GTA
All Springer/NP/PCP Air Gun Discussion General => Air Gun Gate => Topic started by: lillysdad621 on August 11, 2023, 08:19:39 PM
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So, being the bored airgunner i am, i called my other very bored pal, Pelletsport. We BS airguns and one thing led to another (no, you sick @#$%s, not that leading...lol) and i dont remember who brought it up, but the question came up... "dude, why dont we shoot long distance BBs?"
And i know God should have stricken who ever said that with a bolt of lightning, but no, there we were, staring into space with thought of 2 mile shots to terrorists with Red ryders... So the adventure began... many questions came up and we have been working on this concept for a bit now. A couple of things that we have found out. We are aware of the limitations of todays BB guns, so we have posed a challenge to create a BB shooter that can take out a can at 20 yards, with hope to eventually moving it back to 30 and finally, 40 yards (the ultimate farthest distance ever for a BB, as we all know, lol). 20 is far, 30 is way out there, 40 is so far out there is not even funny...
first surprise: How far can a BB drill through a can from a Red ryder? 10 yards, say some? 15?. context: this is a tired daisy 102 model 36 that i have essentially made into a red ryder by swapping woods and all. Velocity? 216 fps with daisy BBs. drilling distance? 20 yards. More impressive, i took out a very old Daisy 102 with the kiddie stock (if you are not aware, those are the grand daddies of the Buck) and it did the same but this one is only shooting 163 fps.!!! And then again witha Daisy 188 pistol. 168 fps. right through. The only caveat is that they have to be cans FULL of water.
second surprise: BB guns are like pellet rifles, and BBs are different. meaning some of them like some and others like other ones. the difference is groups from 4 in down to <1 in at 10 yards, which means that accuracy at longer ranges is perfectly achievable (now, no one said expect FWB 601 like accuracy, but remember, we are using soda cans for the project.
Third surprise: BB guns are fully tuneable. Go ahead. try it. Red ryder triggers are tuneable to be lighter than pellet gun triggers. Seals can be improved and barrels may be polished. Also make sure that they are solidly mounted. Oh yeah. this is not just Red Ryders... crosman 760 work too, and daisies 35, and any other BB gun you got sitting there collecting dust. *(&^, i tuned the Daisy 188 and it is now a very enjoyable 10 yard plinker!. and at 15 ft it will do groups smaller than an inch.
The purpose of this crazy post is to get you involved in something that may sound crazy... nutty, even. But is sure a ton of Fun. let me know about your progress/ experiments/ comments... have fun!
PS: muzzleloaders are nothing more than huge BB guns!!!! and we take them seriously.
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You do realize you’re about to open Pandora’s box !!
BB gun mania knows no bounds.
I look forward to reading about your endeavors
Will definitely be following this post
Will you be only using steel BBs or are lead an option?
Thank you for posting
Dave
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I'm thinking about a sabot for a BB out of a high powered PCP, or are we strictly sticking with Red Ryder and clones?
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Hummm..I might try coating a BB with candle wax and shooting it out of the Umarex NXG APX at 20 pumps or so.
It will be interesting to see if the wax catches the rifling in the barrel like a sabot would.
Best Wishes - Tom
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I have one of those APXs and good luck with 20 pumps.
It might be a little bit dangerous.
I wonder if blowing up a BB gun could equal or surpass killing a can at 30 yrds equating it with success.
Ron
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I have three Ekol co2 bb air pistols made in Turkey. An ES66 and 2 ES66C Compact. The reason I mentioned them is they have brass rifled barrel. Only bb only air guns I have with rifling.
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Any round ball, but strictly from smoothbores. as far as only RRs? NO WAY! let the BB guns pour out of your closets!!! Funny you mention the PCp thing... i made a 2240 with a hipac and a 760 smoothbore barrel (milled to fit). 700fps BBs. made a great shotgun!
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another thing that i have come to realize is that you almost never need to pump a pumper to its highest power level. more often than not you can find better accuracy at less pumps.
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Hummm..I might try coating a BB with candle wax and shooting it out of the Umarex NXG APX at 20 pumps or so.
It will be interesting to see if the wax catches the rifling in the barrel like a sabot would.
Best Wishes - Tom
Tom, that is a wild idea! I had considered a patch (like a muzzle loader) but never thought of wax. I am told slower speed and slower twist rate gives best accuracy for round balls, but I have never seen any test results, and they were talking about black powder rifles with lead balls, or a plastic round ball, not bb's. (A bb is super slick compared to any other roundball, so who knows how it will behave in the air if you give it a good spin?)
