Zan .177 22 and 24 gr slugs

[steve123]

I tried the 24 grainers this summer, on a short distance ( 55 M ) they do fine, and will make a hole in a 20 foot container hitting the same place a few times, also sort of do that on a long distance ( 120 M )
But long they do arrive sideways so not good in that sense.

As you can see on the left not desirable hole shape.
But that’s a 2" target at 120 M, i do not recall speed here, but i have no doubt it was +900 FPS, and the rifle my Two.

Probably need a faster twist barrel.

It'd be a expensive project but one could source a faster twist custom .172 firearm barrel(Lilja??) then cast or swage heavy .172 slugs.

 

[Peashooter]

Indeed the CZ barrel in my Two the twist are just 1:17.7 and no choke

Also its not like i was going to shoot 20 - 22 - 24 grain all the time CUZ i only have 120 Meters of range and even 10 grain will do that enjoyable, and 13 & 16 just fine.
But i was thinking it could be nice to be able to, maybe join some of those long range challenges with the little caliber.
I will take being able to shoot 1/2" groups at 100 fairly consistent, and i have not been able to do that with my Maverock or the new two, i can get there but still need a little luck i feel.
And i am hoping a little more spin on things might bring me the rest of the way

 

[Coors]

@Peashooter Thanks very much for sharing that info. It's exactly what I wanted to know. Any idea who might make a faster rate of twist .177 barrel? I have not got to go to the range with the NSA 20.5's yet. They might shoot similarly to what you did show. They are however shooting into a super tight hole at 13 yards in my basement range. And how are you liking the Epic Arms Two?

 

[Scotay42]

Alpha precision make a 1:14

 

[Peashooter]

Me and the two had a bumpy start, ordered with LW barrel but it had a choke inthe middle 25% of the 700 mm long barrel, got a CZ instead which is butter smooth every mm of the barrel.
Epic took real good care of me.
I have also had some issues around the valve, but i am still not quite sure what it is though, epic been great and i have 3 valves + a spare valve pin.
But it seem like 15.000 - 20.000 shots is about the limit for a single valve, or that is of course not the entire valve but i think maybe the jet part, which after that many shots do display some wear and tear.

But i only shoot the Two, dont even look at my other rifles, but i am thinking about bringing in a new one, but really it have to be something special on the barrel part, or it will pretty much just be more of what i already have.
ATM i have a good eye to the Macavity MA8 but for that to work it would probably have to be ordered with the 1:16 FX barrel

 

[Peashooter]

Yeah there is the Alpha 1:14.6 barrel, https://alfa-precision.net/demo/tproduct/436390175-312932878491-barrel-blank-cal-177-45mm-standard

But as i remember they claim these regular barrels to be pellet barrels, but on the other hand it is the same kind of rifling as in my CZ barrel, and my Two CZ barrel is better with 16 grain and up Zan slugs than my Maverick with the heavy barrel, that i can not get to shoot 16 grain Zan as well as it shoot 13, but others do have better luck than me with those, and according to viking airgunner on YT the new 1:16 look promising at least with 16gr H&N slugs.
H&N in any weight i have never been able to shoot good.

I have 22 gr Zan and 20.5 NSA i have not yet tried in my two, will do that when more comfortable weather arrive.

 

[rigbymauser]

I also tried the 24grain ZANs in the Revere with no luck. But as written in many post the 22grain works wonders. I believe ZANs should try to alter the ogive to 1 rather than the .5 the slugs have now. That would still work if the gun one have shoots ZANs well enough already.

Thanks for sharing P shooter. Get a barrel with a faster twist. The barrel have to be “chambered”for the longer slug so it doesn’t engage in the rifling when chambered…unless the ogive is changed.

 

[JaceSpace1369]

Probably need a faster twist barrel.

It'd be a expensive project but one could source a faster twist custom .172 firearm barrel(Lilja??) then cast or swage heavy .172 slugs.

