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Dave Shattuck
Guest
As most of you who read this forum must realize by now, Mr. B is quite the guy to know. He is constantly leading us down a road to unbelievable better accuracy, sometimes bending the traditions way more than the rest of us could ever get our heads around without him. And so it goes with his latest group of concepts.
As soon as Dan mentioned he was working on designing an Air Gauging devise for measuring pellet head sizes, I had no doubt that I wanted one. Then, after seeing his first series of test results at one of our Indoor matches where he was shooting absolutely huge X-counts - like in the 20's - and dropping only one point on his first shot over the course of 3 cards, I placed my order. Of course, we all know that our individual results may vary.
I haven't yet to have enough range-time after sorting to truly give any exacting numbers, but from what I'm seeing in the shop, I have no doubt the results will be outstanding to say the least.
The way the gauge works: after connecting it to an air supply, the air is first fed through a small inline filter before running through a series of two in-line regulators. I set mine first regulator to bring the initial pressure down to 40 PSI, then the second to a very constant 30 PSI. From there the feed goes through a pin dial in order to allow for fine-tuning it even further before finally feeding into a large dial indicator which is the nuts and bolts of the whole system as this is where you do your actual measuring. This dial is 4" in diameter and reads in increments of between 0 and 15 PSI and sits atop the actual brass die used for gauging the pellets head. Did I mention that this entire device is designed to screw into a reloading press? Oh, and another thing, you can order different size dies of both caliber size and head size per caliber if you wish. I started out with one die for .177 caliber which was on the larger side and better for doing things like CPH's, plus one in .22 caliber for measuring AA 16.1's, but almost immediately turned around and ordered a second set for each caliber one step smaller so as to be able to expand out and cover just about anything in either caliber. That is, unless I move up to owning a .25 caliber Unlimited Class gun someday, which is on my list.
I usually try to measure the bulk of my pellets at a range of between 7 to 8 PSI on the large dial indicator, and by doing so will find several that may fall as low as 3 or 4, or as high as 12 PSI. That's a good, workable range!
What you are doing is sorting your pellets into similar, if not exacting head sizes, which will better allow you to determine what sized pellet your barrel prefers. When I was sorting my JSB 8.4's I found that out of a tin of 500 about 90% landed in the 8 or 9 PSI range, with the rest measuring only 2 or 3 PSI above or below. But, once I switched over to measuring a group of CPH's that I had already worked up using my "old method", I found that the majority landed between 6 and 7 PSI with a low of 4, but astoundingly was looking at just as many pegging out the needle at somewhere above 15 PSI, meaning that those heads were extremely large even though they had sorted before as being quite acceptable. See what I mean about feeling more confident now because of head sorting than when I was just using my tried-and-true method that I'd been doing for years. I guess it's a case of either "a little knowledge can be dangerous", or, "what you don't know won't, or can, hurt you".
All you will need to get started is a small shop-sized air compressor, one capable of maintaining a minimum of ±55 PSI, and a reloading press. What I am using for a press is an old RCBS Rockchucker that for the past 20 years has been doing nothing but sitting in a corner collecting dust and taking up room.
The only other thing that needs to be done before getting started is to wash and weigh your pellets, not necessarily in that order. And, once I get a little more familiar with what I'm doing, I'm gonna try skipping the weighing to see what happens.
Doing the work is a bit on the tedious side as this takes at least half again longer than weighing pellets. And the unit is kind of pricy, but no more so than that of a decent scope, or about half (or less) of what a case of good quality rimfire ammo costs. Even still, the fact that any gun will never be any better than the pellets we feed through them makes this device extremely affordable in every way.
Now, if you'll excuse me, I've got some pellets that need sorting.
That's my 2¢ worth, but what do I know.
Dave Shattuck
As soon as Dan mentioned he was working on designing an Air Gauging devise for measuring pellet head sizes, I had no doubt that I wanted one. Then, after seeing his first series of test results at one of our Indoor matches where he was shooting absolutely huge X-counts - like in the 20's - and dropping only one point on his first shot over the course of 3 cards, I placed my order. Of course, we all know that our individual results may vary.
I haven't yet to have enough range-time after sorting to truly give any exacting numbers, but from what I'm seeing in the shop, I have no doubt the results will be outstanding to say the least.
The way the gauge works: after connecting it to an air supply, the air is first fed through a small inline filter before running through a series of two in-line regulators. I set mine first regulator to bring the initial pressure down to 40 PSI, then the second to a very constant 30 PSI. From there the feed goes through a pin dial in order to allow for fine-tuning it even further before finally feeding into a large dial indicator which is the nuts and bolts of the whole system as this is where you do your actual measuring. This dial is 4" in diameter and reads in increments of between 0 and 15 PSI and sits atop the actual brass die used for gauging the pellets head. Did I mention that this entire device is designed to screw into a reloading press? Oh, and another thing, you can order different size dies of both caliber size and head size per caliber if you wish. I started out with one die for .177 caliber which was on the larger side and better for doing things like CPH's, plus one in .22 caliber for measuring AA 16.1's, but almost immediately turned around and ordered a second set for each caliber one step smaller so as to be able to expand out and cover just about anything in either caliber. That is, unless I move up to owning a .25 caliber Unlimited Class gun someday, which is on my list.
I usually try to measure the bulk of my pellets at a range of between 7 to 8 PSI on the large dial indicator, and by doing so will find several that may fall as low as 3 or 4, or as high as 12 PSI. That's a good, workable range!
What you are doing is sorting your pellets into similar, if not exacting head sizes, which will better allow you to determine what sized pellet your barrel prefers. When I was sorting my JSB 8.4's I found that out of a tin of 500 about 90% landed in the 8 or 9 PSI range, with the rest measuring only 2 or 3 PSI above or below. But, once I switched over to measuring a group of CPH's that I had already worked up using my "old method", I found that the majority landed between 6 and 7 PSI with a low of 4, but astoundingly was looking at just as many pegging out the needle at somewhere above 15 PSI, meaning that those heads were extremely large even though they had sorted before as being quite acceptable. See what I mean about feeling more confident now because of head sorting than when I was just using my tried-and-true method that I'd been doing for years. I guess it's a case of either "a little knowledge can be dangerous", or, "what you don't know won't, or can, hurt you".
All you will need to get started is a small shop-sized air compressor, one capable of maintaining a minimum of ±55 PSI, and a reloading press. What I am using for a press is an old RCBS Rockchucker that for the past 20 years has been doing nothing but sitting in a corner collecting dust and taking up room.
The only other thing that needs to be done before getting started is to wash and weigh your pellets, not necessarily in that order. And, once I get a little more familiar with what I'm doing, I'm gonna try skipping the weighing to see what happens.
Doing the work is a bit on the tedious side as this takes at least half again longer than weighing pellets. And the unit is kind of pricy, but no more so than that of a decent scope, or about half (or less) of what a case of good quality rimfire ammo costs. Even still, the fact that any gun will never be any better than the pellets we feed through them makes this device extremely affordable in every way.
Now, if you'll excuse me, I've got some pellets that need sorting.
That's my 2¢ worth, but what do I know.
Dave Shattuck
