Should you oil your pellets?

by Harley Ayre

Oiling pellets is a question every PCP shooter faces sooner or later. Let's examine what's at stake.

Why oil pellets?
There is only one reason to oil pellets, and that's to keep the bore clean. Oil doesn't make the pellet go any faster - in fact, it may slow it down a little depending on what you use and how much you put on the pellets. During the 1990s, airgunners discovered that their guns were losing accuracy after shooting for awhile. If they cleaned the barrel, the accuracy was restored. There were two distinct and different causes of dirty airgun barrels.

What do I mean by a dirty barrel?
Well, I sure don't mean the black deposits you get when you run a clean patch through the bore. Those are from the antioxidant coating on some pellets, and airguns will always have them regardless of whether you clean the barrel or not. They do not affect accuracy and are best left alone. What I am referring to are actual deposits of lead that coat the bore. These will build up and eventually destroy your accuracy. Lead deposits come from only two sources - velocity and hard pellets.

High velocity leads the bore
In the mid-1980s, airguns went faster than 1,000 f.p.s. for the first time. Despite the fact that they were not accurate at that speed, shooters disregarded everything for the bragging rights to all that velocity. Unfortunately, a leaded bore came with it. Airgunners were not used to cleaning their bores (they never had to before), so this caught a lot of people by surprise. The solution is to shoot at 850 f.p.s or slower, which is where the best accuracy is, most of the time anyway.

Hard pellets lead the bore
Any pellet with antimony in it (to harden the lead) will lead the bore quicker than a pure lead pellet. The Crosman Premier, which was the choice of just about every field target competitor in the 1990s, is such a pellet. Crosman puts antimony in all their pellets to harden them for various reasons, but mainly because they function better in repeating airguns. Crosman makes a lot of repeaters. So Premiers will lead the bore faster than JSBs and Beeman Kodiaks.

The combination of high velocity and hard pellets REALLY leads the bore!
Some shooters did both things. They shot Crosman Premiers at high velocities, and their barrels leaded up in a very short time. I know of competitors who cleaned their barrels every 200 shots - while many Olympic target shooters NEVER clean their barrels! These shooters were forced to begin examining pellet oiling as a solution.

How to oil your pellets
I've seen everything from pellets that dripped actual drops of oil (very bad) to pellets that looked dry but left a slight slickness on the fingers when handled (just about right). First, you know you don't need to oil pellets if you shoot at velocities under 900 f.p.s. and only use pure lead pellets; but if you are going to shoot faster or use hard pellets, here's how to oil them. Put some soft foam, or even a folded paper towel in the bottom of a round pellet tin. Put about 10-20 drops of oil on this surface. Pour in a layer of pellets that just covers the bottom of the tin. When you carry the tin, the oil will spread to all the pellets in an even coating.

You don't have to re-oil the bottom of the tin each time you fill it again. Maybe every third filling is enough for a good thin coating of oil. Each pellet should make your fingers a little oily, but no more than that.

The dangers of over-oiling
When you over-oil your pellets, the excess builds up on your gun and starts migrating to places it doesn't belong. The trigger is the worst place for it to go. The AirForce guns all have a dry moly film on their trigger parts, and any oil that gets on them washes it off. Furthermore, oil attracts dirt and will hold it in the worst possible place - in the trigger, where the moving parts have very little clearance. So, if you do decide to oil your pellets, keep it very light.

What oil should you use?
The type of oil was such a personal thing in the late '90s that it got to be a joke. Shooters were jealously guarding "secret" formulae that they were certain guaranteed their success. But the truth is that almost any good, light machine oil will do the job. Airhog has put together a special pellet-oiling kit, so you don't have to do anything but follow the directions. If you're going to oil pellets, this is a good place to start.

That's the scoop on oiling pellets. Don't take my word for it, but use what I say as a starting point for your own experiments.