Loose leade R9 barrel, tight leade HW95 barrel, CPLs and Winchester pellets.

[nced]

A while back I was pulling a too tight patch made from a piece of cotton tee-shirt  through my HW95 barrel and the loop of my Crown Saver ripped the old tee-shirt material in two leaving a REALLY TIGHT patch stuck in the bore. I succeeded removing the stuck patch by carefully using a home made brass jag like this and about an hour of time......
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This "jag" was made by machining and threading the end of a brass cleaning rod, then filing a few spiral grooves. The "patch remover" was pressed into the stuck patch from the breech end, screwed into the patch and then pulled from the bore with bits of patch in the grooves. I just kept using this procedure till the patch could be pulled from the bore.......
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Well.....tonight I actually removed the R9 barrel from the HW95 to return to it's rightful place on the R9 and I re-installed the HW95 barrel (one which had the patch removed) to the HW95. After the barrel was installed it was  "re-adjusted". By "re-adjusted" I mean that it was bent so the poi is real close to the aim point at 18 yards using my new "replaced under warranty" 3-12x44 Optisan Viper. I did quite a few tweaks with my "barrel bender" to get the poi within 1/4" of the aim point at 18 yards and I shot what i feel is a pretty good group from "bucket and sticks" using CPLs with pellet heads sized to 4.50mm. Even with the "reduced head CPLs" the pellet is a real tight fit in the HW95 barrel so I used the ball end of my old Beeman pellet seater to ease pushing the pellet into the leade.
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A while back I had bought a tin of Winchester domes at a Tractor Supply store and they were rather inaccurate from my .177 R9 with the rather loose leade (compared to the HW95). Just for grinns I opened the Winchester tin and shot a group with the tight leade HW95 and was shocked that they were actually very accurate from that gun. Here's a partial scan of the three bulls I shot HFT style at 18 yards (two CPL groups and one Winchester group) and I even used the same aim point for the CPLs and Winchesters.........
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I don't expect to be using the Winchesters because they weigh between 9.8 and 10.0 grains which I consider too heavy for a HW95 class springer, however they did shoot well from the tight leade HW barrel. Here are a couple pics of the pellets.......
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After close inspection they kinda remind me of the old Beeman Ram Jet (H&N Field Target) pellet.

Just found this interesting!

[Kailua]

Those Winchesters look to be pretty well made.  I know you mentioned that they are on the smaller size.  But are they consistent in size?

[nced]

Those Winchesters look to be pretty well made.  I know you mentioned that they are on the smaller size.  But are they consistent in size?

I really don't know since I haven't measured any yet. Actually, after measuring thousands of JSB Exacts, H&N FTTs, and some 7.9 grain Crosman Premiers I've come to the conclusion that as long as every pellet head is large enough to get "sized" in the leade when loading it really doesn't matter much what the initial head size was. My .177 HW95 has a tight leade (well, much tighter than my .177 R9 leade).

Anywhoo.......just for grinns I got out my good digital caliper (an iGaging origin model) and measured 5 Winchester pellet heads at random from the tin. There was a bit of both "as expected" and "very surprised".
As expected
Judging by the fit in the leade the pellet heads were small.

Very surprised
All pellet heads measured exactly 4.46mm
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I don't know if the whole tin is like this (I highly doubt it) or even if another tin of Winchester pellets would be as accurate from my HW95!

[K.O.]

Ed it has been amazing to me how well the Winnie dome have shot out of my pumpers and my BSA Buc once I learned just how much weight variance there is with them... DO NOT MIX TINS...

They vary a lot in weight from tin to tin see Toms thread in the Daisy gate on the 856... The weights in a given tin do seem to center around a given weight but they over different tins vary from 10.2 grain down to 9.3 grains in my measurements so far...

With the work of weighing them I do think the vertical spread will shrink and the odd flyers will happens much less for me...