Barrel Tuners

[Triffid]

Interesting Hornady YouTube video about Barrel Tuners . . .

 

Enjoy!

Triffid

[The Gun Pimp]

Well worth a watch - all 75 minutes - unless you've just fitted a barrel-tuner.........

[Popsbengo]

Well, that was 75mins well spent I think.  Very interesting indeed.

Well worth a listen.

One thing it's validated for me is the care required to ensure bullet alignment is well spent in reducing dispersion due to cross-velocities.

I'll not be ordering a muzzle tuner anytime soon though.  With the money saved (?) I've ordered Jeff Siewert's book

[No i deer]

What did you gain from watching the video pops..?

[LesP]

As I have a bespoke tuner fitted to my heavy gun it was very  enlightening to hear the comments of serious testing as mentioned in the podcast as opposed to reading other shooters views on websites like 6BR regarding how tuners work etc.

I know that you need to find the most accurate charge weight first and cartridge overall length etc. Then moving the tuner to fine tune which might improve group sizes (or not) and their positioning, but I think that in the real world there are other influences (wind strength being the main one for me) to give me confidence to say my tuner has made it more accurate.

As I do not have the laboratory facilities to prove it conclusively works and need my money for other things (women, holidays etc) than bullets, powder etc it can stay on the barrel and locked in one position unless I decide to do a non analytical test for a bit of fun in a tunnel range.

After all it's just a hobby really!

 

 

Edited January 19 by LesP
Additional info added

[Popsbengo]

2 hours ago, No i deer said:

What did you gain from watching the video pops..?

1) a clearer understanding of barrel harmonics and the ballistic effects that overwhelm any real-world "tuning" available from adjustable barrel weights.

2) the significance of bullet axial alignment and yaw related dispersion being more significant than I thought

3) some useful links to other related subjects

[No i deer]

I watched an f class John video where he ran the loads that were more and more out of alignment testing the concentricity theory..

They had to be really bent to be really bad on the target..

Small amounts of variation didn't make much difference on the target..

[Elwood]

I’m certainly no expert on tuners, but most people think they are an accuracy upgrade, which they can be. More importantly though they allow you to keep your accurate barrel in tune in varying conditions, ie hot and cold. They also allow you to do it on the range and if you have too during a competition.

I still do a proper load development, charge weight, seating, primer, neck tension before finally running a tuner test, most of my tuners are set on 0 where it was when I was doing my load development.

Disclaimer, no I haven’t watched the video.

[John MH]

My take away was that if you want a tuner get one, if you believe it is contributing to a reduction in group size then that's great and that belief will boost your confidence in your equipment and ammunition; all good positive factors in your mental preparation for a match.

Statistical sample size was clearly emphasised and trying to claim a provable benefit from a single 3 or 5 round group must be taken with a pinch of salt; they (the Hornady Ballistician)  used nearly 1000 rounds in their tests and his conclusion was that a turner adjustments had negligible effects on group dispersion.

The retired Ballistician said he had run nearly 30000 simulations (of lots of factors) and found that the small displacement of mass by adjusting a Tuner a a small amount at the end of a barrel had negligible effect on predicted group dispersion.

I have a Tuners on a couple of barrels and I am not convinced that they make a difference in the very limited testing I have done, but limited testing produces limited results.

[Popsbengo]

1 hour ago, Elwood said:

I’m certainly no expert on tuners, but most people think they are an accuracy upgrade, which they can be. More importantly though they allow you to keep your accurate barrel in tune in varying conditions, ie hot and cold. They also allow you to do it on the range and if you have too during a competition.

I still do a proper load development, charge weight, seating, primer, neck tension before finally running a tuner test, most of my tuners are set on 0 where it was when I was doing my load development.

Disclaimer, no I haven’t watched the video.

"Most people think..."    "Most people" also think doing statistics on three shot strings is reasonable in load development.

I'd rather take the view of experts under consideration than the views of persons that have spent quite large sums of money on a gadget - confirmation bias being a well known problem.

If it adds to confidence then crack on,  I'll not be joining the tuner ownership club myself.

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Elwood]

Experts or expert ?

Also it doesn’t add confidence, it aids maintaining and sometimes improving accuracy.

 

Guess I’d better watch the video.

[John MH]

1 hour ago, Elwood said:

Guess I’d better watch the video.

Might be worth doing.

[Popsbengo]

20 minutes ago, John MH said:

Might be worth doing.

indeed

[No i deer]

I have a tuner on my latest 7mm saum barrel..

It's a Dan Bramley tuner..

