Not all round balls are BBs. When it was first created in 1886, a BB was a type of shotgun shot sized 0.180-inch in diameter. Through the years the size became smaller until today's steel BB is 0.171- to 0.173-inch. Some air guns can shoot either BBs or pellets. They are designed with a kind of 'compromise' bore diameter that will not be damaged by steel BBs, yet allows a lead air gun pellet to also be shot. These air guns are seldom as accurate with either ammunition as regular pellet-only air guns, though some of them do a pretty fair job at short ranges.

Never shoot steel BBs in an air gun designed to shoot only lead pellets!

Pellet air gun barrels are relatively soft steel and the undersized steel BB will damage the rifling as it rattles down the bore. If the gun is smoothbore, there is no rifling to ruin, but a smoothbore .177 is still oversized and will give poor performance even with premium pellets such as RWS or Beeman. A good way to shoot round balls in a pellet gun is to use a round lead ball. These are sized the same as lead air gun pellets and will not harm your barrel, although their accuracy is poor compared to the better Beeman and RWS precision air gun pellets.

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