BBL Tuners - Do you use them?

[JG26_Irish]

How many of you are using any kind of barrel tuner on your 22lr? I know that some shooting disciplines do not allow tuners or weights but for those that do, how many find them useful? I occasionally shoot in local bench rest matches near home. The clubs that hold these do not have a vintage rifle class. They shoot sporter class which is limited to 8.5 lbs and unlimited class which is well the mega-buck race guns with all the bells and whistles. My old vintage Win and Rem rifles are both too heavy to make the cut for sporter class so I find myself shooting an old factory stock vintage rifle in the unlimited matches. All the guns I see are using Harrell type or Fudd bbl tuners. Everybody claims they are worth the $. I cannot say other than most of them out shoot me. It is not that I shoot bad but I am new to BR and am still learning how to shoot in the wind with flags. The range where these matches are held is notorious for very wild winds. Swirling, gusting, tough to read. I have been reading up on tuners and PRx and have talked to Tony P about it and think it may be worth the trouble to try a tuner on my rifle. I called Mike Ezel and discussed his PDT tuners and decided to order one. In theory it will damp the vertical vibrations in the bbl as the bullet travels down the bore to the muzzle and limit the amplitude of the movement at the muzzle to tighten the groups in the vertical plane. This may also be able to compensate for minor variations in muzzle velocity due to ammo variance. Makes the gun less sensitive to ammo selection. It won't make bad ammo shoot well but it will make the rifle shoot better with any ammo. Wow.

Sounds peachy right? Or is it snake oil? We will see in a few weeks. Any opinions welcome but I really want to hear from those who have tried these devices. Good, Bad, Ugly?

Irish

 

[LRShooter101]

Right situation they work and work well!

Per your comments above, they are not a magical fix all, but they will allow you to get the most out of certain barrel & ammo combinations.

Since you can't load your own rimfire, your only other option is try as many factory loads as you can looking for that magic bullet, or start modifying your barrel (usually means altering the profile/length) to get the optimal results. With a good barrel and good ammo, the tuner will allow you to workout the harmonics to as close to optimal as you are going to get.

While most people stick with tuners on rimfires, there are also some people using them with good success on centerfire rounds. Generally speaking proper load development should get you where need to be with the barrel harmonics, but a tuner in some cases will even further refine the performance levels.

Not sure of the hard numbers, nut I have seen a lot of Benchrest shooting records set with tuner equipped rifles.

If you search places like Accurate Shooter and and of the Benchrest Central, you will find plenty of examples.

 

[clmayfield]

I just bought one for the first time. My rifle is a hammer, but now that I am doing Smallbore NRA F-Class competitions, I am trying to squeeze every last bit out. I will let y'all know how it goes after I tune it.

 

[JG26_Irish]

I just bought one for the first time. My rifle is a hammer, but now that I am doing Smallbore NRA F-Class competitions, I am trying to squeeze every last bit out. I will let y'all know how it goes after I tune it.

Thanks Carter. May I ask which tuner you chose to try? I too plan to report the results of the Ezell tuner once I have enough data to determine its worth. I come from a background in harmonic vibration control in steel structures. Last winter I began designing my own tuner for both the 22 as well as my AR15 type rifles. Both were based upon the PRx data. I was hoping to find a tuner that would damp both in the vertical plan as well as the horizontal. Before I got very far, I found Ezell. His tuner used powdered tungsten to aid the damping process. This is similar to a long beam damper that I developed a few years ago. I intuitively see it as having potential. Rather than guess about it or use intuition, I figured I would try it. Will post results here in a few weeks.

Irish

 

[clmayfield]

I bought a Harrell's style tuner from Killough Shooting Sports. Harrell Style Muzzle Tuner Silver

 

[clmayfield]

Here are my tuner groups. The day was a bit windier than I would have liked for what is, essentially, load development.



I shot 2 groups at the 0 setting, 2 at 25, 2 at 50, 2 at 75, and then moved up and did the same for 100-175, 200-275, etc. So those first couple of groups were 8 shot groups at different settings.

After finding that 0-75 yielded the smallest groups, I shot 4 shot groups at settings 0, 25, 50, and 75. I didn't have calipers, so I eyeballed it as 0 having the smallest group, when, in fact, 75 had the smallest group. I tried to halve it between 0 and 25, going to 12, then I halved that to 6 and kept going on down to 1. I didn't like that result, so I went back to 75, first trying to go high to 81, then down to 68. 68 yielded my smallest group, so I tried to search around for a sweet spot around 68. 68 stayed the smallest group, so I shot a confirmation group at 68 and another confirmation 5-shot group (all the others were 4 shots to save ammo).

A couple of interesting observations:
1) I shot a 6X5 averaging .226" a while ago, so my rifle should be shooting in the 2's, my goal is to get it into the 1's consistently. I don't know if I did that. I will need to try side by side with the rifle with a tuned tuner and without on the same day in the same conditions.

