Sorting Pellets and Slugs?

[M Volle]

I reached a point where my process improved enough that I felt comfortable that, while still rookie class, I was seeing groups that were inconsistent and not completely "my fault"

I decided to weigh some of my pellets and slugs to see if the variance should be significant at 50M. I was just shooting from the tin and while my gun seems to like the JSB Exact King Heavy MK II 33.95 gr in 25 cal. groups weren't improving over time.

I measured full or mostly fulll tin amounts of the pellets and slugs I have - many surprises -

Trying to move to 100M range it seems like I will have to do some sorting and maybe learn about resizing - how tightly do people group their slugs for good groups?
Is it practical to resize several styles and types of slugs of do I need to settle on the best ones for my gun first?

As can be seen, the ZAN slugs showed the tightest weight range but even in the same line from the same manufacturer, the range differed a lot from weight to weight

Does this seem in line with what others are seeing?

 

[dgeesaman]

Pellets and slugs are quite different animals I think.

Slugs have a lot of surface in contact with the barrel, so while the pressure and barrel will size the slug on the way down the barrel that work is a huge variable that affects accuracy. I’m aware that some slug shooters are resizing their slugs and testing in increments of much less than .001” and finding that the slug diameter should be sized to match the preference of the barrel.

Pellets are less sensitive to that but I have found that head size is still important. So if you’re going to sort pellets I’d start with head size and visual inspection to remove bad pellets. Weight sorting is pretty easy so that’s common but I have not found the heaviest and lightest to shoot much differently. I encourage you to take the five heaviest and five lightest and shoot them in a 10 shot group to compete against a ten shot group from the middle weight range.

I also find that sorting methods fall into two levels of expectation: sorting to eliminate oddballs and sorting to divide the good ones into smaller groups that are gooder. I have not found much benefit with the latter approach but if I were competing seriously the former is quite valid. You don’t want to lose a point at a major match because of a bad pellet that would have been easily spotted.

David