Big Al

Ive shot literally thousands of rabbits using SK Standard match ammo as thats what my rifle is most accurate with., if Tenex works in your gun then the results will be the same. With correctly placed head shots they all roll over the same with match ammo but you cant chest shoot them the way you can with Eley or Winchester subs. if required. I tend to use the match ammo when Im shooting from supported positions in the summer and at longer ranges, 100yd head shots are easy enough in decent conditions during the summer. As the winter and bad weather comes and I end up on the lamp and in the wind etc I go back to Eley subs, not as accurate but more forgiving of a misplaced shot.

No, Im not saying that at all, my reference is to the tuner not the barrel. Your barrel will react to changes in its temperature regardless of whether or not it has a tuner fitted, we already understand that well. Because of that we configure barrels that require multiple shot strings and high levels of accuracy differently to single shot sporting rifles, ie thicker with more meat around the crown etc. The point I make is that changes in barrel temperature wont change the effect the tuner has on the barrel. The tuner is a fixed weight strategically placed on a barrel to improve its tune relative to any given load, when you heat the tuner up it doesnt get heavier or lighter so its effect remains the same. Ive been there, trod that path thoroughly and know from my own experience and testing. I wouldn't have said what I said if I didnt know it to be a fact, Im not into making unproven claims.

I very much doubt you will ever get scientific evidence for very much to do with rifle accuracy, most of the time you have to rely on anecdotal evidence, much the same as all things rifle related. If the barrel could go out of tune when its hot it would do that with or without a barrel tuner on, there is plenty of anecdotal evidence to suggest that doesnt happen. In LR benchrest Ive shot five shot strings in twenty seconds in hot summer temps, the barrel was mad hot yet the tune remained and the groups were small. Ive done this with and without a barrel tuner, it made no difference. By the time you get to the last relay the barrel is untouchable yet the accuracy is still there. As for mixed results with tuners, there are two very simple reasons for that, either the tuner is wrong or the person tuning the barrel with the tuner is doing it wrong. People will always poo poo stuff they either dont understand or cant get to work. Take a look at the 100yd BR scene in the US, you wont find many of the top shooters who dont use tuners all the time now, thats your benchmark as to wether or not they work consistently. The exact same can be said for load development, its either right or it isn't. If the tune is right for the temperature then the gun will shoot well, if its not it wont. Ive shot against people who moaned about their results in the summer only to find they had developed the load in the winter.

Heat has zero effect on a barrel tuner, a hot weight weighs the same as a cold one.

I cant remember, is the front cap of the SAK integral to the baffles? as I said to you privately there is more to tuning a rimfire than a CF in terms of weight needed, adding it to the front cap would make the mod too big in my opinion, far better to make the weight of the entire mod part of the tuning weight. It can be done and Ive proved it to myself, it just needs some simple redesigning, whether or not there is a market remains to be seen.

The Jet Z offered an easy way to prove the concept but with some work and proper testing Im sure the makers of moderators could incorporate the concept if they wanted, whether or not they are prepared to do the testing to get it right or see there is a market for them would be the main thing. Initially when lockdown started back in March my phone went quiet and I probably didnt get any new work for the first 6 weeks or so, this worried me a bit so I turned my attention to this project beyond my initial prototypes while things were quiet. Once we started opening up again the work came in thick and fast and it hasn't let up since hence why Im where Im at with it. On reflection I dont really want to be a moderator maker/retailer either but I enjoyed proving the concept. Things like the tuner weight, thread pitch and increment size aren't something I would want to share at this stage as it cost me a lot of time and money to find this out. The concept works and if anyone sees a market and is prepared to do the work then maybe what Ive done so far will provide some inspiration to them.

