TargetTalk

RE: Pellet testing...Pilk is right! It just doesn't matter.

RE: Spendy vs. cheap...It just doesn't matter.

I recently acquired a Steyr LP1. It came with an assortment of high grade match pellets and a Nygord pellet sizer. I was assured that the sizer would gain me valuable accuracy. I was dubious, since Nygord himself told me that they don't work. Time to test!

I put the LP1 in my trusty heavy vise, holding it by the trigger guard as recommended in the owners manual. I'm not an engineer...I read the directions. Distance was thirty feet. Measurement of groups was by dial caliper and glasses I use for very close work. Groups were measured edge to edge at the widest part. For center to center distance (standard for group measurement) subtract .177 pellet diameter from the group size.

All groups were 25 shots to minimize statistical variations. The cylinder was recharged every 50 shots because I don't have a full SCUBA tank.

Back to BASICS...pellets, that is. I started with the cheapest pellets because I hoped to see the most improvement from my efforts. As many of you know, you load the LP1 by inserting the pellet directly into the barrel, so I wanted to see if there would be any difference by loading by different methods.

For the first group of 25 I loosely seated the pellets into the breech and closed the bolt to seat it more firmly. For the next 25 I used a Beeman pellet seater (ball end) to uniformly seat the pellets and even the skirt. For the next 25 I used the Nygord sizer, seating the pellets firmly with my thumb (as I think most do). The next group was only 15 shots with the pellets seated backward by thumb.

The backward seated pellet group was unacceptable. The group size was .835. This group would produce a solid "9" with many hitting the "10".

Moving to the loose seating, group was .451. Ball seating, .412. Sized group, .710 but one shot opened it from .552.

There were some surprises here and that altered my whole test plan. First, the loose seat was larger than the ball seat. For the rest of the testing I used firm thumb pressure to seat all shots. The sized pellets shot much larger groups than the unsized ones. This held true thoughout the tests, but the effect diminished with heavier pellets.

Next was the perennial favorite...Hobby pellets. Largest groups of the series: .485 unsized; .645 sized. This was a disappointment to me, as I had done well with these in the past (even sized). I was happy though, since I had just bought two sleeves of the nicely performing Basics.

A favorite of many shooters, Meisterkugeln heavy (yellow), performed well with a .405 unsized and .432 sized.

Now let's get into the "heavies". Finale Match (4.51) right from the tin came in with .356 unsized; .450 sized.

Finale Match (4.49) from the box, .350 unsized; .380 sized. This is just NICE! I'd be thrilled with a case of this.

Last (and least) was R10 5.3gr (4.50) out of the box (like the Finale above, individually packed). It came in with a .403 unsized, but one pellet opened it up from .315. Sized was .350. Good stuff!

Obviously, with this gun at least, sizing sucks. Yes, the premium pellets gave smaller groups. BUT, the cheap Basics and everything else would cut very deeply in to the inner 10 ring with every shot. Between the best group and the worst is less than 1/2 a pellet diameter. How close can YOU hold 'em?

To the guys who think that buying the expensive stuff will allow them "to shoot 10.9s when they do everything right"; dream on!

This gun is one of the more accurate I have tested (not by much) and I'm tweaking it to suit me, but I really don't believe it will allow me to shoot higher scores than others I've used. Of course, when I'm at those Olympic finals I'll be able to sneer at the other guys knowing I've got the best! (Hey!, I can believe, too, and I believe I'll have another beer.)

Remember my motto: "Test 'em yourself!"

My testing of sized pellets agrees with yours in that I have found sizing to be of no benefit in almost all instances. Most of the time it is detrimental to accuracy. With some pellets I have found sizing to cause velocity loss to the tune of 15 to 20 fps. This might be related to lead hardness. I do not think that testing is necessarily a waste of time though. I have found some lots to shoot such that they could make the difference between a high 9 and a 10. It could work the other way too, but I prefer to think that I am punching a hole exactly where I am pointing. To find a good lot might require having access to more lots than is possible unless you get lucky and stumble on a good lot quickly. I don't subscribe to endless testing in search of the perfect pellet though. This does nothing to develop skills. This is like most aspects of shooting, you just have to approach it in the way of your choice.

Sound advice BEA.

That is what i call 'pellet placebo effect'.

If you see good results in your mind, they will show in your target.

Pellet testing. Good question!
I will rephrase it. It depends of your current performance and your goal.
If your knowledge and performance level below 565, pellet testing will not affect your performance.
If you know how and you are able to score over 570 you must do this.
If your goal is to perform over 580 you can’t avoid it.
All depends ;)

This is perfect example of: three levels of performance and three different levels of suggestions and three different ways of verbalization of the same “problem –solution” issue.
Thank you Greg Yezersky ;)

Russ,

Ihate to disagree with you, but instead of doing directly, Lets look at this logically. Four questions

What was the worst size group of Rover's test? (Never mind the average size that were consdierably smaller).


