HomeThe Real Meaning of BB
by Tom GaylordOriginally published in the late 1990s
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The information I'm about to give comes primarily from Cass S. Hough's book: It's A Daisy! Mr. Hough is the grandson of the founder of Daisy. Originally, the first BB guns had a bore size of approximately 0.180 inches. This is close to the shotgun pellet size BB, which falls in between shot size B and size BBB. Hence, little boys used lead BB shot in their guns. Later, Daisy standardized lead shot to 0.175 inches and called it air rifle shot.
In 1928, some clever little boys in the Minneapolis area discovered that reject steel ball bearings sometimes fit in their guns. Daisy began experiencing a large number of returns with one or more of these steel ball bearings stuck in the barrel. Mr. Hough, the author of the above-mentioned book, tracked this problem to its source and arranged for the American Ball Company to produce steel air rifle shot. Daisy bought the American Ball Co. in 1939.
As a side note, steel air rifle shot has an extreme tendency to ricochet, giving rise to the mother's warning: You'll shoot your eye out! Lead balls seldom bounce back, but steel ones almost always do, even from properly designed bullet traps. Of course, you would always use eye protection when shooting ANY gun, regardless of the composition of the projectiles.
After WWII, some air rifle shot was made of aluminum, which made for high velocity but lousy accuracy. Only collectors have this shot any more. Precision-rifled airguns from Germany and Czechoslovakia were designed before WWII to use lead balls, as well. Most of these shoot 4.4mm lead shot, which is still available from Security Pawn in South Carolina (803-747-9917). They also sell Haenel-brand bolt-action lead-ball-firing target rifles in used - but nice - condition, which were discovered in East Germany. $59.95 gets you a good to very good bolt-action target rifle that would ordinarily retail for over $150.00. Ladd Fanta has done an excellent article on BBs (BBs, Balls and Bearings) for the American Rifleman. If you are interested, his article goes into much greater detail.
Please Note: This is a archive article and as such the information about Security Pawn and the availability of the airguns mentioned are no longer valid.
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