.177 Pellet weight deviation question

[wicki67]

Ladies & Gents,

Just picked up a tri-pack of .177 Daisy Pellets to try in my guns... Tri-pack consisted of a wadcutter, a hollowpoint and a pointed pell. The package didn't have a weight associated with either of the packaged pellets, so I pulled out my trusty RCBS 5-10 scale and proceeded to weigh out five of each pell....

WOW! I am floored.... I was under the impression that these things had to have somewhat consistency; but, CRIPES was I ever wrong!

My question is this.... to those who have weighed their pellets; what is the acceptable amount of deviation in weight (ie how many tenths of a grain) between pellets before it make a difference in accuracy?

It would seem to me that one would what no deviation in pell weight...period!

My Daisy's weighed out as follows:

Pointed
1 - 6.9gr
2 - 7.7gr
3 - 7.2gr
4 - 6.9gr
5 - 7.1gr
total deviation of .8gr for this group

Flats (wadcutters)
1 - 7.6gr
2 - 8.2gr
3 - 7.9gr
4 - 8.3gr
5 - 7.8gr
total deviation of .7gr for this group


Hollowpoints (the best group)
all 5 pell weighed out at 7.6gr.....

Thought, comments, suggestions...?!?!

Dave T.

[Nathan]

The pointed definitely have too much. I don't weigh mine (yet) so I have not set my own bench mark as to what is acceptable to me. Some posters here have weighed them and maybe they will chime in. Those posts might be in the old GTA but you could search around. There are a lot of hits on the Yellow if you search for weighing pellets. There will be some variation even in the "good" brands.

Nathan

[wicki67]

Nathan,

Yeah, I figured the pointed ones had way too much of a weight spread...
I can barely keep those on the target board with my Quest & Big Cat. I will have to do some research in the archives; I was just wanting to put the idea out and see if anyone was currently checking weights/pellets, and maybe get their input as to what they have been finding.

If I can grab a few spare moments this weekend; I may have to take a few pellets, weigh them again, then shoot all the pells that are as close as possible to one weight; just to see how they shoot...

Now my curiosity is really up...

Thanks,
Dave T.

[timegoat]

I don't have a scale but when m'lady and I went back to college a few years back I measured head sizes of daisy pellets vs. RWS for a quality control class final project. The RWS pellets were made to 13% tighter tolerances than the Daisy. I'd give the raw numbers, but I barely understand them myself anymore and I wrote the report!  Got an A on too.

I'm tempted to do the same with some other pellets, but I got better things to do with my time... like shoot!

- Mark

[Progun]

Hey Dave T. shocking huh? Shucks if it was a perfect world all of them pellets would weigh exactly the same  as  marked on the tin. Alas, you now know the truth. Quite a bit of variation in most tins which when shot unsorted are bound to have some effect on group tightness. But maybe not so much. When I used to take the time to weight sort, I would group the pellets that fell within a range on my scale that didn't exceed .1gr on my scale. Example: all pellets that weighed 7.9 gr into one batch, all that weighed 8.0 into another batch, etc knowing that my scale would only be accurate to within .1gr so a pellet that weighed 7.9gr could vary in actual weight from 7.90gr to 7.99gr and the scale would show all in that range  as weighing 7.9 gr. I only shoot for fun and hunting now so I don't have to be so anal retentive. If competition is your thing you probably should weight sort. Tcups did an extensive comparison of various brands showing the weight variations from tin to tin or batch to batch which you can read about in the archives on the old GTA. Quite imformative.

[wicki67]

Thanks guys,

I did a bit of research in the archives and read up a bit on what others had found before me... AMAZING!

True, I don't want to get to the point of not being able to shoot because I'm weighing pellets. But, I do love the challenge of wringing what accuracy I can out of my guns. Finding out this tidbit of information (all pellets not being uniform in weight) has REALLY opened my eyes.... Now I know why some pellets shot like &^^&!

Thanks for all the replies, gentlemen.... and a big THANKS to all the previous guys that went this route before me and provided data for the archives!

Dave T.