Big Al

Another very simple option you have is to try some seating depth tuning with the old rounds, if groups aren't quite where you want them. I appreciate you can only easily seat the bullets deeper into the case but your accuracy nodes will repeat. By going 0.005" deeper into the case over a 30-40 thou span or as far as is safe and practical you might find something if you didn't want the faff of a barrel tuner or pulling all 500 rounds to do a new load. Just watch out for indications of pressure increases as those bullets get considerably deeper into the case, they should be easy to see/feel.

The first issue you have is one of safety, knowing for sure that the old ammo you have wont cause pressure in your new barrel. The second is will the old ammo fit the new chamber? I would load a few pressure testers up for the new barrel starting at least 2.0gr lower than your old ammo currently is and creep up to your old ammo charge weight and then beyond by another 1.0gr if possible. Go out and do a pressure test and if it reveals that your old charge weight is safe in the new gun then your safe to use the ammo assuming it fits the new chamber. If it doesnt then your pretty much scuppered without stripping that ammo and resizing it, whatever you do dont try to resize loaded ammo. As for a barrel tuner, if you have a good tuner than has been fitted/balanced by someone who knows what they are doing and they give you comprehensive instructions on how to use the tuner you might be able to improve the old load should it not shoot so well in the new barrel. My experience is tuners will tune any load so some degree, even bad loads. A well balanced tuner can usually half group sizes from worst case scenario. By that I mean if you keep adjusting the tuner until the groups are the largest then with correct tuning they will go to about half the worst group size, so 2" down to 1" or 0.5" down to 0.25" if you have a good barrel and load combo. Ive seen so many examples of this with both home loads and factory ammo Im confident in what I say. If when the tuner has been fitted by coincidence an optimum is reached before moving the tuner then all moving it will do is increase group sizes then bring them back to where they started again. The biggest issue I have found though regarding tuners is actually getting one that is the right weight for the barrel and that has the right level of adjustment in terms of thread pitch and increment size to give you half a chance of it being useful. Long thin barrels have different requirements to short fat barrels, the same tuner wont work the same on each. As I see things now its a bit pot luck with tuners because nobody Im aware of has made different spec (weight) tuners to work with different barrel profiles and there is very little published info that is any use to allow users to get the best from the tuner assuming its the right spec for the barrel. The same weight tuner could work across all barrel specs but it would need to be treat very differently on a stiff barrel to a flimsy one. If I was going to produce barrel tuners for general sale I would probably make at least three different weights to cover the spectrum of CF barrels out there from hunting to competition and again a couple of different ones for rimfire, its definitely not an easy one size fits all thing. A lot of the tuners out there are just far too heavy and as a result the adjustments are too coarse often creating POI shifts rather than shifts in tune, I think this explains why many people have been sceptical because they havent been able to get the best from the barrel with the wrong type of tuner fitted and very poor instructions for use. If nothing else and you dont use a tuner then if your old ammo is safe to use you can use it to run the new barrel in. Every new barrel needs to be run in but not for the reasons many think. For me running the barrel in has nothing to do with extending its lifespan or improving its accuracy. Every barrel Ive ever chrono'd from new (of which there are many) has always sped up by anywhere from 80-150fps after around 100-150 shots. If you develop a load for a new barrel before it stops speeding up then your tune will shift as your speed does. Thats why diligent competition shooters dont develop a load for a new barrel until it has stopped speeding up. Of course this only matters when looking for optimum accuracy, many people just require acceptable accuracy which can be very different from optimum.

Everyone in the gun trade should put a link to this survey on their website or FB page to encourage as many people as possible to contribute. We should also copy links to all the groups we frequent.

Yes I think it is but I would say I would be more likely to listen to people who might have had continued success over a reasonable period of time. Those are the people I would be listening to. I would agree 100%. Of everyone who competes in most things the 5% categorisation I mentioned earlier will apply. So very often though its the same names at the top of many leaderboards which seems to confirm that.

If you want to be truly competitive you cant, barrels and loads change throughout the barrels life and the component batch size. Environmental factors could also change a load month by month. Of course it depends on how competitive the shooter wants to be.

