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I think the use of washers would work well for fine tuning, it really does take very little movement to change the tune once you have found a sweet spot. I use a 20 tpi thread with my homemade tuners, one whole turn gives 50 thou movement. A quarter of a turn (12 thou) or less either way is enough to change things. If you were going the washer route I think you would need a sliding weight for coarse tuning then tinker with the washers. The further forward from the muzzle you are, the less weight you will need for coarse tuning.

That's a nice set of card... 👍👍

I have one without the screen - really excellent bit of kit for £50.

Here's and interesting read with some of the history to our firearms legislation. The British Constitution and the Right to Keep and Bear Arms for Defence | The Ludwig von Mises Centre (misesuk.org)

If we were chatting on a range in 1985 and I said "In a couple of years my single shot .22lr Webley target pistol will be banned and placed in the same category as a Vicker machine gun " you would have thought that utterly absurd too. You may not see the point of MARS rifles and seem not too concerned that they have been banned on a whim because they "look dangerous" or can fire fast, but have you ever seen someone who can really operate a conventional lever action rifle? - Will these be the next to go, or maybe have a stopper in the tube magazine only allowing 5 rounds to be loaded? And of course, a .338Lap is far too dangerous to let a civilian anywhere near one.

Anyone who has been shooting for a long time will know just how many of our basic shooting freedoms we have lost, we are constantly walking backwards. True, some regulation over the last 50 years has made sense, but an awful lot has made little sense and done very little to reduce criminal activity. Most restrictions come under the "seen to be done" banner and of course, legitimate shooter are an easy target, with ineffectual national associations and most shooter seemingly quite happy to sell any other branch of shooting, if it doesn't actually effect them directly, down the river. Remember, these new ideas effect a whole raft of shooting related topics, not just reloading. In a life time of shooting I've see our freedoms eroded from the time when you could buy a shotgun certificate in the post office and buy your shotgun on your mum's mail order catalogue, to a time where it may soon mean it's an offence to have an empty case in your possession or need a variation to buy a new bullet mould.

I think you are absolutely right - totally unnecessary. But it will be cheap to implement, will be seen to be doing something, will (as always) face very little opposition and just one more of the thousands cuts required to totally eliminate shooting in this country.

I can't see why something simple wouldn't work. The Parker Hale .22 mods are quite slim and sturdy. You really need some fixed reference point and a means of making small repeatable adjustments.

This is the only one I've seen - I made this collet clamp to use a tuner and a moderator as I didn't want to jump straight in and screwcut my shiny new lilja match barrel. This is on a rimfire, not sure I would want a clamp on one on a centrefire.

In Bill Calfee's book (The art of rimfire accuracy) he explains how he calculates the tuner weight and how much it should protrude past the barrel - He's very much a practical guy but does explain what he does and why he does it. I find his writing style very irritating but it does contain a lot of information if you're interested in rimfire accuracy. . The results obtained by his rimfire rifles in BR competitions are amazing.

The way I see it, the extra mass should be in front of the muzzle - the further out the less weight required to do the same job. There seems to be different approaches, for example to tune for positive compensation. This is not a new idea, a Fulton regulated No 4 .303 target rifle was "tuned" for positive compensation, the idea being that the bullet should exit the muzzle on the upward travel of the vertically vibrating barrel. The theory is that a slightly faster bullet will exit earlier on the up swing and depart on a lower trajectory and a slower bullet will exit later for a higher trajectory - If the rifle was regulated for 600 yards the two trajectories should cross at that distance and give minimum vertical dispersion. Remember Reynolds and Fulton were regulating .303 service rifles with thin barrels shooting selected service issue ammunition, mainly by various amounts of pressure bedding. This idea is seems to be one of the primary aims for rimfire benchrest shooting - Where you have no control over the velocity of the ammunition you will have vertical error at competition distances. The alternative idea is that you get the bullet to exit the muzzle while it's at a "stopped" position, either at the top or bottom of a vibration or even at the center of a figure eight sinusoidal pattern.

