TargetTalk

No big deal heirmax. That is what the forum is for -- talk. If a person is never going to make a mistake it is because they never post.

And if you think about testing ammo for AP, go read that interview with Ragnar Skanaker. Somewhat shortened excerpt, from memory: Q: Will special ammo improve your score? A (after some thinking): Maybe, if you're a very good shooter... Q: What ammo do you shoot yourself? A: The cheapest, of course!

oldcaster wrote:No big deal heirmax. That is what the forum is for -- talk. If a person is never going to make a mistake it is because they never post.

Yep. But referring to my question: is plate the name of the thing at which I shoot (and try to hit the inner-circle)?
Max

hiermax wrote:Yep. But referring to my question: is plate the name of the thing at which I shoot (and try to hit the inner-circle)?

Do you mean the square card "target" or the round dark "black" in the middle of it?

Anonymous wrote:And if you think about testing ammo for AP, go read that interview with Ragnar Skanaker. Somewhat shortened excerpt, from memory: Q: Will special ammo improve your score? A (after some thinking): Maybe, if you're a very good shooter... Q: What ammo do you shoot yourself? A: The cheapest, of course!

Typical trite answer of no use to anyone. Just because Ragnar Skanakar did something different to other top shooters (or rather said he did) doesn't make that the right thing to do. But hey if you don't want to shoot the best ammo for your gun then that's fine, I however prefer to use the optimum equipment and ammo for the job.

Rob.

David Levene wrote:

hiermax wrote:Yep. But referring to my question: is plate the name of the thing at which I shoot (and try to hit the inner-circle)?

Do you mean the square card "target" or the round dark "black" in the middle of it?

I mean that square card made of paper.
Max

By no means to cause any disrespect to the many opinions.

If my gun were to shoot a 12mm group of 5 shots, when I know it can do under 7mm, given the same pellets, would that not cause any doubts? I believe that part of the process of learning and affirming is that you would be able to call your shots; and as such, given a batch of pellets, it is a responsible shooter's "duty" to maximize or make full use of each equipments' capabilities. In this light, given that your shot should have been a 9.5mm, with a 12mm group, that could potentially give you a 10....or an 8. Or, if in the finals, and Wang Yi Fu shot a 6.7 (?), it could have been a 6.2 or a 7.2. Or, another way of looking at it, why not get a Daisy instead, it's significantly cheaper and it would probably make the same 12mm group anyways.

hiermax wrote:I mean that square card made of paper.

Target

David Levene wrote:

hiermax wrote:I mean that square card made of paper.

Target

Uuh, that simple. As a non native-speaker I often think quite inconvenient. Maybe that´s because in the german language we very often use different words for almost same things. This AP-target would be named "Scheibe" in german (the word translated in english would read "slice" or "plate" :-)
Thx
Max

I'm still not fully understanding the "it doesn't make any difference" point of view.

If a shooter can hold, say, the nine ring (or 8 or whatever area you want to use), but the equipment shoots, let's say, 3mm wider groups than the "best" available, from just a statistical point of view (seems to me as I visualize it), there will be more shots that hit wide to lower score than hit closer for better score (the rings are round and higher scores are obviously smaller area than lower -- no?). If a clean target requires, say, a 20.5mm hold with a "perfect" equipment combination, what hold does it require with one less perfect?

As another thought, from a mental game point of view, if the goal is to always shoot tens, what do you do with the 9 (or less ;) ) just so close to the ring that it might be you or might be the cheap pellets? Likewise with a "wide" ten that maybe should be a 9? While I agree with the concept that as soon as a shooter starts getting more into equipment than shooting, the shooting is lost, what we are really talking about here is best possible accuracy and that quest necessarily includes equipment.

Maybe futzing around with pellet testing is not something instead of training, it's part of the process needed to build confidence while training?

