Barrel Tuners
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Nature Boy
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Shot a 600 yard match today with the tuner. Here’s the results.
Temp at the start of the match was 72 deg and climbed to 98 deg by the end so a pretty good range to see if the tuner could compensate for conditions.
I dropped 2 shots in the first match that I’m confident were due to missing a shift in the wind
The second match I started seeing more vertical deviation and dropped 3 shots, one high and 2 low. I felt it was a good time to make an adjustment so after the 10th shot I turned it 1/2 an increment in (temp up, tuner in, temp down, tuner out). The remaining 10 shots were all 10’s and X’s
The third match I left the tuner alone and cleaned the target
Although it’s interesting that the first 30 shots before the adjustment scored 295-17X and after the adjustment scored 300-18X, I’m not sure I can attribute it to the tuner. Conditions were tricky. It’s easy to miss a switch in the wind and it was swirling today. Was it the tuner, me, or the wind? Hard to say for sure
I’ll need to get more experience with it before I can trust that it does what it’s reported to do.
Temp at the start of the match was 72 deg and climbed to 98 deg by the end so a pretty good range to see if the tuner could compensate for conditions.
I dropped 2 shots in the first match that I’m confident were due to missing a shift in the wind
The second match I started seeing more vertical deviation and dropped 3 shots, one high and 2 low. I felt it was a good time to make an adjustment so after the 10th shot I turned it 1/2 an increment in (temp up, tuner in, temp down, tuner out). The remaining 10 shots were all 10’s and X’s
The third match I left the tuner alone and cleaned the target
Although it’s interesting that the first 30 shots before the adjustment scored 295-17X and after the adjustment scored 300-18X, I’m not sure I can attribute it to the tuner. Conditions were tricky. It’s easy to miss a switch in the wind and it was swirling today. Was it the tuner, me, or the wind? Hard to say for sure
I’ll need to get more experience with it before I can trust that it does what it’s reported to do.
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Nature Boy
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I know that’s what the short range benchrest guys do but I have no experience adjusting loads for changing conditions.
I developed this load back in February and temps were in the 40-50 range. Powder is H4895
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Nature Boy
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Update:
Went out to the range where I shoot F Class matches to do some load testing but also to verify my tuner settings at 600 yards
I stuck 3 of the 12” Shoot N C targets on a frame. These correspond to the NRA 600 yard target center.
I sighted in and then shot 5 into the center target with my tuner set at #2, the setting I had determined to be optimal back in August.
I then moved the tuner one increment to the #3 setting and fired 5 more at a clean target. (Each increment moves the weight 0.005” in or out)
Then lastly, I set the tuner back to #2 and shot 5 on a clean target to verify repeatability.
There’s definitely something to this tuner technology. My task is to learn when to turn it and when not to.
Went out to the range where I shoot F Class matches to do some load testing but also to verify my tuner settings at 600 yards
I stuck 3 of the 12” Shoot N C targets on a frame. These correspond to the NRA 600 yard target center.
I sighted in and then shot 5 into the center target with my tuner set at #2, the setting I had determined to be optimal back in August.
I then moved the tuner one increment to the #3 setting and fired 5 more at a clean target. (Each increment moves the weight 0.005” in or out)
Then lastly, I set the tuner back to #2 and shot 5 on a clean target to verify repeatability.
There’s definitely something to this tuner technology. My task is to learn when to turn it and when not to.
I just stepped off into the "tuner" pool. I've only shot one string with it, hard to say, but a couple of good "flat" spots of tight shots, but it was only one round. From shooting without the tuner it could feasibly do the same thing, it often puts shots cutting each other or in the same hole, with the occasional shot being off a little, but usually not as much as a couple of these. Need to shoot it some more. 2 shots at each bull, 0 through 25 on the tuner. Nothing definitive yet, but the tuner does affect things for sure.
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Nature Boy
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I’d probably shoot 7, 11 and 24 again with 5 rounds each and see if it repeatable
Offfhand
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Barrel tuners started getting popular with benchrest shooters about 25-30 years ago, so popular "a must try, must have" add-on that about everyone who had a lathe was making their own version. I tried about half dozen one-off experimental tuners made by shooting pals, including a couple of very ingenious designs, but they never got in into production because they were scared off by threatening letters from Browning's lawyers about infringing on their BOSS patents. I still use one of those first turners and never heard of anyone actually being sued. Rimfire bench shooter got into turners big time and back then a popular tuner design was simply a micrometer thimble bracketed to the muzzle. Which made an easy, but precisely recordable turner while also demonstrating that very slight adjustments could have significant impact. Nowadays tuners have become such an article of faith with rimfire benchresters that you never see a serious RF bench rifle without one, some of which are rather mind-boggling. Attached are pics from a few weeks ago at the "Triple Crown" event, a major Rimfire competition in Va, which drew shooters from around the world. Note the elaborate tuner that caught my eye. For the past few years tuners on my centerfire benchrest rifle have become pretty much a set and forget proposition. Once tuned for the barrel-not the load-they are seldome changed. And I've long since learned that a tuner will not make a winner out of a sub-par barrel, no matter how much you tinker with it. .