Alpha precision (yes I know they are russian) makes 1:14.6 and 1:15twist barrel blanks both Lw and Poly.

 

[JaceSpace1369]

Yeah there is the Alpha 1:14.6 barrel, https://alfa-precision.net/demo/tproduct/436390175-312932878491-barrel-blank-cal-177-45mm-standard

But as i remember they claim these regular barrels to be pellet barrels, but on the other hand it is the same kind of rifling as in my CZ barrel, and my Two CZ barrel is better with 16 grain and up Zan slugs than my Maverick with the heavy barrel, that i can not get to shoot 16 grain Zan as well as it shoot 13, but others do have better luck than me with those, and according to viking airgunner on YT the new 1:16 look promising at least with 16gr H&N slugs.
H&N in any weight i have never been able to shoot good.

I have 22 gr Zan and 20.5 NSA i have not yet tried in my two, will do that when more comfortable weather arrive.

They claim them to be pellet barrels because they have a super heavy choke, all you gotta do is cut the choke and recrown.

Also Aselkon makes 1:15 twist barrels. @thammer sorry to bother you, do you have faster twist barrels in .177? 1:16 and under

Edit: why do I keep getting these messsages.

 

[JaceSpace1369]

View attachment 537976

I now have NSA 20.5s and I'm tuning this airgun for them. I had over 60fpe for 3x shots but I moved on to a 1129.6fps for 5x shots, 10fps spread tune and that's a bit over 58fpe. I've since been tuning it around 1110fps and got a crazy 13 x shots over a 14fps spread.

Have you tried the Mr Hollowpoint 29gr slugs?

22 cal to 375 cal & Balls

22 cal $25 per 50 Standard diameter .217 25 Cal $25 Per 50 Standard diameter .251 I can size the diameters to...

mrhollowpoint.com

 

[bowopt]

Are any of you guys having barrel leading problems? This is the first thing that came to my mind.

How many shots before it's time to clean or the precision degrades?

On my FX heavy liner shooting slugs. I found that I got slightly better accuracy with clean barrel. So I clean my barrel by pulling just 1 dry patch every 100 or 150 shots. But it's not a magic number. I'm sure that some barrels perform well when it's dirty.

 

[steve123]

On my FX heavy liner shooting slugs. I found that I got slightly better accuracy with clean barrel. So I clean my barrel by pulling just 1 dry patch every 100 or 150 shots. But it's not a magic number. I'm sure that some barrels perform well when it's dirty.

Thanks for sharing.

However I'm specifically asking about .177 slugs going fast because a friend uses Gunzilla and his barrel still leads up quickly enough with 20 grainers that he doesn't shoot them much. They shoot great at first then by some point the precision falls apart.

I shoot slugs in my 22 and 25 and I can go hundreds of shots before I need to run patches.

 

[Arzrover]

Heavy 177s are definitely interesting...
To be more accurate, Steve, the fouling I experience isn't leading. NSA uses a silicone coating, afik, that somehow reacts with the pressure and the hardness of his slugs to create SOMETHING in the bore that REALLY drags on the slug. The velocity drops significantly after only about 10 shots in my RW and accuracy STARTS to deteriorate. Giving a couple to season the bore, I get 2 phenomenal groups @ 100 then it starts to open as the velocity drops. Only scrubbing with JB Bore will get rid of the dragging ... These are the 20.5 gn NSA 177s. I've experimented with different lubes, including HBN but nothing really extends that much. More experiments are required, it seems...
One thing only touched on here is twist rate. From using different calclators, it seems that a 1 in 13 would be perfect with a 1 in 14 being still stable and useable for the 20 gn NSA's. Going heavier than that would definitely require the faster twist. I don't have any barrels in my pile that are faster than 1 in 16, so I've kind of let the project drift away and been playing with the NSA 18.9s in 20 cal the most. They are quite fun, don't have the same fouling drag issue(likely because of less bore friction) and will do quite well out to my own range limit of 208 yards.
So it SEEMS like I was operating on the stability edge for the 20.5s and when I created the thread "Happy pills" we were using some 20.2 hand swaged NSA's that were pure lead, not the high speed machine harder lead in most of his offerings. The Zan's or similar might be better because of that. Soren really seems to have good success with a lot of them...
Fun stuff ! ...
Bob

