- Thread starter Taylorbok
- Start date
Granted you can still have positive comp without a tuner but the window is usually very small . With additional weight the window can be widened but the wrong weight can make it worse , if it does with a tuner you can at least move the adjustable weight to make it better . If it is a fixed weight with no movable weight then another weight will have used . This varies from gun to gun .
Last edited:
What forces are making it more common for the bullet to exit while the barrel is moving downward versus the bullet releasing while the barrel is moving upward?
What is your process for “tuning” a load in the reloading room to change from the bullet being released when the barrel is moving downward to change it to where the bullet is released when the barrel is moving upward?
Are there any measuring tools that help determine which direction the barrel is moving when the bullet releases?
The offset of weight above verses below the barrel centerline combined with recoil force being the main driver . I will change weight until I see trends in which the slower rounds are trending up . The only way I have found to know if the barrel is bending is to shoot ladders 1 grain apart side by side looking at the POI trends . Any barrel can be measured but relating a particular movement to POI is the hard part .At 100 yards there should not be much if any poi change with a velocity range of 250 fps . If there is the barrel is bending . Then we confirm the 100 yard ladders POI changes with differing powder charges at long and extreme range while measuring BC and variations ,TOF, velocity and poi on each shot with a Oehler 89 system and cameras while monitoring variables such as Barrel temp , environmentals, etc. Depending on the particular round we can measure these parimeters out to 2 miles or more .
Last edited:
Interesting. So, do reloading practices have any effects on whether the bullet releases on the upswing or downswing of the barrel or is it only determined by weights on the barrel?
Absolutely , the exit times do , but if the ladder does not show any real bending trends then a lighter or heavier bullet can . Once the pattern is found with the right bullet weight then the powder charge is adjusted to put you in the ideal exit time on the ladder . Or the tuner both can get you to ideal exit time if the pattern is present during those exit times .
How many shots per ladder?
This is gonna blow your mind.
I
It's for a special bunch . Back in the day, it was called the ungraded class .
Once the gun is settled from load work up and shoots good , 6 shots per ladder and repeat as many times that you feel you need to to see the trend when changing weights for each graph or ladder . The goal here with one shot per charge is to control barrel temp and to be the same on every ladder . Temp repeatability will help for more of repeatable ladder.
Last edited:
If the barrel is in the sun and gets too hot..out of tune
Shoot too fast…out of tune
Tune while hot and now cold …out of tune
This is the problem in a nutshell if it’s even reality
Shoot too fast…out of tune
Tune while hot and now cold …out of tune
This is the problem in a nutshell if it’s even reality
To be fair, I think that's more along the lines of trying to keep everything as consistent as possible during testing. Keeping the barrel the same temp, not because it would "lose tune," but to just keep another variable the same during testing. Which makes sense.
Now, the other side of the conversation is all the variables that you can't control.
Now, the other side of the conversation is all the variables that you can't control.
I agree. However, companies like AB's product and business revolves around data, testing, compiling, analyzing, and releasing/selling said data. So, while they obviously still have a budget like any business, their point of view doesn't care too much about the barrel being burned out at the end of the test. As they don't require any match performance and other such things once the testing is done.
Hornady is in a similar situation.
I'm just making a point that yet again, when the data/results don't go the way tuner and positive compensation proponents like, they make ridiculous arguments like "they didn't see it because they only turned the tuner a few settings." The owners and employees of these companies are professional researchers. For the most part, they aren't going to be overlooking something that someone on the weekend in their underwear with a laptop can poke holes in without trying.
Which goes in hand with my earlier posts. If you were to show up to the day job of forum tuner proponents and told them how they were doing their job wrong, they'd lose their shit. They'd expect you to respect their knowledge in their full time trade. But they never give that same courtesy to people whose full time trade is ballistics research and development.
Case in point. You have someone claiming that AB and Hornady didn't test enough settings........while also linking a video that only shows a few three shot groups at a few settings. Claiming that video is a good representation of tuners.
