Mac wrote:
If you are clipping the shroud, the accuracy should be terrible. Is this the case? A barrel that does not have a concentric bore can result in clipping the shroud. Easy enough to see if you can see both ends of the barrel.
If the lead is not well done, that can do some shaving as well and as Rick suggested, it could end up in the shroud.
It's not a case of pellets clipping the shroud. Initially, I thought that was certainly it, but the shroud seals by an O ring to the barrel and action, at the rear. The barrel has two O rings, one on each end of the chamber. It's a pretty standard arrangement in that sense.
The front/muzzle end of the shroud threads onto the barrel muzzle thread, making the cavity between the barrel and the shroud a dead air space. IDK how lead bits could get into there, unless they came past the front barrel (chamber) O ring, and also past the shroud O ring.
The shroud O ring is a fat one, universal O ring #207, while the original seemed not to be a tight fit to the barrel, so I replaced it.
OTOH, that ring appears to simply be a cushion seat for the shroud to the action bore, around the barrel. It shouldn't be needed to seal anything, especially as one can shoot without the shroud, with some sacrifice of accuracy.
I also replaced the barrel O rings, 10mm x 2 mm, which seal the barrel to the action block.
My working hypothesis is that the bits were blown past the front barrel/chamber O ring, and the shroud O ring, into the shroud to barrel cavity.
A few hundred pellets should show whether the new O rings blocked a leak from the front of the chamber.
One of the aspects of the hypothesis which trouble me is that velocities seemed very consistent on the chronograph, while I would expect them to vary more if the chamber was leaking.
Probably, I'm overlooking something obvious.