Hey, don't get me wrong - go spend your money. The industry will be happy, and so will your competitors - the time you spend testing ammo is of no use whatsoever for your result. We put 100 shots assorted stuff from H&N Club to heavy RWS R10 through my LP10, and the overall group is around 8-9mm. Other people did the same with their Morinis and Hammerlis, so it can't be an isolated event. But, of course, believing is everything.

buy a good quality sizer you may get a shock at how poor your favorite pellet is i size RWS RN10's and they can be atrocious size wise the ones i use are 4.51 my sizer is 4.52 the pellets stick out of the top some drop nearly through it .
some may say well your sizer could be out but at the price it cost i dont think so
welcome to winter

LeLongCarabine wrote:buy a good quality sizer you may get a shock at how poor your favorite pellet is i size RWS RN10's and they can be atrocious size wise the ones i use are 4.51 my sizer is 4.52 the pellets stick out of the top some drop nearly through it .

pellets are made in head sizes 4.48. 4.49. 4.495, 4.50, 4.51, 4.52.

These are the head sizes that fit onto the rifling in your barrel. The skirt is always bigger than the head, which is why you can have a pellet hold in really tight group. the skirt is thinner so that it blows out with the air pulse behind it to fill into the grooves can allow no air leakage.

Also, to my knowledge, most sizers are made 4.52, so they are not changin anything regarding accuracy, just making you feel good.

Someone in our group had a 4.49 sizer. Can't remember if it was factory or home built and we all tried it and it made no difference at all as pilkguns said above.

I thought pellet sizers died in the 1980s when they were just a gimmick. I use my barrel to do the sizing.

By the way, my best ever score in an air pistol match (577) was done with Gamo Match, at a time I had factory batch tested RWS R10s, but left them at home by mistake!

If you still think that testing pellets is worth while then make sure you actually do it by batches. don't just decide that say 4.49 R10 are the ones as each batch produces different results (but the difference is so small, it might effect a 585 shooter.

Try this: The next time you have your air pistol in a machine rest (please don't anyone say they used a sandbag or anything like that!), put some of your favourite pellets in backwards, you'll still get a 10 ring group, then try squashing some... get my drift.

pilkguns wrote:

LeLongCarabine wrote:buy a good quality sizer you may get a shock at how poor your favorite pellet is i size RWS RN10's and they can be atrocious size wise the ones i use are 4.51 my sizer is 4.52 the pellets stick out of the top some drop nearly through it .

pellets are made in head sizes 4.48. 4.49. 4.495, 4.50, 4.51, 4.52.

These are the head sizes that fit onto the rifling in your barrel. The skirt is always bigger than the head, which is why you can have a pellet hold in really tight group. the skirt is thinner so that it blows out with the air pulse behind it to fill into the grooves can allow no air leakage.

Also, to my knowledge, most sizers are made 4.52, so they are not changin anything regarding accuracy, just making you feel good.

This is consistent with my (admitedly limited) understanding of this aspect of how mechanical accuracy is achieved. The pellet (or bullet or whatever it is we want to send down range) has to enter the rifling with its center aligned with the center of the bore. With enough force behind it, if it enters or "jumps" to the rifling in any way off center, the projectile can actually enter the rifling slightly off center, be thus engraved (deformed really) by the rifling unequally, and travel down the bore that way leading to inconsistent results on target.

I can see where the head size would play a part in this. The skirt would be sized by the chamber of the gun prior to firing so a "presizing" step seems irrelevant.

So as long as the head size is "right" for the gun and is consistent, and the skirt is big enough to fill the chamber on loading, sizing individual pellets would be a complete waste of time or even detrimental to improved accuracy. Is this about right?

I have on occasions suspected that I had put a pellet in backwards yet it still went where it was pointed, so at one club shoot a couple of us just for fun shot strings of ten backwards.
The result? groups the same size, in the same place, and with scores on my average!
Wish this damn snow would move on so I can get out more instead of playing on here all day!
Best regards and good shooting
Robin

The skirt would be sized by the chamber of the gun prior to firing so a "presizing" step seems irrelevant.

Picture found at http://adg.h1.ru/p/46izh.htm

Comparison of traces of rifling.

You can see on the left a spent pellet after going through a 6-side polygonal-rifled barrel and through the standard rifling of a IZH-46 air pistol on the right.

Should the head of a pellet go through the riffling, or just the skirt?

paulo wrote:Should the head of a pellet go through the riffling, or just the skirt?

Hi Paulo, they both touch/engrave.

Tony G