What is the size of the 10 ring? (don't forget to add double the pellet width to that)


How many times bigger is the 10 ring than the worst group size?

Based on that, how could any Air Pistol shooter, even one who averages 599 possibly benefit from pellet testing?

Scott, it is not a problem to disagree with anyone, we are just talking here. Sometimes I understand that it is not pleasant to disagree with me personally ;)I'm talking about the final application where 9.9 and 10.9 is important.

One more thing, for some ridiculous reason, the barrel has its own character and I will personally test pellets because the same model, the same air pistol, and the same brand of pellets will perform differently. For example, Finale Match made by Walther, size 4.50 mm, I will minimize variables, such as air velocity, the same pellet size, and the same pistol model, but only the barrels will be different. So, each barrel will show its own character, a smaller or bigger group. My advice is if your goal is to win the match, you should test pellets for your particular pistol and make sure you choose the best option for your particular pistol model.


If your knowledge and performance level below 565, pellet testing will not affect your performance. (there is no chance to see you on the Final :(
If you know how and you are able to score over 570 you must do this. (there is a chance to see you on the Final ;)
If your goal is to perform over 580 you can’t avoid it. (there is a chance to hit the GOLD while you will perform on the Final :))

Sorry if I was misunderstood initially. I hate my accent. ;)
I do not have any problems to be on disagreement with me, but there should be no disagreement if we are talking about problem solution aren’t it?

The critical issue with pellet accuracy is not just whether the group off a rest will fit inside the ten ring. You have to think about it in the context of the whole shooting system, which includes the shooter. The math gets a bit ugly, but you need to look at it from a random process/statistical angle. I'm going to simplify things a bit. If you want to get rigorous, it involves things like CEP (circular error probability) calculations, which I don't do on Sundays. For the masochists who want more rigor, this is a good place to start:

http://www.statshooting.com/papers/meas ... an2008.pdf

If the shooter is perfect, their group size will match what you get off the rest, let's call the radius of that group Rr. If the pistol was perfect, a shooter will produce a group of radius Rs. When you combine the two, they don't just add. The exact distribution of shots will depend on the underlying character of the two shot distributions. For example, if it is equally likely that a shot occurs at any radius up to the group size, that would be a "uniform" distribution. It's more typical that most shots at clustered in the middle, and it gets less & less likely that they are out near the edge of the group size. This would be more like a "Gaussian" distribution. This is where things like "standard deviation" (a measure of "randomness") & such get involved.

If it was a simple linear problem instead of round, the standard deviation of the the two variables would combine as the square root of the sum of the squares. Let's stick with that to get a feel for how things will behave:

If the radius off a rest was equal to the radius of the shooter, the combination would be be ~ 1.4 times larger than the error of the shooter. That would require either an exceptional shooter, or a pretty lousy pellet.

If the radius off a rest was 1/2 the error of the shooter, the combination would be only about 12% larger than the error of the shooter alone. That's still a pretty big pellet error compared to the shooter, but the combination isn't that much larger than what the shooter would produce with perfect pellets..

If the radius off a rest was 1/4th that of the shooter, the combined group would be just ~ 3% larger than the group due to the shooters wobble. That is still not a particularly stellar pellet accuracy. I'm not shooting at the Olympic level, but I would consider that good enough for most purposes.

Also, keep in mid that you have to shoot a LOT of pellets to get really good statistics info. 20 shot groups can give over a 10% error in the "true" group size, and you'd have to shoot 80 shot groups to cut the error in half.

The critical issue is how big the group off a rest is COMPARED TO YOUR HOLD. Unfortunately, there isn't any easy way to measure that independent of the pellets accuracy. If all your shots are barely inside the nine ring, a pellet that will group well inside the ten ring off a rest is probably not costing you very many points. If you are approaching 580/590, I would want to find a pellet that produces only a slightly enlarged hole off a rest.

There is also the psychological factor. The last thing you want to worry about in a match is whether you should have spent an extra buck on pellets. Going into a match KNOWING that your hardware can reliably deliver groups much smaller than you can is one less thing to think about.

I think Doug sums it all up in the last sentence ,the psychological effect of knowing that pistol and ammo/pellets isof greater value than the actual group. After all the pellets are not individually inspected prior to shooting in most cases. I as well as some other posters have had our pellets matched to lots at the manufacturers of the pellets. I did not experience any significant performance improvement on average. At the WC level I don't think it makes a mental difference either. Rimfire ammo in another story.

