rifling | Air gun blog - Pyramyd Air Report

What’s wrong with solid “pellets”?

Posted on August 26, 2020 by B.B. Pelletier ↓ 115 Comments

by Tom Gaylord
Writing as B.B. Pelletier

This report covers:

Diabolo pellet
The couch coach solution
Tradeoffs
Summary

Today’s report was engendered by yesterday’s report about the AirForce Texan big bore air rifle. Many of you have been discussing the advantages of solid pellets over diabolos

Today I’d like to look at this question a little closer. For starters, let’s call solid pellets what they really are, which is bullets.

A diabolo pellet on the left and a bullet on the right. Let’s call them what they are!

In the 1880s pellets were either solid lead or they were lead with felt glued onto their bottom. In flight the felt caught the air and slowed the slugs down, keeping their nose pointed forward. Just after the turn of the 20th century the invention of the diabolo pellet changed pellets forever. read more

Rifling revolutionized!

Posted on April 1, 2020 by B.B. Pelletier ↓ 79 Comments

by Tom Gaylord
Writing as B.B. Pelletier

This report covers:

Outside the box
Rosenthal award
Rifling
How it works
Outside rifling?
Accuracy
Range increased by orders of magnitude!
Trouble brews
What is to come?
Rumors are flying!
Summary

Outside the box

I’m sure you have heard the phrase, “Think outside the box.” Many organizations don’t really want their people to do that. The organization just wants their employees to enlarge the box a little, but to continue to respect the time-honored principals that got the organization to where it is today.

Rosenthal award

But there are exceptions. In engineering there is an annual Sol Rosenthal Award for the creative idea that best advances its technology that year. Unlike many awards, there is only one caveat to this one. A prototype of the idea must be implemented, so it can be compared to an existing reality that can be measured. read more

The invention of rifling: Part 1

Posted on September 21, 2015 by B.B. Pelletier ↓ 61 Comments

by Tom Gaylord
Writing as B.B. Pelletier

The history of airguns

This report covers:

Nobody knows when rifling was invented
What is rifling?
The first rifling
Gunpowder leaves dirt in the bore
Minie Ball
Trapdoor Springfield development
Ballard rifling
Airgun rifling

Nobody knows when rifling was invented

I’ve been reading about guns for 56 years and the one subject that has always baffled the experts is rifling. When was it invented? By whom? What gave them the idea? One thing is certain — the Wiki piece on rifling is entirely fabricated. It says “Rifling was invented in Augsberg, Germany, at the end of the 15th century. It would be wonderful if that were true, but the fact is nobody knows where, when or why rifling came into being. To be fair to Wiki, I have read other accounts that claim people in the 1400s were thinking of spinning a ball for stability in flight because they knew the fletches on arrows stabilized them the same way. The truth is, though, no one knows for certain when rifling came into being. It is entirely possible it came from several locations around the same time.

What is rifling?

Rifling is a set of parallel raised ridges called lands and grooves that run down the inner bore of a barrel. Today these lands and grooves run in a spiral path relative to the bore’s axis, but that wasn’t always the case. The purpose of the grooves and the lands that stand up between them is to spin the bullet to impart gyroscopic stabilization as it flies through the air. I will talk more about the specifics of that stabilization as this report progresses.

Cross section of a rifled bore.

The first rifling

Back in the 1960s I read somewhere that the first rifling was straight. The lands and grooves ran parallel to the axis of the bore. This was an attempt to keep the bore of a gun clear of deposits, so the gun could be shot longer before cleaning was required.

Gunpowder leaves dirt in the bore

The gunpowder of that era is what we call black powder today. It generates a residue of no less than 55 percent of the solid mass of its initial volume. Some of this is seen in the dense smoke that comes out of the muzzle. The rest of the residue is in the form of deposits that remain in the bore of the gun. A black powder gun can get so dirty that you cannot ram a ball down the bore in as few as 5 shots.

