Ajax Customs BB swelling

[luke213]

Well guys I knew Ajax customs BB's are prone to swelling but I never encountered it until yesterday and today. Little backstory, been using them for at least a year. However I normally use them fairly quickly. Well I opened a bag before Irene(end of October), and I haven't played a game since then. So this week I started checking over guns for a game in two weeks, found I jammed my long range M16(which is a 6.03mm tightbore). So I cleared it, tried again jam. Well that's weird maybe it's dirty, put it away and pulled out my VSR10(Stock TM barrel 6.08mm by my reading). Ran a couple mags but I was getting overhop and fliers, which is strange since this rifle is a bit of a tack driver especially at 75 yards which is what I was shooting.

So after that I got thinking I should check the diameter of my BB's because I suspected they were swollen. With my caliper which is a harbor freight piece of something but it does work. Well a normal Matrix .25g measures around 5.95mm which is the spec on the bag so good to go. I checked the Ajax .43g and some are 6.01 and 6.02 and a few here and there under that in the 5.98-5.99mm range. Though it's about 1 in 10 that are under 6mm, the rest are over. And despite not terribly accurate measuring tools, I also measured weight on a gram scale. I got on swelled BB's a weight of .41g or so, and on under 6mm BB's I get a weight of around .4g. I should note I don't trust my scale at hundredths of a gram, it's not that good of a scale. But it was consistent, so who knows.

Anyways so I've got 3+ bags of these, the others are sealed so theoretically they are fine, but I'm not opening them up since I'm unlikely to use them before summer. But it got me thinking here I am with possibly $75+ worth of heavy BB's that I like that are too big to use. And I hatched a plan and that's what this thread is here to document success or failure;)

So I make holsters and work leather. In doing so I've got a dry box I built which is basically a dehydrator and runs 120 degrees or so along with very low humidity. It runs 24/7 and it is pretty consistent in temp and humidity despite having wet leather put in there every day. So I took around 50 of the BB's and checked the sizes on all of them, about 1 in 10 was under 6mm most were oversized and over weight. So I'm going to leave them in there for a week or so and see what if any changes occur. Ideally I'll see them dehydrate basically down to proper spec where they can be used. And if that does occur it might be an option for other BB's and brands rather than throwing them out if they do swell up.

So I'll post as I have results to post.

Take care!

Luke

[luke213]

Just a small update, after around 2-3 days in the dry box I've noticed a very slight drop in average size on my test set. Initially they were mostly around 6.01-6.02 or most were. Testing those BB's I saw 6.00-6.01 average size and didn't find any 6.02. So my guess at this stage is that it's possible to drop the size back down with heat and low humidity.

So I'm scaling up my experiment to include an entire bag of swelled BB's and I'm moving them to the lower level where the heat is even higher approx 130F average temps, and humidity around the 15% mark. Plan at this stage is to leave them there for a week and see what the results are since I do have a game 6 days away and hopefully I'll bring them back to the point that I can use them again.

Also as a result of the jamming BB's, and unjamming said BB's I realized that my bucking has a torn/deformed lip now on my M16A2, so I'm going to have to replace the bucking before doing additional testing with that particular rifle. Which is my tightest tight bore. I also should note I've seen something a bit off, this is a Madbull black aluminum tight bore which should be 6.03mm. It's distinctly tighter in the last inch towards the muzzle than the rest of the bore. Not sure if that's normal, but it is the case for certain in this barrel. Not much maybe 0.01mm or less but at this point testing by rolling BB's down that barrel. I can't roll them full length they stop at the last inch. Free roll the rest of the barrel. And they will pass down a normal 6.08mm stock barrel however because of size differences hopup is too inconsistent for use.

So I'll toss another bucking in that barrel, or possibly rhop it, then do additional testing as I figure things out. So more information to come as I do more testing and time elapses.

Luke

[luke213]

Alrighty so follow up again quite a few weeks later, I did leave them in the higher temp low humidity environment. And some of the BB's dropped in size and some did not. It was an improvement, maybe with enough time they would be able to be brought back but if I had to guess the time is likely the same or more than their exposure to humidity etc. IE These sat for a few months and likely it would take a couple months of drying to get them back to spec if ever. For my case I could do that, since my dry box runs 24/7 365 for my business, but I haven't. I've gotten them to the point where they feed and function in my bolt gun properly, and while I get more fliers than normal they are functional. So I've just been using them target practicing and in game thus far. I figure over the next month or so I'll finish off this bag and be able to open the next one and see if they are swelled since they are still factory sealed.

The lesson I think here is storing your BB's, I've never worried about it in the past. I've never had BB's swell up even the Excel 0.2g BB's that sat for over 10 years were still in spec. But some of the more specialty BB's and Bio's storage in very low humidity and possibly higher heat but I'm not sure, likely room temp would be better. That should give you the best chance of not having issues longer term. With sniper BB's if you have the equipment and are feeling fancy it wouldn't be a bad idea to split larger bags down and vacuum seal them into smaller packs if you go through them slowly. But that also means having access to a vacuum sealer.

So some lessons of sorts, but not a huge amount of concrete results either but that's what I've seen;)

Luke