I would say Ive been playing around with tuners a lot longer than most, over 3yrs now. Ive made tuners for my long range benchrest rifles and won competitions with them. They are certainly one way to tune a barrel but what they wont do is tune a barrel any better than a properly done load assuming you know how to do that. Ive also been playing with tuners that have been incorporated into moderators for quite some time as well and that took a lot more testing to ensure than the tuning weight, the adjustment thread pitch and the increments on the weights would allow it to tune barrels of varying stiffness. Barrels vary in stiffness considerably depending on the length and the thickness and so its important to produce something that will work over a wide range of barrels. During the early part of lockdown I got to the point of pre-production prototypes that were tested by competent shooters that I know, all the feedback was positive and the same, they work all of the time and deliver the same predictable results. To those who reload a tuner offers a faster way of tuning the barrel to the load, typically I would have the barrel tuned in under 20 rounds and the results are always repeatable. The real benefit of this for me though is for people shooting factory ammo as it enables them to tune the barrel to the ammo and as ammo batches vary it allows easy re-adjustment. Barrel tuning is fairly straightforward once you understand it properly, Im not sure anyone really knows how it works exactly but that doesnt matter so long as it works, its easy to achieve and most importantly the results are repeatable. My results with various types of factory ammo showed that typically a barrel tuned in this way could half respective group sizes, so when fully out of tune it was twice the size group than when fully in tune, starting points with the mod fitted of course varied but by taking it tuner though its range of adjustment you would easily see the largest and then smallest group sizes, lock it of and away you go. Group sizes achieved varied from in the 0.1s to 0.5" depending on the quality of the ammo you were using, tuners may be good but they wont turn poor ammo into match ammo but they will improve it to be as good as it can be. I remember one batch of Eastern European .223 soft point ammo that came down from 1.25" to 0.5" which was quite an improvement and made it very useable considering it was cheap as chips. I should have had these to market already but to be honest its been a busy year and Ive just not got around to it. Please dont contact me via PM about them as I will get into trouble for unofficial advertising. Im just making this post to show you what can be done, I have no product to sell nor can I currently make anything to order as Im just too busy. Maybe someone else will run with the idea as copying is always easier than innovating. This was how I got started, I made a new rear insert for a Jet Z with an adjustable weight attached as an easy way of proving the basic concept, I then fine tuned the thread pitch, tuner weight and the increments of adjustment until I had it working well over a wide range of barrel profiles. I then used different paper scales on my own moderator design as they were easy to make and alter as required, this made it easy to find the number of increments required around the weight. Some idea of scale compared to a Jet Z and a Wildcat Evo. I incorporated an interchangeable threaded insert to make switching the moderator from barrels with different threads easier than buying another mod. What is the collective term for a bunch of moderators?

Its hard to go past these, accurate, reliable, easy to use and cheap to boot!

Not that Ive seen.

I can't speak for rimfire tuners BD as I have no experience of them although its clear they are much bigger/heavier than CF tuners. I can only imagine the harmonic waves from a puny .22LR round in often a very stiff benchrest barrel is a lot duller (cant think of a better word) and so needs a more aggressive approach to changing/tuning those waves, the more weight you use the more aggressive your tuning becomes. Certainly when it comes to CF tuners it takes much less weight and movement to make a difference and the more I have tested the lighter mine have became and with better results. What guides my thinking on CF tuners is the results of my own testing.

The muzzle brake needs to stay in the orientation its currently in to work properly, you dont want gases exiting downwards or it will cover you in dust and also try to lift the muzzle of the ground when shooting prone. Thats the reason there is a tuner fitted behind it. Also the muzzle brake is too heavy and has no means of making small accurate and repeatable movements which a good tuner needs to be able to do. I did use a pepper pot muzzle brake as a tuner once, that worked but it had the correct thread and the nylon tipped set screws and fine increments so it was very much a tuner with a brake incorporated.

Im sure you will know positive compensation can be done with both a tuner and varying charge weights and seating depths, Ive done a lot of the later. I remember when I told people about me tuning for positive compensation at 600yds and 1000yds they looked at me like I had two heads, it works just fine.

Your looking too deeply BD. I think both myself and Alan have already said it doesnt matter where exactly the tuner is placed, it just means more or less weight shift needs to occur to get the same results. The EC tuner is popular but personally I think its too heavy in combination with the thread making for too coarse adjustments. I fitted one recently and also shortened it by about 40% to bring the weight down to work better with the thread that we have to work with. This ives better control of the incremental adjustments and you can see more of whats going on. There are other aspects of the design I dont like as well as its weight to thread pitch ratio but its not a thread about whats wrong with the EC tuner so I will keep them to myself. Ive had tuners in front and behind the crown and also mid barrel, they have all worked as good as each other but required different amounts of weight to get the job done. Mid barrel is pointless it just adds too much weight and looks ugly. Around the muzzle is the right place.