Early shooters compensated by loading smaller balls as the bore clogged up, but that solution wasn’t good. Cleaning black powder deposits from the bore of a gun takes many minutes and requires the use of water. Water left inside the barrel will ruin the next powder charge that gets loaded. So the barrel had to be thoroughly dried between cleanings. A better solution needed to be found.

Straight scratches that run down the inside of the bore were tried, in the hopes that the deposits would collect in them and leave the main bore free for more shots. It must have worked to some extent, because many gun makers started doing it. Then someone had the brilliant idea to cut the scratches in a spiral. That made them longer than the length of the bore, providing more space to hold gunpowder residue. And when they did that it wasn’t long before they noticed a marked improvement in the accuracy of the barrels rifled this way. What I am describing now took many years to unfold. It wasn’t an overnight phenomenon. But it did catch on, and then it began to evolve. Rifling took on many shapes over the next few centuries, as inventors tried every possible thing. The width of the lands and grooves was varied to see what worked best.

This early Kentucky rifle (1730-1750) had wide lands and narrow grooves that were deep. It didn’t work too well.

Here’s some aggressive rifling!

As the centuries passed, barrel makers learned that the lands were what spun the ball (all the bullets were still lead balls at this time). Someone (in Prussia ?) discovered that a ball that was inside a tight-fitting thin leather patch would be easier to load, because the ball could be smaller than the bore and the patch would make up the difference.

That idea came to the American colonies within a few short years, where it rapidly evolved into the famous Kentucky rifle that shot a patched bullet — a round ball enclosed in a tight-fitting cloth patch that filled the rifling and spun the ball. The patch cleaned the deposits from the bore both at loading, when it was rammed down the barrel, and again when it was shot.

The Kentucky rifle was a huge advance in firearms because it allowed the use of smaller bullets (balls), because of the tight-fitting patch. A longer barrel allowed the rifle to extract all of the energy that was in the gun powder, so the rifle shot harder than ever. And it was also more accurate. Accuracy, speed, power and economy of powder and lead. These are all the things that the Kentucky rifle brought to the table. And rifling continued to advance.

Minie Ball

If it seems odd to call a round ball a bullet, it must also seem odd to call a conical bullet a ball, but that is exactly what the Minie Ball is. Claude Minie and Henri Delvigne came up with a bullet in 1849 that had an iron cup in its base. The bullet was smaller than the rifle’s bore, so it loaded easily, but when the gun fired, the iron cup was driven into the base of the bullet, expanding it to fit the rifling tightly.

Later it was discovered that the bullet would expand if the base was simply left hollow. That simplified its construction. The Minie Ball is one of the earliest successful conical bullets and the hollow base variation of it was widely used during the American Civil War, where it took rifling to the next level. Military leaders learned that conical bullets were far more accurate than plain round balls at long distances. The Civil War has several instances of sniper kills at greater than a half mile distance. These were not with Minie Balls however.

These are not true Minie balls. They are a second-generation bullet that has a hollow base to expand into the rifling. They are fast-loading and keep the bore cleaner than patched balls.

In truth conical bullets were already in use among riflemen before the Minie Ball arrived on the scene, but the success of that projectile helped everyone realize the day of the conical bullet had arrived. After the Civil War the United States military embarked on a program to develop an accurate breechloading rifle that used the new self-contained cartridges. I may have to write a separate report about the development of the U.S. Rifle Model 1873, which is better known as the Trapdoor Springfield. Its development lasted over 8 years and went through several iterations of designs before settling on the final rifle and cartridge. It is the work on the cartridge, however that interests us today.

Trapdoor Springfield development read more

How does rifling twist rate affect velocity and/or accuracy? Part 13

Posted on July 24, 2013 by B.B. Pelletier ↓ 35 Comments

by Tom Gaylord, a.k.a. B.B. Pelletier

Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4
Part 5
Part 6
Part 7
Part 8
Part 9
Part 10
Part 11
Part 12

This is the summary report in this series. I’ll give you my thoughts on how this test went, and I expect you to comment, as well.

