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> http://airgungurus.com/2015/07/04/jsb-in-trouble/
> http://www.shooting-the-breeze.com/foru ... hp?t=27237
> https://www.facebook.com/JSB.Match.Diabolo
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" JSB in trouble ?
Over the past three months we started getting reports from airgunners about a decrease in quality in Jsb’s pellet products. At first we thought it was just a coincidence but on further investigations it seems not. JSB is based in the Czech republic and employs around 40 people and is a firm favourite with airgunners and has been in business since 1991.
As reports came in about the quality of the pellets we kept an eye on it and decided to look into it a bit further. Through our contacts with Czech shooters we were given an email address for an airgunner who works for JSB and we fired off an email and we got a reply.
Allegedly (we like to put that word in just in case) JSB are having “some financial” difficulties mainly due to the fact that the distributors are driving down prices and telling JSB that they may need to look elsewhere if they can’t keep up profit margins. We contacted some RFD’s and were told that they simply cannot get good prices from the UK distributors and that their mark up is not that big and that is why the uk prices stay fairly consistent across the board. Being cynical we decided to have a closer look.
One very good and well established UK gun shop is selling JSB exacts in .177
at under £6 per tin and that is because they buy direct and in bulk from JSB. They have to go through hoops to do this and because they do not buy from one of the main distributors this is causing them problems. We contacted another gun shop who do buy from a uk distributor and they pay far more than £6 to get the product from the distributors and they have to sell at around £10 per tin because of that. It seems that the allegation that the UK distributors are driving down the prices that they pay JSB to increase their own profits may be true and after all they are in the business of making profits.
Our “insider” at JSB has also confirmed that they may be using older dies and he has said that dies that were shelved due to wear and tear have came back into production and that two years ago a large percentage of staff had the sole duty of checking quality but this has now stopped and the staff have been moved to “other duties”
It is rumoured (we put that in a lot too) that JSB are concentrating on their new “premium” pellets and they are charging more than double the normal price as these are made using the newer dies and that they are only matching the quality of what the more “normal” pellets that were produced last year. The pellets that we currently know as JSB exacts will become a less target orientated pellet and the quality will not be as good as they once were.
We decided to put it to the test and the results were interesting. To carry out the test we bought three sets of pellet scales and checked them with known weights of 2gr 4gr 6gr 8gr and 10gr, These weights were perfect and were tested on all three sets of scales. Two of the scales returned a perfect result and although the third set was close it was slightly out and we discarded that set. We now had two sets of scales that were spot on.
We tested batch #3020015 and we believe the last two digits are the year of manufacture.
Three tins were bought and we picked 100 pellets at random from each tin so 300 pellets in all and weighed them to the nearest 0.1gr
162 pellets came in at the correct 8.4gr (they should be 8.44 but we tested to the nearest 0.1)
61 pellets were 8.6gr
53 pellets were 8.2gr
9 pellets were 8.7gr
8 pellets were 8.8 gr
7 pellets were 8.1gr or less
We did reset the scales to zero after weighing every 20 pellets to make sure that weights were not affected by any fluctuations in room temperature.
Out of the 162 pellets at the correct weight 34 had damaged skirts and we realise that with transportation this is not uncommon but apart from a few bashes in the skirts we noticed four other things.
1. the thickness of the skirts varied around the circumference which we felt would affect flight stability.
2. Head sizes were variable even though the weights were correct
3. The depth inside the skirts were two different depths and it genuinely looked like two different pellets
4. 8 of the pellets had black dots inside the skirt which looked like contamination and because these were on the outer part of the inner skirt this would again make the pellet unbalanced.
This meant that out of 300 pellets we got 128 that we would class as being perfect or near perfect so that gives us 43% good pellets and if you are a target shooter it would mean that you would throw half away or use them for practice. Not great odds is it?
We did check our source very well and we were ultra accurate in our weighing. We did not check pellet widths as we did not have accurate enough equipment to do this.
Although the “rumour” about JSB being in difficulties cannot be confirmed as only they can confirm or deny it the pellet quality is not impressive and the emails and posts we have seen where people have been complaining about the drop in pellet quality seems to be confirmed with our testing.
We decided to check out this story after someone posted on ourairgungurus.com/forum about bad pellet quality and if you have any experiences good or bad about the pellet quality over the last few months we would love to hear from you and you can email us team@airgungurus.com and we will do a follow up article with your results. Please let us know in the email if you wish your name to be used or not
http://www.airgungurus.com
July 4, 2015 Author barndoor "
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