4.49 or 4.50 - what should I use and why?

[zooma]

Nice shooting Mark, and based on that evidence a reasonable conclusion from Silvershooter to stick with his choice of budget pellets (Hobby)

- but this only shows that good results can be had from less expensive pellets, and that in itself is a very useful reference for us all, and one that Mark has already eluded to in his previous contribution to this debate.

However, the question as to why the manufacturers bother to measure and pack their premium grade pellets of the same type in tins certified to be 4.48, 4.49. 4.50 or 4.51 etc still remains a mystery to me, and even more so when the results we have seen tend to suggest there is firstly no practical reason for the manufacturers to do this, and even less practical reason for the shooters to buy a certain size when they can all work as well as each other - not to be confused with weight or brand that may suite one type of pistol or rifle better than another - or maybe this (weight of pellet) is another "can of worms" to discuss here?

I am guessing the Geco pellets (as usd by Mark) are nominally 4.50, but the tins have no labels on the underside to confirm this? (sorry, I have never used them, so I am only guessing).

[Cones]

Thanks,

That was my best ever 10 shot card.

Yes, the Gecos are not marked for head size.

I suspect the 4.49 / 4.50 designation is more to do with which machine or which die set was used to form the pellets.

I know it is not so critical with a 10m pistol, but even the same make and head size can make a huge difference to the groups at longer ranges with an air rifle. That is why it is often important to get pellets made from the same batch number. With JSB Exact the batch number is written on the same label as the head size.

I suspect with a pistol the only way to check for that TINY improvement between pellets at 10m would be to clamp the pistol and then test fire it at say 25 yards indoors? But I still think the shooter will always be the weakest part of the whole system accuracy.

HTH

Mark

[silvershooter]

Hi zooma, I just measured about 20 Gecos, all were over 4.5 ,some would not pass through at 4.6, btw Gecos are even cheaper than Hobbys.

[zooma]

Methinks I will try some Gecos for myself in my P44 and see what happens - they are certainly worth a try.

[zooma]

Having "dug-out" the old 300S with a view to using it after a rebuild, I have bought a 601 to use during the "down-time" I am expecting to be without it. ( it should be here early this week).

So now for the first time I am interested in a slightly different slant to this debate that has been mainy focused on pellets used in pistols.

I am guessing the Geco/Hobby argument and recommendation is not so strong for use in my new rifle activety as I believe heavier pellets could be better suited - and maybe the 4.50 size could actually be better than the smaller 4.48 and 4.49 sizes?

Any thoughts on using 4.50 R10 Rifle or 4.50 JSB Yellow's?

[silvershooter]

Methinks I will try some Gecos for myself in my P44 and see what happens - they are certainly worth a try.

As they say in the discount stores "Why pay more ?".
An experienced shooter at the club was coaching me, I was using his Matchgun MG1, I thought I had put a pellet in the breach the wrong way, he said it would not matter it would only make a couple of mms difference.

[zooma]

I have my testcard with the Steyr. Was shot with the smaller diameters. 49 or 50 I think.
Usually, pistols prefer smaller sizes, rifles larger.
Not all pistols respond to sizechange by the way. Many dont give any accuracy differences.

Thats Interesting Yana. So far the suggestion is that pistols are not as sensitive to pellet type or size - but maybe rifles are!

Is that because generally rifle pellets are heavier and the barrel is longer?

Would anyone who shoots match rifles at 10 meters (plus) like to contribute to this please?

I am guessing cheap and lightweight pellets such as the GECO and Hobby are not an ideal choice for use with match rifles and maybe the heavier pellets such as R10 and JSB yellow in the 4.50 or 4.51 sizes would be a better option?

[RobinC]

Zooma I'll try and answer.
Rifles? now that is different.