As a young apprentice some 40yrs ago my mentor and still dear friend today told me about the 5% rule. As an apprentice of the year he explained to me that only around 5% of people who take part in anything end up being truly good at it, some 40yrs later after many different experiences I am a firm believer in this concept. You only have to take golf as a good example, statistics show very few players end up scratch golfers and the handicap system worldwide clearly shows the average, the good etc etc. Without any doubt this also transfers to shooting of all disciplines. The idea being that 5% end up very good then a slightly larger percentage end up good and average, poor, choose a new hobby etc. I have certainly found this to be very true when it comes to shooting rifles and load development. We might all be able to shoot a good 3 or 5 shot group now and again and blame poor ones on 'flyers' but far far less of us can repeat this with such regularity that we can then trust our results enough to truly draw accurate conclusions from our testing. I agree that lots of people wont consider sample size and its value, one small group and its called good when statistically its far from it. That said, people can only do what they can and as such not everyone ends up a winner.

There is an old saying, "if you put shite in you get shite out" If someone tries to randomly develop a load as you suggest then they end up drawing the wrong conclusion that there are no nodes. Listen to people who shoot really small groups regularly, dont waste your time or expensive ammo on stuff like this.

Thanks Vince, hope your keeping well.

I am very much a fan of barrel tuners and Ive felt this way since 2017. I have done a lot of testing with tuners of the 'moveable weight via a thread' design and there is no doubt in my mind that they can help a shooter in reducing the average size of the their groups in many different scenarios. The tuner could be connected directly to the barrel or as part of a moderator/tuner set up or a brake/tuner set up, they all work the same and deliver the same results. The problem regarding their effectiveness lies very much with how much effort and understanding shooters put into them, the more you understand the more they reveal the benefits. The benefits could be different things to different people though. One very obvious benefit is being able to tune ready made ammunition such as factory ammo, they do this very well and thats why very few self respecting top level benchrest rimfire shooters would be seen without one. Apply this to factory CF ammo and you can see some real improvements within the same batch. Time when the bullet you want to use isnt accurate enough can be minimised within reason. I have loaded rounds for just velocity with no regard for optimum powder charge then tuned the load to shoot as well as a load developed using close observations in powder charge weight. The benefit of this is Ive found accuracy at the velocity I wanted and not where the node was which sometimes can be well below the speed you wanted with the next node being too high causing pressure issues. Something Ive never been able to do is tune a barrel with a barrel tuner to be any more accurate than a well tuned barrel using any of the more recognised methods. Once a barrel is in a high state of tune with any tuning method I think thats it, there is little if anything to then be improved upon, highly tuned is highly tuned regardless of how you got there. You also reach a stage where other factors like how well you can shoot comes into play for many people or how meticulous in your testing, record keeping and data analysis you are, being able to discern very small differences becomes difficult. I used to have a very stable shooting platform in the form of a 46lb bench rest heavy gun, that allowed me to see things I had never been able to see shooting my regular rifles but it cost a lot of money in time and testing to find. I also think some tuners are better than others, the Bramley one is very good. Some are just too big and too heavy where in combination with the thread pitch and increment sizes they make for too coarse an adjustment and you miss lots of stuff in between.

What action do you want?

Read the rules on advertising, its obvious.

I speak to customers every week and its amazing just how much things differ from force to force, variations here in Northumberland have been taking 2 weeks lately but in the past Ive had them done on the same day by driving over to the office and waiting 30 mins, granted there was a bit of a story behind that but it shows how flexible they can be. It really is outrageous to think we have one standard firearm policy yet forces both interpret it and deliver it in so many different ways from the ridiculous to the sublime. Surely the likes of BASC etc should have been able to convince the government by now on how to go about this. My own personal FAC is due for renewal in Oct 23 with Northumbria, I received the paperwork in early April with a request to get it back to them asap so all goes smoothly, Im not expecting any issues.

Sold.

I always use a bronze brush at least one caliber bigger than my barrels, they do a far more efficient job than the correct size ones.

If the barrel is thoughtfully shortened by someone who knows what they are doing then there is very little chance of the gun not being as accurate as it always has been.