Better accuracy by deburring pellets

Okay guys, this little experiment was interesting so figured I'd share it with you.  I got some .22 and .177 CPHP last month when they were on sale at Amazon.  Like most of the tins I've gotten over the last couple of years, they both showed a good bit of flashing around the mold parting lines and the skirts...the .177 worse than the .22 this time.

Groups at 25 yards were pretty disappointing from several rifles.  Last night I decided to see if manually tumble deburring them in a wire strainer would do anything.  Unfortunately I didn't have the presence of mind to set up and take a before closeup but here is a  representative shot of the after:



I think the parting lines on the .177 were too substantial to remove but the .22 cleaned up pretty nicely.  So I gave them another try and the .177 were still pretty dismal but the .22 are showing promise.  Before deburring, I was getting groups of about 1.25" on average at 25 yards with the FD-PCP.  Here's what the first 2 groups looked like after deburring:



So these groups shrunk to less than half the size.  Not going to win any awards but they're now vaporizing 1/2" Mardis Gras beads with confidence.  That's good fun for a cheap pellet, and it means they are now suitable for woods walking for gray squirrels.

I have no idea how repeatable this may be.  It might be one of those correlation doesn't equal causation things so if you try it, please report back with your results.

Oh, I agree with you 100% on that.  I was looking at this as more of a general observation.

I really haven't saved any money by buying Crosman pellets over the years!  They are better than Daisy and Gamo, that's the most positive thing I can say.

Jason

Very interesting results.

Do you think that removing the parting lines, from the nose/skirt areas,
reduces the gyro effects of these parting lines grabbing the air flow around the outside of the pellets,
and causing the wild dispersion/lack of accuracy, along with the slight weight imbalance of the parting lines etc?

As we know, the air flows around and over these areas, during the pellets flight etc

Tia,
Don.

Excellent, simple experiment that displays a great result.    Thanks for adding to our knowledge!   

I really haven't saved any money by buying Crosman pellets over the years!

Being a mainly a plinker, if I can consistently hit a 3" target out to 50yds, I'm satisfied. CHPH does that for me with the guns I own. That said, CPHP saves me nearly $10 per tin over my other pellet choice, JSB, so I think that is significant savings when I'm going through more than a tin a month.

Of course, if I'm looking for groupings, I go JSB

Don, that sounds good.  I'd love to hear how it turns out for you.  Just to give my perspective, I don't think it's some sort of magic wand that will suddenly make terrible pellets into one-holers but maybe it can significantly improve those with a very specific defect.  And my guess is it would be pellets that have thin flashing at the parting lines...something that is relatively easy to break free and/or hammer flat.  As you can see in the photo, the heavier, wider "pillowed" parting lines on the .177 pellets just aren't going to improve substantially from tumbling.  So hopefully you have a tin that is a good candidate for this experiment.
 
There may even be some benefit to doing this with pellets that don't look particularly bad.  I tried it with a tin of H&N Crow Magnums with very subtle parting lines but they were still pretty awful when I got done   However I couldn't find a barrel that would even attempt to group them in the first place so maybe they were doomed from the start.
 
The .22 CPHP on the other hand would try to group but kept throwing fliers 1/2" to 1" in random directions from the main group.  And that reminds me, these have heads ranging from 5.46mm to 5.54mm and I had attributed that to the reason they wouldn't perform well.  Perhaps that isn't as important in this case (this barrel?) because it's a night and day difference after the deburring.
 

They group pretty well from a QB78 also, this one is a shade over 1/4" CTC at 25 yards:

Well, I was combining the tumbling with cleaning so I was using some Purple Power and a 1.5" paint brush while simultaneously tossing them in the wire strainer in the same fashion a cook would do in a frying pan.  Crosman's alloy is pretty hard so I was doing it pretty aggressively, also swirling them so they scrub on each other and against the wire mesh to help break up the flashing.

Yes, I wash almost all my pellets.  Based on some experiments I did a few years ago, it doesn't always help but it never hurts. 

Purple Power works much better than dish soap but I've only tried 3 or 4 different cleaners.   Since washing pellets is something I like to do in the house at night or when the weather is bad outside, I don't like using heavy aromatic solvents like naphtha.  It's mostly odorless and doesn't burn or itch if a little gets on my hands...but it degreases like something that you'd expect to require a hazmat suit.  The typical use is cleaning automotive parts and engine bays.  I can just spritz a grimy engine bay and wait a few minutes and hose it off and everything basically looks new.

After they are clean and dry, I tumble them with a few drops of White Lightning which is a wax lube...a dry lubricant after the carrier solvent evaporates.