Its not that rifles are more sensitive to size or weight than pistols, it's that the targets are so tight the difference can actually make the difference between a 9 and a ten. The width of the ten at 10 mts is 0.5mm, 20 thou in old money! and with world records running at max possible 400 ex 400 Ladies and 600/600 men, and the top shooters are all capable of shooting that. Good national levels are 380, 570, that's averaging 9.5.
The difference between a 9.5 and a 10 is around 1 mm, any one at that level must look for that last 0.5 mm in group size, its the difference between first and tenth! And to ensure it they must test for group size, and use electronic targets and Scatts to measure it.
The factors at that degree of precision are pellet size, weight, and consistancy, with barrel length, velocity, and cleanliness a factor. Top shooters looking for that degree will clean a barrel after every shoot.
Yana is not quite right, size will be a factor but weight is generally but not always more critical in a rifle, rifle pellets are usualy a bit heavier at around 8.3 gr whilst pistol are usualy around 7gr.
Do ordinary rifle shooter need that degree? Probably not, but would you be happy not knowing wether that squeaky nine was you or the pellet? So we do take care in selecting the pellets.
Interestingly you may not be aware that most of the new air rifle barrels are not a lot longer than pistol barrels, Both mine and my wifes Walthers are shortish barrels with the sight base on a carbon tube, this is done to shorten the lock time as the velocity is optimal in a pistol length barrel, we use RWS R10 4.5 size 8.3 gr weight.
And before you ask, the different weights of rifle pellets make little difference in a pistol, my guidance as I've already said is go for a quality make and try what suits your gun, it may or may not make any difference to a pistol grouping, but a rifle is different purely because of the tightness of the target.
Good shooting
Robin

[RobinC]

Not Quite sure how I duplicated the post! but now I'm here deleting it I'll add some thing else!

Backwards pellets? As an old fart who uses shooting glasses it's not an uncommon thing for me! To see what would happen I did some test groups with the pellet backwards in my Steyr LP2 compact, yep you've guessed, no difference in group size or shot location!
Good shooting
Robin

[zooma]

Hi Robin, thanks for that very informative contribution.

[dieselten]

I would test-shoot any pellets from a rest to see what they were capable of doing in any given weapon, pistol or rifle. FWIW I shoot two FWB 700s, both group equally well with RWS match or R10 but my preference is to use R10 4.5mm pellets weighing 8.2gr. Usually buy a "brick" of ten tins so they're from the same production-run.

That said, the RWS match issued by my club perform extraordinarly well in both rifles. I just prefer the R10.

[j_potter]

couldn't help but notice that the target's dated the first of april

[Cones]

It is.

But it was shot in the evening.

Thanks

Mark

[Cones]

Hi,

Just to add to the discussion a little more.

I did four ten shot strings over the Combro chronograph last night with two different types of pellets.

The first two strings with a 1/4 full air cylinder


Geco

480
487
483
482
493
483
489
488
480
486

R10

496
498
496
500
497
494
493
495
493
496

I then did this again with a full (200Bar) air cylinder fitted.

Geco

477
473
481
478
483
485
483
487
487
481

R10

495
490
487
493
491
490
494
492
492
489

As you can see the Geco's are very slightly slower through the pistol than the R10's are.

Both have the same stated tin weights. But I suspect the R10 is fractionally lighter and this gives the increase in FPS.

The test was done just as a matter of interest to see how the LP10E regulator performed with a full then nearly empty cylinder fitted. As you can see there is hardly any difference!

As I had the two pellet types I though it would be a good test of the variance.

The largest shot to shot change (Gecos) looks to be 11fps which is only 0.022% of the highest (493) velocity reading from that 10 shot string.

On the R10 the largest shot to shot change is 6fps which is only 0.0121% of the highest (495) velocity reading from that 10 shot string.

So yes the R10 looks to be more consistent, but the improvement is only 0.0099% of the velocity range.

You need a bigger sample size to give precise results, but this is enough to convince me that the quality is good enough on the low cost option.

Again with rifles on the far smaller target, this can add up to be way more important than it is with the 10m pistol.

Thanks

Mark

[zooma]

Thanks Mark, have you ever conducted any similar type of tests using the various claimed size options from the same pellet type by any chance?

It would be good to see if any difference could be measured in pellet speed by the use of say a series of 4.49 R10 pellets as opposed to a series shot with the 4.50 size of R10 pellets ( or the 4.48 or 4.51 etc).

The suggestion to be gained from this thread so far is that this declared "sizing" by the manufacturers is a waste of time as it makes no difference at all, but maybe it can affect the speed of the pellet more than we think?