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Nature Boy
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thump_rrr
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Just installed my EC Tuner brake I received today on my Savage 10BA .308 with an IBI 5R 1/10 barrel.
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Nature Boy
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Looking forward to seeing your reviews of these tuners
Jim Watson
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That is my understanding, I had not heard of making adjustments to a tuner in mid-match.
thump_rrr
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I found 18 rounds of Berger 185gr Juggernauts over Varget (can’t remember the powder charge off the top of my head) that were developed for this new IBI barrel.
I’m also loading 34 rounds of Hornady 178gr BTHP Match over 43.5gr of Varget. We’ll see what the tuner can do.
I had a tuner on my .22LR Rimfire Benchrest rifle and it "seemed" to work. I used tested lots of very expensive ammo and had difficulty actually obtaining a case lot of ammo samples that tested best. In fact, I once tested samples of 5 lots of ammo from a nationwide dealer within a day of when I obtained them and called with my top three choices when I arrived home and the company was completely OUT of all of them!!! It wasn't much later than that, I quit shooting that game. Before I quit, during one match, I fired three targets, scoring 100, 100, and 99. I figured that would never happen again, so I hung it up and sold my heavy .22LR benchrest rifle to a buddy.
denton
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How tuners work....
Barrel vibrations start before the bullet reaches the muzzle. The muzzle traces out some kind of arc, the shape of the arc probably being a little different from rifle to rifle. In most cases, I think the arc is an ellipse. The function of the tuner is to adjust the natural vibration frequency of the barrel "whip", so that bullets exit at an optimum point on the arc.
When the muzzle is on the side of the ellipse, it is moving fairly fast, and a small difference in when the bullet exits the muzzle will make a big difference in where the bullet lands. When the muzzle is on the end of the ellipse, it is moving slowly and a small difference in when the bullet exits will make very little difference in where the bullet lands. When adjusted to this point, the result is "robust". That means that small changes in charge, temperature, etc., usually make little difference.
"Barrel harmonics" is a misnomer. Resonant frequency is probably a better term. That is the frequency at which the barrel naturally vibrates. Barrel harmonics is probably a corruption of harmonic motion, which simply means motion that repeats itself. A harmonic of a frequency is an exact multiple of the resonant frequency.
Just putting a weight on the end of a barrel will tend to reduce barrel whip, as will putting vibration damping material in the barrel channel. Barrel tuning devices work a little better, but are very hard to set up correctly. Probably the best method is one of the ladder methods. The smallest groups tend to occur when the center of the group has moved as far as it is going to, and is ready to start back toward the starting point.
Barrel vibrations start before the bullet reaches the muzzle. The muzzle traces out some kind of arc, the shape of the arc probably being a little different from rifle to rifle. In most cases, I think the arc is an ellipse. The function of the tuner is to adjust the natural vibration frequency of the barrel "whip", so that bullets exit at an optimum point on the arc.
When the muzzle is on the side of the ellipse, it is moving fairly fast, and a small difference in when the bullet exits the muzzle will make a big difference in where the bullet lands. When the muzzle is on the end of the ellipse, it is moving slowly and a small difference in when the bullet exits will make very little difference in where the bullet lands. When adjusted to this point, the result is "robust". That means that small changes in charge, temperature, etc., usually make little difference.
"Barrel harmonics" is a misnomer. Resonant frequency is probably a better term. That is the frequency at which the barrel naturally vibrates. Barrel harmonics is probably a corruption of harmonic motion, which simply means motion that repeats itself. A harmonic of a frequency is an exact multiple of the resonant frequency.
Just putting a weight on the end of a barrel will tend to reduce barrel whip, as will putting vibration damping material in the barrel channel. Barrel tuning devices work a little better, but are very hard to set up correctly. Probably the best method is one of the ladder methods. The smallest groups tend to occur when the center of the group has moved as far as it is going to, and is ready to start back toward the starting point.
The Glockodile
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Oooh!
Feel me some good vibrations!
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