casting for air rifles - round balls and pellets

[atl5029]

hi everyone,

It's been a while since I've been on the forum, but I have a new casting interest that I need some information on.

I recently bought a 22 cal air rifle, and I'd like to try casting pellets for it. I'm not trying to save money on pellets, but rather get max accuracy and performance out of my rifle.

I've read a lot of old threads on casting pellets, which mainly just expound on the inherent difficulty of casting pellets and the lack of molds out there. I'm wondering if there has been any recent developments for casting or swaging pellets. Does anyone make a decent mold yet? Any swaging dies that don't cost more than a new rifle?

One idea I had was to cast round balls using a #F size shot mold, which apparently is .220 caliber. I found a mold here: http://buckshotmold.com/

has anyone tried casting round balls for air rifles? if so how has it worked?

Thanks for your help!

[Plate plinker]

Seems like a PITA when you can buy air rifle projectiles pretty cheaply and darn good ones at that.

That said how heavy a pellet or ball? Something odd would make sense I guess.

[runfiverun]

we have a whole section on air rifles now.
you will probably have better luck in that section.

[GhostHawk]

I've done this. Bought mold from same place, .22 caliber. I have a pair of the 1322 pump up air pistols with the carbine stocks. I doubt you will exceed pellet accuracy.

What you can do is get minute of squirrel head accuracy that if the SHTF and catch's you short of pellets will let you kill rats, rabbits and squirrels with pellets that you cast.

This to me was worth the cost of the mold.

However I also have significant stocks of 5mm (.20 Sheridan) and .22 crossman pellets. Near 3k pellets for the Sheridan bought back when they were 5.50 $ for 500. Now they are 15$ for 500.

Pellets shot fine but they are not perfect, and thus errors creep in.

If you want perfect accuracy which is what it will take to better pellets good luck.
IMO it is not achievable with tools the average home caster has.

You would have better luck I think to make a tool with compound leverage like a bolt cutter.
That when you grab a piece of soft lead swages out a perfect round pure lead ball of the right caliber.

Casting for the small calibers is always going to have small bubbles, voids, etc that will throw off accuracy.

Good luck