I would love to hear the results.
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Hummm..I might try coating a BB with candle wax and shooting it out of the Umarex NXG APX at 20 pumps or so.
It will be interesting to see if the wax catches the rifling in the barrel like a sabot would.
Best Wishes - Tom
Tom, that is a wild idea! I had considered a patch (like a muzzle loader) but never thought of wax. I am told slower speed and slower twist rate gives best accuracy for round balls, but I have never seen any test results, and they were talking about black powder rifles with lead balls, or a plastic round ball, not bb's. (A bb is super slick compared to any other roundball, so who knows how it will behave in the air if you give it a good spin?)
I would love to hear the results.
I realized too late the smooth bore limitation, but the idea is fantastic. Now, back to smoothbore!
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nah, lets free the BBgunners... you wanna use a rifled barrel? knock yourself out! (poor soul... lol). the idea is to use BB guns and reliably hit a target at a set distance.
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another thing that i have come to realize is that you almost never need to pump a pumper to its highest power level. more often than not you can find better accuracy at less pumps.
I found that to be very true. 5 to7 pumps gives more accurate results than a full 10.
Ron
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I'll just get a bigger target!
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So, being the bored airgunner i am, i called my other very bored pal, Pelletsport. We BS airguns and one thing led to another (no, you sick @#$%s, not that leading...lol) and i dont remember who brought it up, but the question came up... "dude, why dont we shoot long distance BBs?"
And i know God should have stricken who ever said that with a bolt of lightning, but no, there we were, staring into space with thought of 2 mile shots to terrorists with Red ryders... So the adventure began... many questions came up and we have been working on this concept for a bit now. A couple of things that we have found out. We are aware of the limitations of todays BB guns, so we have posed a challenge to create a BB shooter that can take out a can at 20 yards, with hope to eventually moving it back to 30 and finally, 40 yards (the ultimate farthest distance ever for a BB, as we all know, lol). 20 is far, 30 is way out there, 40 is so far out there is not even funny...
first surprise: How far can a BB drill through a can from a Red ryder? 10 yards, say some? 15?. context: this is a tired daisy 102 model 36 that i have essentially made into a red ryder by swapping woods and all. Velocity? 216 fps with daisy BBs. drilling distance? 20 yards. More impressive, i took out a very old Daisy 102 with the kiddie stock (if you are not aware, those are the grand daddies of the Buck) and it did the same but this one is only shooting 163 fps.!!! And then again witha Daisy 188 pistol. 168 fps. right through. The only caveat is that they have to be cans FULL of water.
second surprise: BB guns are like pellet rifles, and BBs are different. meaning some of them like some and others like other ones. the difference is groups from 4 in down to <1 in at 10 yards, which means that accuracy at longer ranges is perfectly achievable (now, no one said expect FWB 601 like accuracy, but remember, we are using soda cans for the project.
Third surprise: BB guns are fully tuneable. Go ahead. try it. Red ryder triggers are tuneable to be lighter than pellet gun triggers. Seals can be improved and barrels may be polished. Also make sure that they are solidly mounted. Oh yeah. this is not just Red Ryders... crosman 760 work too, and daisies 35, and any other BB gun you got sitting there collecting dust. *(&^, i tuned the Daisy 188 and it is now a very enjoyable 10 yard plinker!. and at 15 ft it will do groups smaller than an inch.
The purpose of this crazy post is to get you involved in something that may sound crazy... nutty, even. But is sure a ton of Fun. let me know about your progress/ experiments/ comments... have fun!
PS: muzzleloaders are nothing more than huge BB guns!!!! and we take them seriously.
You need to get the Daisy 499B, and then find Cobalt327 on ebay and order his spring/air pipe upgrade to put in.
= more velocity and a target smoothbore barrel!
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I have one of those APXs and good luck with 20 pumps.
It might be a little bit dangerous.
I wonder if blowing up a BB gun could equal or surpass killing a can at 30 yrds equating it with success.
Ron
Hi Ron.
I quite understand your concern.
I've already had my gun pumped up to 18 - 20 pumps several times ..and... so far... it has held together.
Last winter I was shooting 117cal JSB 13.43 Knock Out slugs out of it... at those pressures.
I was a making one shot kills on Grey Squirrels out to 35 and 40 yards.
All the shots were, spot on, accurate head shots too.
Thats not to say that I could not have trouble in the future though.
Thank you so much for your wise concern.
I will take your sage advise under consideration in the future.
Best Wishes - Tom
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I'm subscribed! :D
Got a piece of stainless steel tube that shouldn't have been a good barrel for BB's that was pretty danged accurate at 20 yards in my homemade pumper from years ago (long since bit the dust)...