My very first tuner..

I did the load development the usual way that went very well and I'm yet to try out the tuner..

This was October 2022 and I haven't put the barrel back on yet.

The 7mm 270 is still shooting great so I've no urge to swap the barrels around.

I watched the yanks at the European championships adjusting their tuners to adjust the positive compensation.

They seem to be confident adjusting them..

 

[Artiglio]

I started watching , but lost interest when the discussion was about the differences between artillery shells effectively laying in the bottom of the bore and cartridge based bullets being held in the bore by the cartridge case. Then all the talk of computer modelling etc down to the point of accounting for jacket wear in the course of the bullets travel in the barrel. Too much deviation from the central point of the subject for me. 
 

In the real world I first tried a tuner having found that on a new barrel putting a magnetospeed on halved the group size, had one of the early Cortina tuners fitted to the barrel and undoubtedly it made a difference , in terms of group size, shape of group and poi. 
 

Not had a barrel since that produced such repeatable results as that first try. But as i’ve got them i don’t see any harm in fitting them and generally they do alter poi and group size to a degree. But they don’t improve an already good load. As for moving it outside of a load development session , i’d have no idea which way to go during a comp.
 

Being totally unscientific and based solely on my experiences, the tuners effect seemed much greater on a 7/270 and a straight 284. On the 300wsm not so much. ( until the day i shot a detail with the tuner loose and had no understanding of what was going on till i discovered it after).

Of those that listened to the whole video,  would I be right in thinking they were leading upto the conclusion that  a decent barrel, good components, well developed load and carefully produced ammo were far more important factors than the tuner, which wouldn’t be able to cope with variances in ammo anyway? 
 

[Popsbengo]

 

6 minutes ago, Artiglio said:

 

Of those that listened to the whole video,  would I be right in thinking they were leading upto the conclusion that  a decent barrel, good components, well developed load and carefully produced ammo were far more important factors than the tuner, which wouldn’t be able to cope with variances in ammo anyway? 
 

"race car parts make a race car" is the way they summed it up.  Also, your last point is a key observation - if there is any effect from tuners it's tiny compared to so many other factors and because of practical reasons, most load development is limited in numbers of shots, so statistically suspect when comparing results and therefore tuner benefits are inconclusive at best

[Artiglio]

Thanks Pops.

[Bianchi]

My experience with a barrel tuner has been limited to .22 lr rimfire out to 300m. Each ammo type/lot number can be optimized to one of the rifle’s accuracy nodes. The optimal setting  is uncannily consistent for each type, so I can reset the tuner with confidence when switching over ammunition.
 

Some tweaking may be required due to factors such as temperature, conditioning of the barrel etc. With .22 lr, the low energy levels probably result in barrels being relatively more sensitive to minor shifts in their weight and weight distribution from a barrel tuner than centerfire rifles running at 3000+J or even HME.
 

With centerfire cartridges, hand loaded ammo can first be matched to the rifle and an optional barrel tuner provides the final touch should shooting conditions change. Could observe that at the Europeans in Bisley last year with the unexpectedly high temperatures.

 

[Big Al]

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.

[Artiglio]

This thread on Accurate Shooter suggests a few issues with the way Hornady did their testing.

https://forum.accurateshooter.com/threads/hornady-podcast-on-barrel-tuners.4114687/

[Popsbengo]

I think what we can agree on is that there's endless scope for debate and theorising about the very complex subject that is internal ballistics. Hand-loading and 'tuning' loads and firearms for optimum performance is fascinating.  I've come to the conclusion that it's far easier to eliminate bad performing loads than to arrive at a near perfect marriage between load and rifle.

I make ammunition that's as repeatable as I can make it,  use only the best components,  invest in the best rifle & sight combo I can afford,  take care to eliminate poor groupings and then crack on with shooting!  I get pleasing accuracy and precision however I'm sure there's something further to be gained - it's just very hard to get that last nth% ..

[The Gun Pimp]

On 1/21/2024 at 7:24 PM, Big Al said:

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.

 

[The Gun Pimp]

Al - I think that's one of the best summations of barrel-tuners I've ever read.

[No i deer]

7 hours ago, The Gun Pimp said:

Al - I think that's one of the best summations of barrel-tuners I've ever read.

Yes very good

[JCalleja91]

There's alot of chat hear mentioning hand loaded ammunition.. do they mention Factory ammo at all? Is a tuner beneficial then where other factors aren't tunable? 

 

I started watching the video but it got a bit deep for my tired brain and I fell asleep 😅