The barrels
Three barrels were used in this test. One was the factory barrel that comes with the .22-caliber AirForce Talon SS. It’s a 12-inch Lothar Walther barrel that has a choke of about a half-thousandth inch reduction in the bore diameter for the final 2 inches of length. That makes all the pellets of uniform size as they leave the muzzle, and it may potentially stop any in-bore wobble. This barrel has the standard airgun twist rate of 1-turn-in-16-inches of bore travel, written as 1:16″.

The other 2 barrels were made by Dennis Quackenbush. Neither barrel is choked. One is a 1:12″ twist; the other is a 1:22″ twist. They’re also about 12-inches long and are held in the gun by AirForce Talon SS barrel bushings. Several comments have suggested that because these barrels are different than the Lothar Walther barrel, this test is somehow not fair. But the results of all the shooting prove otherwise. Sure, there are variations from barrel to barrel, depending on the power used and which pellet was shot. But the results are so close between all 3 barrels that whatever differences there might be are overridden by the similarities. In other words, I’m suggesting that if Lothar Walther had made all 3 barrels, there would be similar differences.

Talon SS precharged air rifle twist rate test 3 barrels
The 3 barrels used in the test. Factory barrel in the middle.

I believe the twist rates are what drive the results. We weren’t searching for the most accurate barrel in this test. We were looking for behavior changes as conditions were changed. And we got that.

Velocity
The first thing that was tested was velocity. Both pellets — the 14.3-grain Crosman Premiers and the 15.9-grain JSB Exact Jumbo were shot from all 3 barrels at each of 3 predetermined power settings. These settings were marked on the gun so they were kept constant throughout the test.

Talon SS power settings
The power settings were the power indicator screw all the way to the left (the lowest setting), and the power screw centered on each mark (settings 6 and 10).

07-24-13-01-Velocity-table

I reviewed the velocity for you in Part 8. Here’s a summary of that report.

In all cases, the velocity increased the most between power setting zero and setting 6. The velocity increase from setting 6 to setting 10 was always smaller than the increase from setting zero to setting 6, and that’s irrespective of the twist rate or which pellet was shot.

What you’re seeing here is the slowing down of the rate of velocity increase as the air flow increases. That’ll become clear in a moment when I discuss the rifle’s maximum velocity potential.

As the twist rate slowed (1:22″ is slower than 1:12″), the velocity increased at most power settings with most pellets. There was one instance with the 1:22″ barrel when the JSB Exact pellet actually went 2 f.p.s. slower at setting 10 than at setting 6; but with all other barrels and pellets, there was always a velocity increase as the power setting went higher.

Focusing on the 1:22″ barrel for a moment, we see that the velocity increases between setting 6 and setting 10 were not as great as they were in either the factory (1:16″) barrel or the 1:12″ barrel. This suggests what we have suspected all along — that the twist rate of the barrel does slow down the pellet as it gets tighter. And we can see from this test that the phenomenon is most apparent at the lower power settings. At the higher power settings, the differences seem to shrink, indicating that the influence of the power setting is overriding the influence of the twist rate. I believe this is an important finding, and it sets up the next observation, which is that the top velocity of the gun was fairly close for all 3 barrels, regardless of the twist rate. The type of pellet made more difference to the top velocity than the barrel twist rate did.

It should be obvious from these results that the Talon SS powerplant has upper limits that cannot be exceeded by forcing more compressed air through the barrel. This illustrates the relationship between barrel length and velocity in a pneumatic airgun.

A second thing I found interesting is that power setting 6 is very close in performance to power setting 10. In the case of the 1:22″ twist barrel, it’s remarkably close…but it’s close for all three barrels. A prudent airgunner might consider this when setting the power wheel adjustment on his Talon SS, knowing that a lower setting uses less air, yet gives velocity that isn’t that much slower.

A third thing is that the velocity performance of the 1:22″ barrel is so good at power setting 6 that it makes power setting 10 useless. Take that thought just a little farther, and you’ll see that all power settings above setting 10 are pretty much a waste of air in a Talon SS with a 12-inch barrel, regardless of which pellet you use.