 

[JaceSpace1369]

Heavy 177s are definitely interesting...
To be more accurate, Steve, the fouling I experience isn't leading. NSA uses a silicone coating, afik, that somehow reacts with the pressure and the hardness of his slugs to create SOMETHING in the bore that REALLY drags on the slug. The velocity drops significantly after only about 10 shots in my RW and accuracy STARTS to deteriorate. Giving a couple to season the bore, I get 2 phenomenal groups @ 100 then it starts to open as the velocity drops. Only scrubbing with JB Bore will get rid of the dragging ... These are the 20.5 gn NSA 177s. I've experimented with different lubes, including HBN but nothing really extends that much. More experiments are required, it seems...
One thing only touched on here is twist rate. From using different calclators, it seems that a 1 in 13 would be perfect with a 1 in 14 being still stable and useable for the 20 gn NSA's. Going heavier than that would definitely require the faster twist. I don't have any barrels in my pile that are faster than 1 in 16, so I've kind of let the project drift away and been playing with the NSA 18.9s in 20 cal the most. They are quite fun, don't have the same fouling drag issue(likely because of less bore friction) and will do quite well out to my own range limit of 208 yards.
So it SEEMS like I was operating on the stability edge for the 20.5s and when I created the thread "Happy pills" we were using some 20.2 hand swaged NSA's that were pure lead, not the high speed machine harder lead in most of his offerings. The Zan's or similar might be better because of that. Soren really seems to have good success with a lot of them...
Fun stuff ! ...
Bob

Would cleaning up the afik from the NSA slugs help? It also doesn't help that those slugs are .178 while everyone else's range from .1775- .1776 (H&N, JSB, ZAN) Guys like Dale (VK) makes .1771 and .178 but they are pure lead swagged unlike NSA. Griffin also makes .177-.1771 I will be receiving griffin .177-.1771 20gr and 23gr slugs and will test them in my U2 177 twist rate is 17.7 so not enough, but I can atleast see how it compares to the nsa in terms of consistency with the velocity.

 

[steve123]

Heavy 177s are definitely interesting...
To be more accurate, Steve, the fouling I experience isn't leading. NSA uses a silicone coating, afik, that somehow reacts with the pressure and the hardness of his slugs to create SOMETHING in the bore that REALLY drags on the slug. The velocity drops significantly after only about 10 shots in my RW and accuracy STARTS to deteriorate. Giving a couple to season the bore, I get 2 phenomenal groups @ 100 then it starts to open as the velocity drops. Only scrubbing with JB Bore will get rid of the dragging ... These are the 20.5 gn NSA 177s. I've experimented with different lubes, including HBN but nothing really extends that much. More experiments are required, it seems...
One thing only touched on here is twist rate. From using different calclators, it seems that a 1 in 13 would be perfect with a 1 in 14 being still stable and useable for the 20 gn NSA's. Going heavier than that would definitely require the faster twist. I don't have any barrels in my pile that are faster than 1 in 16, so I've kind of let the project drift away and been playing with the NSA 18.9s in 20 cal the most. They are quite fun, don't have the same fouling drag issue(likely because of less bore friction) and will do quite well out to my own range limit of 208 yards.
So it SEEMS like I was operating on the stability edge for the 20.5s and when I created the thread "Happy pills" we were using some 20.2 hand swaged NSA's that were pure lead, not the high speed machine harder lead in most of his offerings. The Zan's or similar might be better because of that. Soren really seems to have good success with a lot of them...
Fun stuff ! ...
Bob

Ah, ok Bob, I didn't have the story quite right then?!

