WHERE'S YOUR HEAD AT?

What makes the perfect pellet? If you buy a tin of high quality pellets these days, you'll almost certainly find them to be extremely well made, with little to no lead swarf or detritus, and hardly ever any flaws or other defects. Put them on a set of scales and you'll find their weight to be almost identical, and shoot them over a chronograph and, provided you're using an air rifle of equally high quality, you'll find a minimal variation in muzzle velocity. And yet they might not be accurate. At least not in that particular gun.

But if these pellets are so well made, then why can't accuracy be guaranteed with each and every tin of pellets? Numerous factors come into play, such as the shape of the pellet and its ballistic coefficient, but one important variable is head size.

While .177 pellets are nominally 4.5mm and .22 pellets are 5.5mm, head size will vary in increments