Barrel "Conditioning".

[airgunnut]

I have lost count of the number of times I have seen shooters on a sighting in range with four or five different makes of pellets opened in front of them, taking five or so shots with each type and then saying that their gun is not grouping.

Whenever a brand of pellets is changed (sometimes even different batches of the same pellet) or if the barrel has been cleaned then the barrel has to be "conditioned" to that particular pellet by putting at least ten shots (I do 20 to be on the safe side) through it before trying a group.

Different brands of pellets have different percentages of elements in them which affect hardness, coefficient of friction, B.C's etc which all have an effect.

Just thought a "Heads-Up" on this subject might stop a bit of frustration....

Neil

i agree and it annoys the heck out of me, same as the so-and-so's who say they can zero a scope in, in 5 shots and claim they never have any fliers

[austin870]

I personally don't buy into the barrel conditioning thing on springers. Although I pull a couple of patches through every 250 or so rounds I can't honestly say even cleaning does anything. With that said none of my guns is particularly "finicky" or sensitive. I guess there are pellet guns, like rimfires, that really need to be bedded because they are so sensitive to conditions.

I have 5 springers and I can shoot ten different kinds of ammo for over 100 rounds and then put my guns favorite in and it will group exactly the same.

When accuracy falls off I look to my scope rings/mount first. There are some days I flat cannot hang with the accuracy level of the gun. This is especially true when I jump from gun to gun. With a springer the follow through is absolutely critical and no easy thing to do consistently even from a rest.

I will say it is VERY noticeable with rimfire shooting. I just don't think the pellet lube etc is near as dense and saturating as the greasy stuff they use on rimfires.