit them into the breach. So if that's any indication of how slugs would work then IMHO springers are better off being treated as a conventional air guns and shooting conventional pellets rather than trying to get them to perform like PCP's with slugs and higher BC ammunition.

Just my $.02. You could always try it and see how it goes.

Nico
 
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A typical diabolo pellet is designed so that the head just rides the lands of the rifling, while the skirt is bigger so that it cuts into the rifling grooves and seals the bore. A constant-diameter slug looses that sealing effect, so on top of having to move extra weight, you are getting some air leakage around the projectile.

I would also think shooting slugs through a choked muzzle would cause issues.
 
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A typical diabolo pellet is designed so that the head just rides the lands of the rifling, while the skirt is bigger so that it cuts into the rifling grooves and seals the bore. A constant-diameter slug looses that sealing effect, so on top of having to move extra weight, you are getting some air leakage around the projectile.

I would also think shooting slugs through a choked muzzle would cause issues.
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Your so right Mr Driskill, 

A springer is a pellet gun by all means!

And all the articles and tests I've read through the years a springer has a rather small window of pellet weight to optimize the performance and longevity of the spring and piston seal ( for instance in .22 a 13 to say 16 grain pellet ) anything lighter or heavier will shorten the life cycle of guns internals. Gas rams on the other hand probably wouldn't be hurt as much but still don't think the power is there to make a slug affective...

James from Michigan, 
 
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I tried some slugs from one of the popular airgun slug sellers using my Benjamin Titan NP. Very inconsistent POI and difficult to load into the breach consistently; the Titan is a break-barrel - I had to ram some of the slugs in just to close the breach. In short, those slugs were not effective at all in my Benji Titan and the choke on the barrel made the resulting shot errors even worse. I also believe that the slugs did no good to the lands/grooves in the choked portion of the barrel - too much pressure and friction produced by the solid slug as opposed to the relatively small surface area on a diabolo pellet in contact with the barrel lining (head edge and skirt tip). My experience with 'em.
 
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I tried some H&N Grizzlies in a Hatsan 125 at 40 yds, and the result was odd. I was aiming at one target, hit one about 12 inches right and 8 inches low, an adjacent gong, making it easy to notice. Did that consistently for 5-6 shots. I never really went further than that with the result as I was pretty sure I didn't have the adjustability to zero it.
 
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KnockOut has a 10gr hollowpoint slug in .177 which works just fine in my HW97k, which is a 14.5 FPE gun out of the box. The exit velocity is 7.5% lower then a slightly heavier Diablo Field Heavy - which points to the larger contact area/friction of the slug. This gun really likes the H&N 8.64 gr Field Target Trophy pellets, but they lose 26% of their velocity after 50 yds. Whereas the Diablo Field Heavy (10.3 gr) loses 20%, and the KnockOut slug only loses 15% - which shows the lower aerodynamic drag of the slug. The slug had higher exit velocity variance than either of the two pellets above, so will have increased vertical group spread as a result - but not that much for say 50yds. From 50 yds to 70 yds the H&N FTT will drop 5-6 inches, and at 120 yds the drop is around 4 ft. I haven't tried yet to see what kind of drop the slug will have at 120yds but that should be fun.
 
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pete97k said:
KnockOut has a 10gr hollowpoint slug in .177 which works just fine in my HW97k, which is a 14.5 FPE gun out of the box. The exit velocity is 7.5% lower then a slightly heavier Diablo Field Heavy - which points to the larger contact area/friction of the slug. This gun really likes the H&N 8.64 gr Field Target Trophy pellets, but they lose 26% of their velocity after 50 yds. Whereas the Diablo Field Heavy (10.3 gr) loses 20%, and the KnockOut slug only loses 15% - which shows the lower aerodynamic drag of the slug. The slug had higher exit velocity variance than either of the two pellets above, so will have increased vertical group spread as a result - but not that much for say 50yds. From 50 yds to 70 yds the H&N FTT will drop 5-6 inches, and at 120 yds the drop is around 4 ft. I haven't tried yet to see what kind of drop the slug will have at 120yds but that should be fun.
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Good information. Nothing beats a field test to verify BCs. Just remember if the slugs initial velocity is low enough it may not make up for it at the terminal end.

In theory a heavier projectile should have a better BC and thus retain more energy down range. Sometimes a higher percentage of retained energy doesn't matter if the initial energy isn't there to begin with.

I've found that advertised BCs can be very different (both up and down) than I actually get in my guns. Chairgun and Strelok are great tools but it's important to verify the actual BC in your rifle. I'm not saying you don't know this and haven't done it. I'm just putting it out there for everyone.