With a 10.2 hold, a mediocre pellet may score 9.9. Unfortunately, I do not break the shot center 10 ring each time.

All of the pellets including the cheapest dirtiest Daisys outshoot me but with that said from an engineering point of view.

Isn't whether or not a pellet sizer is going to make a difference going to depend a lot on the relative diameters of the sizer and the barrel diameter. I can imagine that sizing to 4.5000 then shooting from a barrel that is 4.5050 would result in a larger group than not sizing the pellets at all if their diameter before sizing was over 4.500?

From an experimental point of view, I'd want a set of sizers with as small an incremental range as machining would allow then using the same lot of ammo use each of them to determine which sizer worked best with the barrel on the specific gun since they would all vary somewhat

the worst group Rover came up with is still a 10.6 + shot (Just guessing here, I have'nt done the math).

Until Air Pistol matches are shot with perfect scores and the average Final score is 106 or better, testing pellets in an air pistol is as useless as trying to determine if Shell 93 Octane makes your Corvette go faster than Exxon 93 Octane and you are only driving it on the Interstate where driving a 100 mph is a rare occurence

a far better use of time is discussing techniques and their pros and cons such as Greg and Russ are instead of pellet testing

Scott,
I trust you noted the very first sentence of my initial post. I'm sure not going to argue with THE MAN. (Especially the one who repairs my air guns.)

However, I did learn a few things from the pellet test.
1) Firmly seat the pellets when using an LP1 (not really important).
2) Pellet sizers appear to be worse than useless.
3) There MAY be a type of pellet that will perform poorly for no apparent reason. The Hobby pellets were the last tin of a lot that had worked very well in the K60 and Morini 162 I tested, but they came in last in this test (although they didn't really do badly) in the LP1.
4) There appears to be no strong correlation between accuracy and price.
5) Of the guns I've tested, there appear none that will give 10.9 accuracy (but very close).

Something I would like to hear from you is; have you seen notably more accurate guns than I have (with a MUCH larger sample available to you)?

Yes, I agree my time would be better spent training than fooling with this stuff. But, "Inquiring minds want to know!"

your observations are the same as mine

To kbookmyer, (to quote you)

"Isn't whether or not a pellet sizer is going to make a difference going to depend a lot on the relative diameters of the sizer and the barrel diameter."

You may note that I used a variety of sizes (4.49, 4.50. 4.51, + whatever the Basics and Hobby's may actually be). ALL showed poorer accuracy after sizing. I did some limited testing quite a while back that did not display such a marked effect.

Beeman did sell a sizer with assorted size bushings, so it's possible to test your theory. I would be interested in the results of your testing, but I won't pursue it myself. I'm convinced of the futility of playing with sizers and I'm back in training mode.

"playing with sizers and I'm back in training mode".

“Like meditation or prayer, knitting and pellet sizing allows for the passive release of stray thoughts” :))

Agreed, Russ. So can you release stray thoughts by imagining you're pellet sizing when you pick up your pistol?? ;-)

pete

Rover wrote:Scott,
Something I would like to hear from you is; have you seen notably more accurate guns than I have (with a MUCH larger sample available to you)?

One thing that you may or may not know, is that at least some (? all) AP manufacturers preselect a set of better than average performing air pistols. These are the one that the top pistol shooters get (ones that they sponsor or support). So for example with the example I know of that company reserves a batch pistols which may well be older than the newer ones. It's a bit like the selected barrels approach that you can get for smallbore rifles from some of the companies.

Rob.

Rover wrote:Something I would like to hear from you is; have you seen notably more accurate guns than I have (with a MUCH larger sample available to you)?

I know the question wasn't for me, but I'll make a comment any way. When I picked up my LP300XT last year from the dealer we tested different pellets and found one H&N pellet that would make perfectly round single hole groups.

Rover wrote:Yes, I agree my time would be better spent training than fooling with this stuff. But, "Inquiring minds want to know!"

I agree that for most of us this won't make a difference and I don't think that choosing the pellet I found for my LP300XT will matter at all in my total score (average of 556 in competition so far this year). But when buying 10000 pellets and the price is the same, why not pick the one that gives the best performance? No extra cost, and all it took was 30 minutes of my time watching the testing being done.

Now, back to training:-)

Gøran

Pellet testing this is what I appointed previously and Goran described specifically.
Pellet sizing is more mental part and can be accomplished in any time when it is suitable for your, during daily activities like knitting or practice routine. Dear Ptererz, if knitting ;) is not your daily practice routine please skip it, it is less important than as a pellet testing.:)