Pellet Seating Consistency

[Bill_in_TR]

After all these years shooting spring piston air rifles I have finally come to grips with something that probably a lot of you will just say : "Well, duh". But maybe some newcomers out there might get something out of my belated experience.

I have always seated my pellets by just firmly pressing the pellet in with my thumb. I always felt that I was fairly consistent in my seating. But just for the sake of trying something out I did some experimenting. I have some brass arrow points I use for shooting targets with my longbows. They are smooth and round and nicely taper to a point. I lightly filed and sanded one to round off the point just a bit. I have been using this arrow point as a pellet seater. It fits nicely inside the skirt of my pellets. The arrow point is wide enough that it only goes in so far and is stopped by the breech.

The key point is that all pellets are seated well into the breech and always to a consistent depth. What this has done for me is that pellets that did not group well before are suddenly shooting very nicely. My rifle appears to no longer be as pellet fussy. And using this make shift seating tool did not negatively impact pellets that were already shooting well.

For me at least it turns out I have not been near as consistent with finger pressure as I thought. If anyone else out there relies on your fingers to seat a pellet you might want to try something like I did. Maybe it will help.

 

[3Crows]

I chamfered the breech inlet on my two break barrel guns. I found that the pellets would often sit proud and then were damaged by closing the action. I have two of those pellet pens in .177 and .22. Now I can consistently seat the pellets just inside the breech. I did note improved accuracy.

 

[Bill_in_TR]

I had thought about looking into getting a pellet pen. But then just a little while back I was staring at one of my brass pointed arrows and thought that the shape was perfect for pellet seating. And I have plenty of spare brass points. The only negative is that it is a two step process whereas with a pellet pen I assume you insert the pellet and seat it in one operation.

 

[vkeith]

I had thought about looking into getting a pellet pen. But then just a little while back I was staring at one of my brass pointed arrows and thought that the shape was perfect for pellet seating. And I have plenty of spare brass points. The only negative is that it is a two step process whereas with a pellet pen I assume you insert the pellet and seat it in one operation.

Yes, you just stick the pellet pen up to the breech and push the slider clip to load and seat a pellet.

I thought that a pellet pen looked like a good way to manage pellets and make loading easier for my break barrel .22 rifle so I bought one of the Air Venturi .22 pellet pens.

I liked it so much that I now have 8 of them each loaded with different pellet types and weights.

They make carrying and loading pellets so much easier than having to handle individual pellets, especially in the field.

I labeled each of mine with the pellet type and weight for easy referencing.

 

[JohnKSa]

Beeman (back before Crosman bought them) used to sell a pellet seating tool that would both seat a pellet and smooth out irregularities in the skirt. Some people swore by them. I have one, but I never used it that much.

 

[Septicdeath]

A set of steel punches. I will use thumb pressure and then the proper size punch.
Seat your pellet just a tad deeper than the barrel block. You accuracy will improve. I will slack off when target practicing, but when hunting I always seat pellets.

 

[Bill_in_TR]

I did some more experimenting this weekend while I was doing some pellet testing. I tried different implements for seating the pellet. The difference in the profiles of whatever I used made differences in the seating depth. These differences affected the POI of the pellet I was shooting. With my Diana 34 the POI varied as much as two inches at 50 feet with the seating depth. With my HW30S it was about a little over an inch. But the groups in those cases were still better than what I got using finger pressure. It seems that a consistent depth is at least as important as what the depth is.