TargetTalk

Please forgive me for asking what might be a stupid question, but I've yet to find a good answer to this.

Both H&N and RWS have heavy and light versions of their 10m wadcutter pellets. H&N used to market these as "rifle" and "pistol" pellets, respectively, but now just call them "heavy" and "light". RWS still market them as "rifle" and "pistol" pellets.

Bearing in mind that 10m air rifle and air pistol are shot at a fixed distance and wind is not a factor in indoor ranges, why would heavier pellets be more suited to air rifles and lighter pellets more suited to pistols?

TomCat80 wrote:Bearing in mind that 10m air rifle and air pistol are shot at a fixed distance and wind is not a factor in indoor ranges, why would heavier pellets be more suited to air rifles and lighter pellets more suited to pistols?

I guess ten meter air rifles produce more velocity than their pistol counterparts, that is why a heavier pellet is preferred. However, some pistols are more accurate with heavier pellets, and some rifles prefer the lighter pellets.

always use heavy pellets (they are more likely to produce tighter groups)
light pellets are for older guns which where you pump each shot manually like the izh or fwb 65/100.

hundert wrote:always use heavy pellets (they are more likely to produce tighter groups)
light pellets are for older guns which where you pump each shot manually like the izh or fwb 65/100.

BS! In my ACTUAL testing, pellet weight made NO difference. I ended up using lightweights in my Walther LGR and heavyweights in my FWB65. Because of this testing the guys at my club all use RWS Diabolo Basics in their PCPs AND SSPs, but they do play around with others.

Whatever pellet works for you is fine, though in most guns the lighter, faster pellet makes slightly cleaner holes.

Test them!

It's the only way to know for sure. Every barrel has it's preferences.
For a rule of thumb, ligth pellets for pistol, heavy pellets for rifle, but only testing will tell.

See this post on pellet testing:
http://www.targettalk.org/viewtopic.php ... ting+again

Hope this helps

Thanks, everyone: I was just wondering if there was some rule of thumb that explained why heavy pellets were marketed for rifle and light for pistol that I hadn't heard about, so this is all really interesting.

Lighter pellets are mainly for lower muzzle velocity airguns, so the the it will punch a cleaner hole on the target for ease of scoring.

Some older AP can barely make 400 f/s when using 550 mg pellets, lighter pellets will gain an extra 20-30 f/s velocity.

Questions regarding what size/weight/brand...etc pellets are best for my AP or AR appear very often on this board, fact is, as Pilkguns and other knowledgeable poster has pointed out repeatedly, unless one can shoot consistently over 570 in AP or 585 in AR, what type one use really doesn't matter much.

Rover wrote:

hundert wrote:always use heavy pellets (they are more likely to produce tighter groups)
light pellets are for older guns which where you pump each shot manually like the izh or fwb 65/100.

BS! In my ACTUAL testing, pellet weight made NO difference. I ended up using lightweights in my Walther LGR and heavyweights in my FWB65. Because of this testing the guys at my club all use RWS Diabolo Basics in their PCPs AND SSPs, but they do play around with others.

Whatever pellet works for you is fine, though in most guns the lighter, faster pellet makes slightly cleaner holes.

BS is right. The case can be made that small extreme spread of velocity should yield tighter groups (although in a pistol, user error makes everything else pretty much academic). That said, the last time I checked velocities which was several years ago, JSB heavy (yellow label) had a significantly smaller E.S. than their light (green label) pellets. On the same day, H&N light bested H&N heavy by a good margin.

When my hold is a whole lot better than it is these days - when I'm 80(?) - maybe I'll go back and try to correlate those results with groups on targets.

I've posted this before, but here it is again for the newbies.

A 10 shot group fired with LP10 in machine rest. 8.3gr JSBs and 7.0gr RWS, 5 of each 10 total.

now post 50x RWS basic and 50x whatever goes well with your gun (which will be a heavy pellet most of the time, JSB med or heavy, Meisterkugel or R10, the basic will go over 10mm per group while the heavy will stay under 8, if you're lucky under 7)


Always use heavy pellets for best results, every athlete in every ISSF final uses the heavy version (because they either say that in interviews or you can randomly find the information on internet). For training RWS basics are fine, I shot 380/400 with them too.

also, adjust the velocity for each new pellet weight, not the sights if you want the best groups.

That's odd. In my tests, using three different guns and two lots of pellets, the light 7grain JSB pellets ALWAYS beat everything else tried. No velocity changes were made, but I'm sure the groups might tighten up if that were done.

Rover wrote:That's odd. In my tests, using three different guns and two lots of pellets, the light 7grain JSB pellets ALWAYS beat everything else tried. No velocity changes were made, but I'm sure the groups might tighten up if that were done.

What were the velocities?

Whatever the three guns happened to be. I did not chrono them because I didn't give a shit.

Rover wrote:Whatever the three guns happened to be. I did not chrono them because I didn't give a shit.

Oh, come on, Rog. Tell the truth. You really DO care.

Oh William, once again you have touched my deeply sensitive side. I really, really do care about such things, but I'm afraid of showing that tender side of me. It's all part of what makes me such a warm, caring, wonderful human being.

Rover wrote:Oh William, once again you have touched my deeply sensitive side. I really, really do care about such things, but I'm afraid of showing that tender side of me. It's all part of what makes me such a warm, caring, wonderful human being.

Yup. You and Raymond Shaw.

j-team wrote:I've posted this before, but here it is again for the newbies.

A 10 shot group fired with LP10 in machine rest. 8.3gr JSBs and 7.0gr RWS, 5 of each 10 total.

That pretty much ends the discussion. :-)

Chip