I wouldn't mind trying 17 cal heavies with a faster twist barrel for the FullMonty if I was sure there weren't going to be problems like you described, leading, or whatever other negative consequence came up.

 

[JaceSpace1369]

Heavy 177s are definitely interesting...
To be more accurate, Steve, the fouling I experience isn't leading. NSA uses a silicone coating, afik, that somehow reacts with the pressure and the hardness of his slugs to create SOMETHING in the bore that REALLY drags on the slug. The velocity drops significantly after only about 10 shots in my RW and accuracy STARTS to deteriorate. Giving a couple to season the bore, I get 2 phenomenal groups @ 100 then it starts to open as the velocity drops. Only scrubbing with JB Bore will get rid of the dragging ... These are the 20.5 gn NSA 177s. I've experimented with different lubes, including HBN but nothing really extends that much. More experiments are required, it seems...
One thing only touched on here is twist rate. From using different calclators, it seems that a 1 in 13 would be perfect with a 1 in 14 being still stable and useable for the 20 gn NSA's. Going heavier than that would definitely require the faster twist. I don't have any barrels in my pile that are faster than 1 in 16, so I've kind of let the project drift away and been playing with the NSA 18.9s in 20 cal the most. They are quite fun, don't have the same fouling drag issue(likely because of less bore friction) and will do quite well out to my own range limit of 208 yards.
So it SEEMS like I was operating on the stability edge for the 20.5s and when I created the thread "Happy pills" we were using some 20.2 hand swaged NSA's that were pure lead, not the high speed machine harder lead in most of his offerings. The Zan's or similar might be better because of that. Soren really seems to have good success with a lot of them...
Fun stuff ! ...
Bob

@greenbeans this may give a bit of insight on your issue.

 

[mercado]

My uragan 1 in .177 will work great up to 18gr now that I have added a barrel band .. will try the 20gr .. only likes .178

 

[Arzrover]

Ah, ok Bob, I didn't have the story quite right then?!

I wouldn't mind trying 17 cal heavies with a faster twist barrel for the FullMonty if I was sure there weren't going to be problems like you described, leading, or whatever other negative consequence came up.

No worries Steve... you saw a glimpse of how good they can be when we were shooting in the Perry pit after that match...

@JaceSpace1369 Jace
Would cleaning up the afik from the NSA slugs help?

Afik is short for "as far as I know "
On cleaning them, I really don't know what will remove silicone oil... it is QUITE tenacious which is why it's used to preserve finishes etc... maybe I should tumble them in acetone and soapy water with a very light abrasive... This may be why lubing them with Gunzilla seems to help.

I really shouldtry some Zan's or others that are pure lead... they're just too expensive, and NSA is churning out very consistent slugs at a great price...

Bob

 

[JaceSpace1369]

No worries Steve... you saw a glimpse of how good they can be when we were shooting in the Perry pit after that match...

@JaceSpace1369 Jace
Would cleaning up the afik from the NSA slugs help?

Afik is short for "as far as I know "
On cleaning them, I really don't know what will remove silicone oil... it is QUITE tenacious which is why it's used to preserve finishes etc... maybe I should tumble them in acetone and soapy water with a very light abrasive... This may be why lubing them with Gunzilla seems to help.

I really shouldtry some Zan's or others that are pure lead... they're just too expensive, and NSA is churning out very consistent slugs at a great price...

Bob

Ahhh I had a slow moment there, it didn't hit me that's what it stood for .

Gotcha though, I asked AI to see what they would come up with and this is what it said. I've stopped ordering Zans as everytime I due there tumbling media inside the bag and cavities of the slugs in both 13gr and 16gr

 

[Arzrover]

Interesting...
In my gunsmithing instructionals and literature, it basically says that once applied, it may never be fully removed from the metal, or at least will be very difficult. The above methods may clean it ENOUGH ... I should try and see.
It IS pretty interesting what the bore feels like once shooting them...VERY catchy and draggy... MUCH better after a JB Bore cleaning... NO sign of lead in the bore with a borescope though...