My experience with regards to rimfire 22's:
First, it's important to understand that the little 22 is one of the more difficult cartridges to shoot well. It's a horribly inefficient little thing that travels roughly 1/3rd the speed of anything modern or "cool". What this ultimately means from my perspective is that the bullet loiters around in the barrel 3x longer than what is typical of the centerfire world. That equates to a shooter that must be on his/her game. Shooting fundamentals come into play a whole lot more with these things. It's what makes them so effective as training guns because if you pay attention to detail with a rimfire, the transition to high-power is a whole lot easier in most instances.
When I worked for Anschutz and built stuff for the resident athletes at the OTC in Colorado Springs, keeping things simple was always a priority for me. I never really messed with tuners on international 3P, biathlon, or Silhouette rifles. (Not all of these are Olympic sports, but it's the 3 principal disciplines we catered to there so I had a lot of exposure to them back then) Some of the bench guns we did used a tuner, but they were always looked upon as more of a novelty.
A lesson I learned early on shooting competitively: If you spend any amount of time in the high-power game, be it Service Rifle, Palma, High Power Match rifle, or whatever... If you want to witness a competitive shooter come apart at the seams, watch what happens when an "on-call" shot splashes somewhere well wide of where the shooter decided it should have hit. For anyone experienced, the most typical response is they instantly start grabbing and yanking on things to try and figure out what has come loose on the gun. Sights, brakes, cans, guard screws, bases, whatever it might be. That's where experienced competitive shooters start looking when problems develop from thin air.
So, take that lesson and apply it here. A suppressor likes to come loose. When I used to shoot PRS stuff, I dealt with it all the time. Part of the ritual became snugging up a can right before a stage. I see no benefit from not developing this practice as a standard routine for anyone running a can on a rimfire as well. It certainly won't hurt anything. As far as ultimate accuracy goes, I don't see them harming anything. Off the cuff, it's been my experience that shooters do a better job on suppressed guns just because they are easier to shoot. Less noise ='s less annoyance so people can devote more attention to shooting instead of being bothered by stuff.
If we're going to try and science this, then I offer this for consideration: On every piece of high-speed footage I've ever watched of a rifle being fired, the projectile
always outpaces the gas plume. If that is indeed fact, then I would say it's unlikely for a can to somehow disrupt what the bullet is doing once it leaves the muzzle. As for the "H" word (harmonics) I have no idea. I have heard that fluting is supposed to ruin that. According to a lot of the general population that is a ten commandment violation.
(
Thall shall not flute barrels)
We flute a metric pile of barrels here at LRI and they seem to shoot just fine. This includes rimfires. Cut, buttoned, broached, and hammer forgings. It doesn't seem to matter. Last, take this with a grain of salt as its an attempt at humor more than anything:
There are 5 things an American man does better than anyone else. Just ask us.
- Drive cars
- Catch Fish
- Drink beer
- Shoot guns
- Fuck women
If we fail at any one of these things it is far easier to blame it on something out of our control vs facing the fact that we might just suck at it. The last one is the exclusion of course.
Assuming this is true I offer the following:
Talk on forums less and focus on well-executed practice more.
Good luck.
C.
LRI