This seems such an obvious and easy way forward I can't believe that it's not the way Eley test their ammunition. As far as I know the Lapua .22 test facility use a "return to battery" set-up. It would be interesting to compare results.

I must agree, with all the millions of .22lr ammunition produced and all the money spent on R&D over the years, it does seem pretty basic to just clamp a barrel/action in a solid vice. The Ransom rest use for pistol/ammunition testing seems the right idea and gave very good results.

Indeed - when you think this is with world class ammunition, shot under perfect conditions in match quality, regularly maintained barrels, it puts the "My 10/22 shoots 1" groups at 100yds with HP's all day long" into a bit of perspective. And I have to say - when checked through the lot analyser, I don't find some of the lots of Eley Match and Tenex all that impressive.

This type design might be worth experimenting with. (not mine, just grabbed the picture). The theory is, you set the coarse adjustment by moving the whole thing fore and aft, then rotate the off center mass to tune out lateral error then fine tune vertical error with the micrometre adjustment. What I would like to see is experiments carried out on the Eley test range or similar tunnel range under controlled conditions. Each lot of Eley rimfire is tested through four different barrels in fixed rests at 50m and groups electronically measured, then all groups (200 shots) combined to give an overall groups size. Until recently you could enter the lot number, found on the side of your box of ammo and find the test results for that exact lot. https://eley.co.uk/find-the-perfect-batch-with-eleys-lot-analyser/

It's true that many of Calfee's ideas lack mathematical analysis, however, it can't be overlooked that Calfee built rimfire rifles have won more regional, state, national and world benchrest records than any other, all of course fitted with his tuners. All the common tuners now in use, and just about all competitive rimfire benchrest shooters use them, whether it's a Harrell, Grunig & Elmiger, Ezell or other, all stem from his work.

You might find these links interesting BD. Barrel tuners are very much a rimfire thing, They seem to have been introduced by a benchrest rifle builder in the US in the early 90's by a chap called Bill Calfee. This chaps rifles have won more national and world rimfire BR records than all the others put together. His early tuners were mostly in the 8-10 oz range. Since that time the move has steadily been to move away from, what we might think of as "target rifle" barrels, to much thinner whippy barrels with lighter tuners. http://www.geoffrey-kolbe.com/articles/rimfire_accuracy/tuning_a_barrel.htm https://www.varmintal.com/atune.htm

Surely depends how short and stiff your barrel is. This one's got lead wheel weights strapped all round it.

In my experience, and I hasten to add, only with .22lr, once you have found the "near enough" setting, only small amounts of movement are then needed for fine tuning. There also seems to be several different approaches, a heavier weight a couple of inches back from the muzzle or a lighter weight in front of the muzzle that try and either produce a null point at the muzzle or set for a velocity compensating tune. Then there are the "limbsaver" barrel dampener type systems. Personally I think .22lr is where the advantage is to be had - With centrefire we can infinitely tune the load to suit the barrel, with rimfire you need to tune the barrel to suite the ammunition. This is my experimental adjustable tuner between the barrel and the moderator.

Unfortunately not, I made this as a "one off" for experiments.

Yes, had a play with tuners. I would really like to do some proper testing at 50/100 yards in a tunnel range, unfortunately nothing locally available. Yes, tuners do definitely have an effect, I'm really surprised they have not really caught on over here. In the US 95% of all .22lr benchrest shooters use them. This is one I designed to fit between the barrel and moderator.:

I made a few of these a while ago - but as others have said, it's only half a tool. To get meaningful data you need a constant force press - something I might eventually get around to some time in the future.

Hello Jeff - I think I can help, one way or another. Several years ago I designed and made the prototypes for the Omega auto-trickler for Dandy products in the US. I have recently discovered a couple of boxes of Omega spares so have been able to make up a few complete units. I'm now down to the odds and ends and no longer have enough bits to make complete units, so have now designed a similar vibratory trickler unit that works the same as the Omega.

Those are really nice consistent groups. 👍

Good and useful information. 👍👍