Accuracy testing
Next, I tested all 3 barrels with both pellets shot at all 3 power levels at 10 meters (11 yards) and 25 yards. Following that, I tested all 3 barrels and both pellets, again, at 50 yards, only I didn’t use the zero power setting. This was where my eyes were opened regarding the effects of twist rate.

Accuracy table final

I analyzed the accuracy in 2 different reports. One (Part 9) was the 10-meter and 25-yard accuracy and the other (Part 12) was the 50-yard accuracy, alone. Now, with the table above we can combine these results and analyze all the accuracy data together.

The first observation I’ll make is that at 10 meters, I got 10-shot groups that ranged from as small as 0.092 inches to as large as 0.578 inches. The factory barrel gave the best results with the JSB pellet; but with the Premier, it was the 1:22-inch twist that did the best. Curiously, that pellet and twist rate didn’t seem to change that much as the power was increased (at 10 meters). With all other barrels and pellets, the group size did change a lot as the power changed.

It’s too simple to say the factory barrel with the 1:16-inch twist rate is the best; but of the 3 twist rates in this test, it certainly is the most flexible across the board. However, you’ll notice that the 1:12-inch twist barrel did shoot the best single group (with JSB Exact pellets) at 50 yards. That group is so close to the Crosman Premier group shot by the 1:16-inch barrel that I can’t call a clear winner — BUT — here is what I CAN say. The Quackenbush 1:12-inch twist barrel is certainly capable of shooting 50-yard groups at least as tight as those shot by the Lother Walther barrel; and in my mind, that puts the barrel-equivalency question to rest.

Another observation is that the 1:22-inch twist barrel was just as good at 10 meters as the other 2 barrels, in general, but look at how the groups opened at 50 yards! That says something very strong about the relationship of the twist rate to accuracy. And it also brings up a second observation.

Premier pellets and JSB pellets performed differently throughout this test. Just look at the 50-yard results for Premiers and JSBs with the 1:12-inch twist barrel, and you’ll see what I mean. This is one more bit of evidence that barrels have preferences for certain pellets.

Final observation
This will be my final remark in this series of reports, and it does not come from the data collected in this test but from the 5-part test of the Diana model 25 smoothbore. In that test, we saw that the smoothbore was able to place 10

JSB Exact RS read more

How does rifling twist rate affect velocity and/or accuracy: Part 12

Posted on July 9, 2013 by B.B. Pelletier ↓ 68 Comments

by Tom Gaylord, a.k.a. B.B. Pelletier

Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4
Part 5
Part 6
Part 7
Part 8
Part 9
Part 10
Part 11

Today, I’ll report on the final test in this series. This isn’t the final report — just the final test, which is the barrel with the 1:12″ twist, shooting at 50 yards. Get ready to be surprised. I know I was!

I did this test on the same perfect day as the factory barrel that was reported last week in Part 10, and the weather was perfect most of the time. From time to time, there was a very slight breeze that I waited out before shooting. The shooting conditions were as good as they get.

Changing barrels took 5 minutes. The silver barrel has the 1:12″ twist.

I used the same two pellets we’ve been shooting all along, and they were shot at power settings 6 and 10…just like the other 2 barrels that went before. The gun was shot while resting on a sandbag that’s very stable. When the tank was filled or the power was changed, I always shot one shot to settle the valve. Experience tells me that’s all that’s needed.

The tank was filled to 3,000 psi.

Power setting 10
I first shot both pellets on power setting 10. And 14.3-grain Crosman Premiers were hitting low and to the left. One of them only nicked the target paper, so I photographed the target before taking it off the backer paper, so you could see the complete group.

Here are the two 10-shot groups of Premiers. Notice that they’re hitting to the right of the aim point, which is the center of the bull they touch. The group shot on power setting 10 is at the top, and it shows why I like to use backer paper when shooting at 50 yards.

Premiers on power setting 10 gave this 2.577-inch group. See the nick on the right edge of the target paper? I had to guess a little for this measurement, but it isn’t too far off.

