Canadian Airgun Forum

Does the shooting of BB's in a combo BB/Pellet rifle, do any damage to the rifling in the barrel?

I believe so... If you are going to shoot pellet on the gun, never use steel BB on it. (BB is much cheaper than pellets and don't think using pellet will greatly improve the accuracy on the same gun tho... Of course pellet has its own advantage like not that likely bouncing around and around... It's your call~)

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That is a good question. The balance of actual evidence that I have found is that it probably does no harm. However, it surely does it no good and there is a possibility that the steel BB could do some wear to the steel barrel, specifically the lands of the rifling. Some people swear by the notion BB will damage the rifling, and some people swear the opposite. In reality, it will depend on what material the barrel is made of and how it's been processed and machined. I'm sure all BB are not made of the same material and some are copper or zinc coated so the surface will be relatively soft and should not harm the rifling.
IMO, you'd have to shot thousands of BB out of a soft steel rifled barrel to wreck it, and hundreds of thousands of BB to wreck a hard steel barrel. And the other parts of the rifle would be toast long before the barrel.

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Iacio, ergo sum

I have to agree with the previous replies.
You may damage the rifling of your air rifle’s barrel by shooting a hard metal BB through it. But why would you do it? Because of the cost of BB’s over pellets?
Also BB’s are inaccurate.


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Yes and no........the newer style bbs have coatings on them. But the other thing to look at, if the gun was designed to shoot both, they didnt exactly put a high end barrel in the gun.

In my 40+ years or so of shooting airguns, I have never noticed any real damage to a barrel from BBs. There are others that will say different, but its not like you will be shooting FT with a combo gun. They are made purely for plinking, as with all BB guns.

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Jonathan

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It have a Daisy 880 that has approximately 15,000 BBs through it. (Most courtesy of my neighbour's grandson).
It shoots pellets after all those BBs with the same level of accuracy as new. (1/2" at 20 meters).
That pump handle has been pumped about 100, 000 times!
Nothing on that gun has ever broken. I keep it well oiled with 30wt nd and store it with one pump in it. It never leaks down.
I used Daisy BBs exclusively. I don't shoot BBs in it much anymore. I prefer the accuracy of pellets.
The manual says the rifling is designed to use BBs and pellets interchangeably.
I can't see any difference in the rifling, or the performance of the gun compared to new. It still shoots a 7 gr pellet at 725fps with 10 pumps.
Not too shabby for a $45 plastic gun.

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You can’t buy a single airgun for everything. Golfers use many different clubs, airgunners need more than one gun

I don’t know if any of my air rifles are combo air rifles [emoji848]
I’ll have to verify.
Are the barrels of combo air rifles rifled or smooth?
Because typically pellet air rifle barrels are rifled while BB air rifle barrels are smooth.

BB’s are slightly smaller than the caliber of your airgun otherwise they would jam in the barrel.
While soft lead pellets are slightly larger than the caliber of your airgun.

Airgun barrels are made of metal that isn’t as hard as a firearm barrel so I would have to assume that shooting a BB through a rifled barrel could damage it slightly but only if you fired a lot of them through it.

My experience has been that pellet shooting is more accurate than BB shooting except at short ranges.


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Interesting situation. Will BB's which are undersized and traveling down the barrel at 300 to 500fps, which must be bouncing back and forth off the sides of the bore (sharp cornered lands) injure the rifling?
Now, BR shooters, when cleaning their barrels during a match, from the breech so as to not take the chance of injuring the muzzle's crown, do not even let the bore mop or cloth patch
on the jag exit the muzzle all the way. The reason is due to the possibility that with a slightly loosened thread, it may sag and when they retrieve it, it will not be perfectly aligned with the crown and may wear or otherwise damage the crown as it re-orients itself with the bore. This is not a hard item traveling at high speed - yet, they will not take the chance of hurting their 4140 chrome/moly or 416 stainless steel bores and crowns through repeated use such as this.
Do BB's hurt the rifling? IF I had such a gun that I wanted to shoot pellets out of, I would NEVER shoot BB's out of it & take THAT chance. It's your gun!

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Best Wishes
Daryl