This isn't off-topic anymore! (was: Have YOU got a metal lathe and know how to use it?)

[Dracheous]

Why not try putting cuts/grooves on an angle on the tail? As long as they all are equal in size and distance apart the air that goes through here would create a pin-wheel affect on it creating the spin you need; sort of like rifled slugs in a shot gun.

Originally Posted by DonP

Like way off course even 20-30 feet out from the muzzle. They must flip and tumble like mad all by themselves.

Is likely cause the tail is heavier than the ball itself; it almost looks that way too to be honest. I wonder if you made the tail a smaller diameter as well? Ie when you mill these make the tail smaller so that the sphere/round is larger than its tail and then try the grooves to see if they can create that spin?

[Danke]

Grooves or holes to spin it, or a little streamer kind of like a drogue. That would be a bit of a nightmare to attach though.

[DonP]

Originally Posted by Dracheous

Why not try putting cuts/grooves on an angle on the tail?

If you have a method for doing this reliably I'd probably be willing to try it out. The only thing I can think of is cutting them by hand. While I have tools small enough to do it there's no way I can - by hand - get anything approaching real precision. It's only 6mm after all. If I go through all that work and it still sucks, does it suck because the grooves don't do squat, or does it suck because my grooves were a shitty +/- 20% precision at best? (e.g. 0.2mm off if I go with 5 evenly spaced grooves, that's not even touching the angle/twist issue...)

Is likely cause the tail is heavier than the ball itself; it almost looks that way too to be honest. I wonder if you made the tail a smaller diameter as well? Ie when you mill these make the tail smaller so that the sphere/round is larger than its tail and then try the grooves to see if they can create that spin?

The 20-30 feet severe fliers are just firing the shotgun slug-like tail piece alone. (Not the assembled piece.)

The tails are lighter than the ball on the assembled pieces. Unlike firing just the tails, the assembled projectiles are getting to the paper and don't appear to be keyholing, the accuracy is just clearly inferior compared to plain BBs. Maybe rifling would fix that, maybe not.

[Danke]

Probably you'd want to jig them on a drill press or milling machine with a cutting disc in the chuck.

Then you could cut a few slots for an aero effect but I think you're already approaching a silly amount of labour as it is.

[Coma]

Why not adapt your mold instead of cutting or Dremeling tiny little grooves?

[Danke]

Molds are expensive, even one like that so untill the fix is proven to work it's easier to tweak the projectiles.

[m102404]

for grooves or ridges, you'd want a die to press the projectiles through.

BB's are "soft"...any die with a sharp edge will work for POC.

As an aside...I bet a gas shotgun can be adapted to shoot these with very little work.

[Danke]

Did you do anything to try and mitigate variations in the projectile when you formed the cone (I think it's so thin that chances of it being off are pretty low) or when you attached the cone to the BB (more of a chance there)?

Maybe if there was a variation that would account for all the flyers.