Soda cans were almost boring at 20 yards, and I once took a potshot at a pencil-sized twig a bit further out-I connected first try...
Come to think of it, I remember sniping empty cicada shells off the side of some trees about 15 yards out-think there was two, and I hit both with two shots...
Gears are turning...
Got too many projects!!!!!!!...
Jesse
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First I see BB's need improvement, maybe Tungsten ??? I'm reflecting on long range BB gun shots of my past, 100 yards is doable IMO
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My 2 smoothbore Daisy 35s are really accurate with Daisy Precision Max BBs. They seem to prefer 7 pumps and under. I don't remember just how far I've tried them, but it's at least 20 yards or so. I did try powder coating a bunch of BBs but it didn't seem to help accuracy that much.
There's a guy on YouTube using carbon fiber shot tubes in his red ryder builds.
https://youtu.be/vTLiZ5JRqos
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My 2 smoothbore Daisy 35s are really accurate with Daisy Precision Max BBs. They seem to prefer 7 pumps and under. I don't remember just how far I've tried them, but it's at least 20 yards or so. I did try powder coating a bunch of BBs but it didn't seem to help accuracy that much.
There's a guy on YouTube using carbon fiber shot tubes in his red ryder builds.
https://youtu.be/vTLiZ5JRqos
Ed, do you know what the fps is at 7 pumps? Thanks!
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First I see BB's need improvement, maybe Tungsten ??? I'm reflecting on long range BB gun shots of my past, 100 yards is doable IMO
Mr. Seiler, I think the same about bb's. I have been studying on grades and precision of ball bearings, and even the Avanti Precision Ground bb's are not as uniform as I thought.
I'd like to test the difference with high precision 4.4mm bb's.
I may buy a kg of high precision 4.4mm steel bb's direct from China if the price is right. Brass bb's might be be in there, too.
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My 2 smoothbore Daisy 35s are really accurate with Daisy Precision Max BBs. They seem to prefer 7 pumps and under. I don't remember just how far I've tried them, but it's at least 20 yards or so. I did try powder coating a bunch of BBs but it didn't seem to help accuracy that much.
There's a guy on YouTube using carbon fiber shot tubes in his red ryder builds.
https://youtu.be/vTLiZ5JRqos (https://youtu.be/vTLiZ5JRqos)
Ed, do you know what the fps is at 7 pumps? Thanks!
I did a few tests today and I must have been thinking about shooting pellets at 7 pumps. 2 pumps with BBs gives me best accuracy and 385 fps. 3 pumps gave me 425 fps but I couldn't get my chronograph to read anything more than 3.
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You're certainly not the first to ask silly BB questions...I went down the path a bit last winter when I found out how fun the Daisy 35 was. I did some BB quality testing, and posted the results:
https://www.gatewaytoairguns.org/GTA/index.php?topic=204581.0 (https://www.gatewaytoairguns.org/GTA/index.php?topic=204581.0)
I ordered some Daisy 499 barrels, intending to install in the Daisy 35, but got distracted down some other rabbit hole before doing anything more with the ideas. _Consistent_ minute of soupcan precision with BBs at 100 feet would be just dandy.
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the 35 is accurate as a smoothbore with wadcutter pellets, but mine did not like bbs, The one i have now wears a rifled cut down 880 barrel, polished and crowned. it is incredibly accurate. so much so that i am keeping it open sights only. Now, i shoot it at 2 pumps with winchester 7.4 domes, and at 53 yards (lasered) i can hit the stick of a stop sign. 2 pumps is like 310 fps.
I saw those carbon fiber barrels and the guns that guy makes... they are definitely something to keep an eye for. As far as a 499b with Cobalts spring kit...i think it could work but the 499 tube is made to work with .173 BBs, optimized for those, even. Avanti shot is nothing but sorted precision BBs at that size. for the distance i want to shoot i think a decent smoothbore barrel (polished if you can) MATCHED with the right BBs for that particular application will work just fine. And as far as a 400+fps RR... well, i think im better off with a pumper. then you have the capability to pump more or less to find the sweet spot. and also it removes any recoil any spring may cause. That is my opinion at least.
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well honestly for distance ya need some twist... it helps prevent the knuckle ball effect...conventional wisdom was 120% caliber was what was optimum...
could run round ball in compromise barrels with faster twist and short rifling if you slowed the round down...
so anyways L.W. has caught on to that maybe pellets benafit from a slow twist barrel also...now there is no way I am running steel BBs thru a rifled barrel so this is lead ball only...
so twist for pellets/ round ball by above theory...