Then it was time to test the 15.9-grain JSB Exact Jumbo 15.9-grain pellet on power setting 10. This is where the surprise comes! Ten pellets made a 1.259-inch group! If you check back with the results the factory barrel gave, you’ll see that this group is very close to the best group made by the factory barrel (1.153″ for 10 shots with the same JSB pellet on power setting 6), and it’s equal to the group that was shot on power setting 10 (1.283″). This addresses a question many of have had from the beginning of this test — namely, are the Quackenbush barrels equal to the Lothar Walther barrel?

JSB Jumbo 15.9-grain domes on power setting 10 gave this 1.259-inch group. This shows that the 1:12″ barrel can be accurate at 50 yards. read more

How does rifling twist rate affect velocity and/or accuracy? Part 11

Posted on July 3, 2013 by B.B. Pelletier ↓ 41 Comments

by Tom Gaylord, a.k.a. B.B. Pelletier

Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4
Part 5
Part 6

Part 7 read more

How does rifling twist rate affect velocity and/or accuracy? Part 10

Posted on June 26, 2013 by B.B. Pelletier ↓ 39 Comments

by Tom Gaylord, a.k.a. B.B. Pelletier

Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4
Part 5
Part 6
Part 7
Part 8
Part 9

Today, we’ll begin looking at the effects of the rifling twist rate on the accuracy of our test AirForce Talon SS rifle in .22 caliber at 50 yards. If you’re prone to jumping to conclusions before all the data is in, I have to caution you that today’s test will look bad because I’m testing the custom barrel that has the 1:22″ rifling twist. We know from the earlier tests that this barrel was most accurate at 10 meters on power levels zero and 6. Above that power level and also out at 25 yards, the accuracy of this twist rate broke down. So, it would be reasonable to assume that this barrel will give results that are even worse at 50 yards.

That didn’t stop me from trying my hardest to shoot well. I was able to watch each pellet go into the target paper because of the distance, and that was disconcerting when the pellets landed so far from the aim point and from each other. Let’s take a look at how the rifle did.

The day was nearly perfect, as it has to be to get good accuracy from pellets at 50 yards. The air was calm, except for some light breezes from time to time. I was able to work around these breezes and get the results I was after.

I decided not to test the rifle on zero power because of the long distance to the target. Any breeze would have so much time to blow the pellets off course that I felt it wouldn’t prove anything. So, both pellets were shot on power levels 6 and 10. That’s how I’ll test all 3 barrels.

You may remember that this barrel produced velocities that were very close to each other at power levels 6 and 10. With 14.3-grain Crosman Premiers, the respective velocities were 840/854 f.p.s.; and with 15.9-grain JSB Exact Jumbos, the velocities were 817/815 f.p.s. We expect the pellets in this test to go to the same place on the target, and I would expect the two groups for each pellet to be pretty similar in size.

Crosman Premiers
I started with Crosman Premiers and the power set to 10. I did not adjust the scope since completing the 25-yard accuracy test and the center of the group landed about 3.9 inches below the aim point. Ten pellets went into a group that measures 2.04 inches between centers.

Ten Crosman Premiers went into 2.04 inches at 50 yards on power setting 10. The center of this group was about 3.90 inches below the aim point with the scope set for 25 yards. The pellet at the top center is part of another group — not this one. I did account for the full size of the pellet on the left that just clipped the edge of the target paper.

On power setting 6, the center of the group also struck the target 3.90 inches below the aim point. These measurements of the groups are just approximate since the center of each group was difficult to locate precisely. The 10-shot group size on power setting 6 was 2.607 inches between centers. This is slightly larger than the group shot on power setting 10.

Ten Crosman Premiers went into 2.607 inches at 50 yards on power setting 6. The pellet hole at the lower right is not part of this group.

JSB Exact Jumbo
Next, it was time to test the JSB Exact Jumbo pellet. I started with power setting 10. The center of the group landed about 4.25 inches below the aim point.

Ten pellets shot on power setting 10 went into a group that measures 2.509 inches between centers. The group is much taller than it is wide.

Ten JSB Exact Jumbo pellets went into 2.509 inches at 50 yards on power setting 10. The group is taller than it is wide for reasons unknown. read more