Recoil itself plays its part in how a rifle shoots because it changes the harmonics within the system and certainly in centerfire rifles zero recoil has been proven to have a detrimental effect on accuracy. You couldn't attach a heavy recoiling rifle to a fixed vice and expect good results, its been shown not to work. When I built my BR heavy gun it weighed 46lb with an 8" wide forend and a 3" wide rear, both sat on/in sand filled bags. A combination of the weight and the friction meant with a 6 Dasher case firing a 105 bullet the gun would recoil about 1" when left to free recoil backwards. The whole shooting system was extremely stable and almost impossible to shoot badly unless you broke certain rules. One of this rules was recoil management. The same amazingly accurate gun would go to pieces if you slid your shoulder in tight and tried to restrict the already minimal recoil, I tested his extensively. Because of the lack of recoil it really needed to be left to do its thing, the minute you made any contact with the gun it didn't shoot as well. There are examples from the US of heavy guns being 90lb and firing calibers like 6BR, the initial idea was to almost try and eliminate recoil to make the gun easier to shoot but it didn't work, the guns shot better with an element of recoil to be allowed in the system. I appreciate the .22LR is a much smaller case and the harmonic pattern will be different but I still wonder how batch testing in a vice makes sense when the BR rimfire shooter will still let the gun recoil freely albeit not very far? If I was going to batch test in a tunnel I would contruct a sled system that would hold the gun perfectly still and repeatable but would allow recoil to take place and also be controlled and adjusted as required, something like a rail gun.

The thing I dont understand about batch testing ammo is the concept of securing the action in a vice that has zero movement, this doesnt seem to replicate how the gun will be shot and in turn how the harmonics will perform in the real world. Considering some rifles can be tuned with stock bolt adjustment it seems counter intuitive to lock it in a vice and allow zero movement. Then again I accept these guys know far more about it than me.

There are 220 bullets here all the same batch if anyone is still using them - £55 posted.

We dont really need to understand, so long as they allow us to tune a load does it really matter if we understand whats happening? Ive done lots of tuner testing and I think I know now what I need to know to get the best from them, even if I dont fully understand the physics. Below is a test I did a couple of years ago bringing a random powder charge into tune, I then verified it by continuing to shoot small groups at the same tuner setting. The last row shows me taking the barrel out and then back in again.

Yes, that would make sense. Ive seen it touted many times as a barrel tuner but without repeatable fine adjustment it couldn't be.

I have no experience of rimfire barrel tuners so if this guy is using something this heavy and adjustable and is a record holder then clearly they must work on rimfires. I imagine the harmonics must be very different to a centerfire case when you consider the pressure differences.

A barrel tuner needs to be able to make precise and repeatable movements, the Limbsaver thing doesnt offer that.

Just because there is a picture of a guy online like that doesnt mean it works, even the smallest of movements on something like that will give crazy POI shifts, try it and see for yourself. I said what I said to save the OP wasting time with a moderators and based on my own experiences/testing. I would say that thing in the picture was probably a barrel dampener that wasn't intended to be moved like a tuner. People played with that concept with the aim of trying to dampen down the harmonics and make the nodes bigger, it worked but it made guns too heavy to quality for the LV category so wasnt that popular. The most popular tuners on the market today are in the 3oz-6oz range and even they can be too much on a long slim barrel. One of the best tuners out there for the short/stiff 6PPC benchrest barrels weighs 3.5oz

No, its way too heavy.

Give me a good Brexit debate any day. As for Covid, society has more than its fair share of nuggets and as said earlier they are breeding fast, therein lies our problem.

Are you wanting heavier bullets for longer range targets or killing things? If the latter then there aren't that many good heavy hunting bullets with reliable expansion. I would say Sierra 77gr Tipped Matchkings are the best, very explosive even on soft targets at long range, great for rabbits and the like. 77s only need an 8T although Ive shot them very well out of a 7T as well. If you want to shoot the heavier 80-90gr bullets at targets then a 7T or 7.5T makes sense but your going to have to go down the rebarrel route as no factory guns come with fast twists like this. The Bergara 9T will shoot 69gr Sierra TMKs which also expand well and will still give you a significant improvement at longer ranges over the traditional lighter bullets used in a 22/250.

7mm RSAUM would be a good swap for the 7RM. Potent, accurate, good brass supply and loads of load development data as it a common FClass round. If you want to go .224 and like a bit of fun then 22 Dasher is a highly accurate and very competent choice in combination with a fast twist barrel and 75-90gr bullets. Of course your options are endless and people could debate them for weeks here but most would be better suited to a Remington short action and/or a different bolt face.