2) I have always questioned whether this is all random. I have said before that you can look at one of my score cards and write "load development" and there are some groups that are a lot tighter than others. I think there is something more going on here, though. Notice that when I was searching around in the 0-25 range, my groups where all in the 3's, while when I was in the 50-75 range, all groups were in the 2's.

3) 6 o'clock fliers - these have been plaguing me. I was thinking it was a marksmanship issue, but it could be ammo. The whole reason I bought this tuner was to try and mitigate my 6 o'clock flier issue. My thought was that maybe I am in a bad harmonic "area" that is causing me to throw a flier every now and again. There was one flier in the 66-70 settings, that was really more of a 4 o'clock flier. In fact, vertical-wise, it is almost at the same elevation of my other lowest shot that group. Obviously, I will need to shoot a 5X5 to confirm that my problem has gone away. Interestingly, I tend to throw a 6 o'clock flier about every 25 shots. There were many many more in this set of groups... it looks like about 8 or 9 in 117 shots, or about one for every 13 - 15 shots. So maybe harmonics contribute to the fliers.

4) De-tuning. While my very best groups might not be able to do as well as a naked barrel (no tuner), changing settings on the tuner no doubt had an impact on accuracy. If I shot the way the "81" group turned out in competition, the fifth shot would be at my own foot. If tuning can have a negative effect on accuracy, it can certainly have a positive impact.

5) Most benchrest 22's have pencil thin barrels and tuners. My barrel is more like a heavy palma contour. It is absolutely huge for a 22LR! It is also long at just over 30". I think thick barrels minimize the impact of tuners. They are less whippy and therefore harmonics are less of a big deal as the amplitude of the wave created by the shot is smaller. Once tuned, I imagine the difference this will make is marginal, but I will take any improvement to pick up a few extra points or X's.

 

[agbm]

RAS tuners brake, Bostrom Gunsmithing

 

[JG26_Irish]

Carter, that is very interesting what you saw with the tuner. Dan Killough is a good guy and a Texas boy too. Thx for sharing your findings. I hope to have my tuner in hand in another week or two. The Benchrest shooters that I am seeing who shoot the unlimited guns are all using heavy bull barrel profiles in all but the sporter grade guns. They are all also using the Harrells tuner up here in this region. Nearly all are using Eley Black ammo also. The best 4 or 5 of them can consistently shoot in the 0.150's as long as it is not too windy. Even my little Remington has a 0.80" straight profile bbl that is 26" long. It shoots OK but is in the 2's and 3's now most of the time. The last time I shot it, I printed 15 five shot groups at 50yds with my best ammo. 5 were in the 3's (actually one of those was a 0.404"), 3 were in the 2's, and 7 were in the 1's, with the best being a 0.139" and the worst the aforementioned 0.404" group. This was a little better than usual for that rifle due mostly to extraordinarily calm winds that day at our range. But it is indicative of what it can do with good ammo on a good day. Average was 0.251" for all 15 groups. I am hoping to see a measurable drop in that average with the tuner. I would be a happy customer if the average for many groups becomes something closer to 0.150-0.180". Conditions are the real killer and it does affect performance a lot. We will see soon enough, lol.

Just in the interest in sharing data, that same day on the same card, I shot 10 other groups using Eley 10x ammo, which has never shot quite as well as the Eley Black or Lapua ammo for me. Of those ten groups, six were in the 3's, and two were larger than that. The other two were in the twos. Just shows how much of a difference ammo alone can make in an otherwise good shooting rifle. Best was a 0.207" and worst was a 0.626" group that had two shots that went way low at 6 o'clock. Other lots of 10x have averaged in the mid 2's for me but this set of groups averaged 0.359".

Irish

 

[jbell]

I think you may find that your tuner settings will more than likely be not only brand specific but lot # specific.

 

[JG26_Irish]

I think you may find that your tuner settings will more than likely be not only brand specific but lot # specific.

That has also been the experience of the BR shooters that I know. While they mostly all shoot Eley Black in matches, they still are spending a large amount of time and ammo testing different lot #'s of Eley each month to find which ones shoot best with their gun, even with the tuner. Seems the muzzle velocity is one of the big variables. Eley lots vary from about 1040 fps up to 1080fps and this alone will affect accuracy. The Ezell tuner that I am getting is claimed to have a wider sweet spot than other tuners of similar design. That is due to the powdered tungsten held in small chambers within the tuner body. That mass is free to move independent of the tuner body and thus can better dampen the barrel vibrations. Others who have tried this tuner claim that once the sweet spot has been located, it has been found to shoot well with a wider variety of ammunition. Still will be likely that it would shoot best with certain lots/speeds, but we will see. I have about 14 or 15 different lots of Eley Black, 10x, Lapua CX, Midas +, Wolf and SK in various amounts lying about as well as a dozen other brands of non match and match grade ammo. I plan to try several of them. The real test will be if I can make it shoot the Midas + ammo. That stuff stinks in my rifle. I still have about a week to wait. Any excuse to go to the range is a good one, lol.

Irish