Side by side testing of projectiles in a particular gun is required to really determine what energy you're ending up with the at the target.

This kind of BC testing is somewhat difficult and is best done with two calibrated chronographs or one lab radar. Changes in muzzle harmonics/flip between different pellets and slugs can skew POI drop measurements and thus the BC calculations made from them. Conversely a single chronograph at the target range can at least give you terminal energy.

Typically my springers loose too much energy with heavy pellets to make them worth while. I try to use the most accurate pellets that are reasonably efficient. Accuracy IMO trumps energy. That's just me. Ymmv


Fun stuff!
 
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Mycapt65 said:
Good information. Nothing beats a field test to verify BCs. Just remember if the slugs initial velocity is low enough it may not make up for it at the terminal end.

In theory a heavier projectile should have a better BC and thus retain more energy down range. Sometimes a higher percentage of retained energy doesn't matter if the initial energy isn't there to begin with.

I've found that advertised BCs can be very different (both up and down) than I actually get in my guns. Chairgun and Strelok are great tools but it's important to verify the actual BC in your rifle. I'm not saying you don't know this and haven't done it. I'm just putting it out there for everyone.

Side by side testing of projectiles in a particular gun is required to really determine what energy you're ending up with the at the target.

This kind of BC testing is somewhat difficult and is best done with two calibrated chronographs or one lab radar. Changes in muzzle harmonics/flip between different pellets and slugs can skew POI drop measurements and thus the BC calculations made from them. Conversely a single chronograph at the target range can at least give you terminal energy.

Typically my springers loose too much energy with heavy pellets to make them worth while. I try to use the most accurate pellets that are reasonably efficient. Accuracy IMO trumps energy. That's just me. Ymmv


Fun stuff!
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I use a cheap AC6000BT chronograph. For measurements at 50 yds I just cut a 1.25" diameter hole in a 1.25" thick piece of plywood and use it as a mask. I usually can get a slug through after 3 shots or so. Seems to work just fine. My bet is that the H&N FTT 8.64 gr pellet decelerates much more rapidly than the slug - but measuring velocity with the AC6000BT on anything past 70 yds will be quite a challenge.
 
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pete97k said:
I use a cheap AC6000BT chronograph. For measurements at 50 yds I just cut a 1.25" diameter hole in a 1.25" thick piece of plywood and use it as a mask. I usually can get a slug through after 3 shots or so. Seems to work just fine. My bet is that the H&N FTT 8.64 gr pellet decelerates much more rapidly than the slug - but measuring velocity with the AC6000BT on anything past 70 yds will be quite a challenge.
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If you can get the muzzle velocity and velocity at 50 yds you can figure out the BC and you won't have measure it at 70 yards.

You can sort of do this with a single chronograph if the guns velocity stays consistent over many shots. Take a ten shot velocity average at muzzle. Then move the chronograph to a known arbitrary distance (the further the better) and run another ten shot string and average that velocity. Take the two average velocities and the known distance to a BC calculator and you'll get a pretty accurate BC for that projectile through your gun. Now use that BC for 70, 100yds, whatever in Chairgun or Strelok and they'll cough up your velocity and energy numbers for those distances.

The single chronograph method is tedious but it's fairly accurate if your gun is consistent and distance properly measured. I'd much rather use two chronographs or better yet a Lab radar.
Good luck and have fun with it
 
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Nico5999 said:
They will function in the gun but I personally wouldn't use them in any of my springers.

Pellets that are too heavy can damage the spring, so slugs have the potential to do the same. If it's a gas ram I'm pretty sure you'd be okay but if it's a conventional coiled spring I would avoid using the slugs.

Nico
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I didn't know that regarding a pellet being too heavy. I know very light alloy pellets could damage springers and gas ram because of the piston head slamming the breech with too little air cushion but too heavy is an issue? I shoot 16.2gr JSB Beast's in my R9 and get 624fps. Those are the heaviest 0.177 pellets I can find. Are those too heavy for a springer?
 
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badger5th said:
I didn't know that regarding a pellet being too heavy. I know very light alloy pellets could damage springers and gas ram because of the piston head slamming the breech with too little air cushion but too heavy is an issue? I shoot 16.2gr JSB Beast's in my R9 and get 624fps. Those are the heaviest 0.177 pellets I can find. Are those too heavy for a springer?
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Some said earlier in the thread "heavy " was harder on a springer. I have no clue.
 
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