.177 = about 21 twist...
.22 = about 26 twist...
.25 = about 30 twist...
so maybe in the future some will pick up these L.W. barrels to see if they hold an advantage with pellets at longer distance... then also see if higher velocity round ball works well in them also.. ;)
https://www.lothar-walther.com/gun-barrel-blanks/airgun-barrels/?p=1&o=1&n=12&f=5683%7C6874%7C6085 (https://www.lothar-walther.com/gun-barrel-blanks/airgun-barrels/?p=1&o=1&n=12&f=5683%7C6874%7C6085)
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I thought about using a Benjamin 310 it's a BB shooter, but could barely dump all of the air on 6 pumps. What Benjamin did was install a valve return spring that had a HUGE compressive force. They didn't want the gun shooting fast. With a light valve return spring the 310 might have BB's smoking.
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You need to take a look at the Barra 400e. Excellent (can size) accuracy out to 25 yards, and quite good power.
https://hardairmagazine.com/reviews/barra-400e-selective-fire-bb-gun-review/
For power, we need to go back a bit in history. Back in the 60's there was a gun, the Benjamin 3030. It was advertised as being able to shoot through a 5 gal. metal bucket. I have a working one, and if I remember correctly, it shoots at about 600fps
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Just preliminary but Gamo lead bb's seem to shoot better in my Ekol es 66 rifled barrel as well as in my Crosman Vigilante with rifled 8 inch 357 barrel.
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Not stupid, fun!
I'm a fan of this idea because the round ball, like a BB, has such poor balistics that it is relatively safe in smaller ranges: it loses energy fast. For example according to Chairgun, a BB hurled at the speed of sound will only fly around 170 meters, and at twice the speed of sound it only travels 190m, only 20 meters more! And that is maximun range, the last half of which the BB has less than half a foot pound of energy, it is almost in free-fall. Interestingly, it is supersonic for the first 20 meters, so there. Balance that of course with the ricochet of BBs should they hit something hard early on, but still, this is what makes this idea fun! BBs would define the "hopeless" class of distance accuracy competition.
The Marksman brand of BBs are known to be a little larger than standard, and some have found they fit more snugly and thus are more accurate out of barrels made to shoot pellets. Often too, they are too large for smoothbore barrels made to shoot standard BBs.
https://www.pyramydair.com/blog/2019/05/marksman-premium-grade-steel-bbs-and-speedloader-part-1/
The comments section explains how to get the stuck BB out of your gun. Which we may eventually have to do.
I suspect wax will turn to liquid at the pressures required to launch a BB supersonic, not that a liquid sabot is a bad thing.
I'm game, what are the challenges? First can at 100yards/meters?
EDIT: on second thought, make that 50 yards/meters. I don't have enough scope for a 30 meter drop.
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My 2 smoothbore Daisy 35s are really accurate with Daisy Precision Max BBs. They seem to prefer 7 pumps and under. I don't remember just how far I've tried them, but it's at least 20 yards or so. I did try powder coating a bunch of BBs but it didn't seem to help accuracy that much.
There's a guy on YouTube using carbon fiber shot tubes in his red ryder builds.
https://youtu.be/vTLiZ5JRqos (https://youtu.be/vTLiZ5JRqos)
Ed, do you know what the fps is at 7 pumps? Thanks!
I did a few tests today and I must have been thinking about shooting pellets at 7 pumps. 2 pumps with BBs gives me best accuracy and 385 fps. 3 pumps gave me 425 fps but I couldn't get my chronograph to read anything more than 3.
I did the same type of barrel change on two $17 Bucks, back when they were $17 at Walmart, but used 499 tubes turned down at the breech end to fit in the clamshell. After making adult size stocks, changing to Cobalt power springs and new sights they are amazingly accurate repeaters at BB gun ranges. The both shoot 370-375fps with Black Diamond Hornady BBs. I have been thinking about getting one of those carbon fiber ones to try in a spring-loaded model 25 tube. (http://)
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I'm following this. But, this deserves to be in the bb gate?
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I've shot bb's out to 40-50 yards before... You need a calm day with no wind or nearly any and I highly recommend scaling up the size of the target for the distance or it won't be very entertaining. 15-20 yards a tin/pop can seems appropriate, 40-50 yards a coffee tin or old paint bucket, 80 yards a metal trash can... Maybe? ;D
If you could somehow put just the right amount of backspin on a bb it could help overcome drop over distance... Accuracy still wouldn't match what we have with rifled barrels and lead pellets though.