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.

No longer trading.

Thats highway robbery lad, meet me half way and your dreams will all come true. 😉

Thanks for that. Im generally happy with the view from my Hawkeye so didnt really want any extra magnification.

Thats interesting Pete, does the one you use have added magnification?

Ive got 220 in total, 2x boxed 100s and 20 loose. All boxes have been opened and the 100s are different batch numbers. £140 plus postage. No messages, first to say yes gets them.

The good thing about running your own business is you can decide how you want to do it, there is no right or wrong way so long as you are happy with your profits at the end of each year and you develop a good relationship with your customers and ultimately a good reputation. Im comfortable that my costs and profit margin are well covered so I adopt the plan Ive already laid out. If I have to buy a reamer and go gauge (no need to waste money on a no go gauge) I can still make a profit from job one with the reamer albeit a reduced profit. When I first started building rifles this was common practise for me, get an enquiry but dont have a reamer so buy one and do the work. I could have spent £10k buying everything I felt I needed reamer wise but it seemed to make more sense just working for a smaller margin on job one and keeping my cash in the bank or investing it in barrels, machinery or other tooling. If every job that came in was a weird reamer that was unlikely to ever get used again then I wouldn't be so flexible but thats not the case. Looking back at even the last 30 jobs they were all your regular stuff, maybe the odd lengthened throat but all bread and butter work with a few common reamers from the drawer, on that basis I dont mind losing a few quid on the odd reamer purchase rather than asking a customer to pay, as I said it reminds me of the 'mechanics tools' analogy I gave earlier. I do talk to people who tell me stories about some rifle builders that either try to steer them onto a reamer they have or ask them to pay for the reamer and in some cases even keep it afterwards. There are all kinds of rifle builders out there hence my reference to some being mean, Im happy with the way I see it.

You cant go wrong with Callum, a gentleman and a highly competent rifle builder.

I wouldnt dream of asking a customer to buy me a reamer, its my job to have the right tools to do the work, within reason. I dont have a .221 reamer and in 7yrs Ive never been asked to chamber anything in .221 but I would consider it something I should have so I would buy it and take a reduced margin on the first job. Next time I need one it will be in the drawer with the others. I would only look for a customer to supply/pay for a reamers if it was a real weird chambering that I would never expect to use again, in that case they can buy it and keep it once Ive used it. I think arguing over the cost of a reamer and go gauge with a customer is mean and not something Ive gotten into. If I go to the local garage I dont expect to buy the mechanic the tools he needs to fix my car. As for who to use, yes its best to get some feedback from others if they can. As for the chambering, I dont really see a lot of point to the .221 Fireball, its a load of hassle in terms of brass supply for no real return, might as well go .223 or 20 Practical but if they need to scratch an itch then someone will provide the finger.

Top quality reamers are readily available in the UK with relatively short lead times these days. I wouldn't choose the rifle builder based on whether or not they just had a suitable reamer. Your location isnt really relevant these days unless you specifically want to visit the rifle builder, I doubt I ever meet more than 10% of my customers in person and Ive got rifles Ive built all over the country and some far flung places around the world for that matter. I think the internet and social media/forums has made the world a small and relatively safe place to do business remotely now.

Choose the bullet weight you would prefer to shoot and the speed you would like to drive it at, from there the choice of chambering will become fairly obvious. Sub 55gr bullets are great to 350yds, 400 at a push, from those ranges outwards in my opinion the best readily available .224 vermin bullets are the 69gr & 77gr TMKs, neither of which are going to be 'flat' if there ever was such a thing? I built a 224 Valkyrie in bolt action format for a chap, he was happy with it for his application but at the end of the day its just another chambering, no better or worse than many others. Bear in mind it needs its own bolt face and wont work with a .223 bolt face, it would need to be modified and once done wont be any good for .223 again.