If AB or Hornady had made a similar video with inconclusive results, it wouldn't have been enough settings or enough shots. But when the small samples show what they believe in, it's all of a sudden concrete irrefutable proof.
Last edited:
I think 5036 rds over the life of three barrels in 7 years on the same rifle with one tuner is plenty to tell me what I needed to know .Not to mention data on every caliber from 22 rimfire to 375 Cheytac .
Last edited:
Please post the data.
I have to protect my companies proprietary data points for my weighting formulas so ……. I have already posted some data . And it was totally quiet and ignored. It it showed improvement over baseline with weight and adjustments .Not going to do that again just to have it ignored .
2 or 3 shots per setting is all Erik uses to tuner test. He thinks is a waste of ammo to keep shooting on settings that don't show any promise. Move on to better settings quicker and test those first. If you want to revisit those other settings you can, but it's like seating depth load development, 2 or 3 shots tells you all you need to know about that seating depth, 5 or 10 more shots wont make the group smaller....He told Brian Litz he feels his sample sizes are enough for him to determine what he is looking for. F-Class John's video is just demonstration of what Erik tells them to do. They both win so it must work....for them anyway!
I agree, a group is never going to get smaller with more shots. But… I think you said you use a tuner, have you ever gone back to a ‘bad’ setting, just to see how much better the good setting was?
I tried that a couple times, to try to quantify how much better the perfect tune was. These are 20 shot groups, from the 3 shot - adjust, Cortina-esq method. One is what the test said should be the best, and the other is what should be the worst.
Edge to edge, there’s a 0.14” difference between them, which is the largest I saw trying to shoot best v worst 20s(I tried a couple times). Weirdly, what the 3 round test told me should be the worst, always ended up edging out the other…
ive shot quite a few load comparison tests over the years round robin (Load1,L2,L3,L1,L2,L3,etc) and in batches (Load1-3x, L2-3x, L3-3x, etc) to get three-5 and 10+ shot groups of each load...and how the groups formed was always interesting
wasnt uncommon for one of the loads to shoot the first 3-5 rounds of that variation into a ragged single hole and then the following rounds made the group bigger and bigger
while another load would start with 3 rounds not touching and the following rounds punch out the middle of the first 3
in the end all of the loads would be virtually the same and overlapped with no constant winner when repeated
wasnt uncommon for one of the loads to shoot the first 3-5 rounds of that variation into a ragged single hole and then the following rounds made the group bigger and bigger
while another load would start with 3 rounds not touching and the following rounds punch out the middle of the first 3
in the end all of the loads would be virtually the same and overlapped with no constant winner when repeated
If you can’t see the fallacy in this statement/logic, you’re not able to be in the conversation.
What if they told you they don’t wear underwear when they shoot? Would that mean that works too?
That’s where a lot of your issue is. You think 5,036 rnds in 7 years and 3 barrels is a lot of data.
I'm not saying I think they win because they use tuners, Erik, at this point in his career has won more than Litz did when he was competing. So I'm only saying he has a lot of credibility, so does Litz, they have opposing viewpoints on this subject and probably other topics as well. The best solution for non believers is to do their own testing and draw your own conclusions from it. F-Class John was a non believer in tuners originally and now he wouldn't show up at an event without one.
I'm not trying to convert anyone over to tuners, I don't have a dog in the fight, so your viewpoints or anybody else's aren't going to change what I have experienced by using one. I'm building an F-T/R rifle and will test one on it as well. If it provides the same results then yeah for me, but it's not going to make me a world champion.
Everyone that thinks they're snake oil is always wanting someone else to provide data to prove they work....do your own, tuners are cheap and no matter what evidence someone shows here, they're never going to believe it anyway until they see it does or doesn't work with they're own eyes.
I never went back to retest the really bad ones, but there seemed to be 3 different patterns from all the settings. The worst patterns were with none of the bullets touching and were about 1 MOA, the second pattern was with the bullets almost touching and some overlapping a previous bullet hole slightly. The last pattern was a single bullet hole with up to 5 shots fired.
Retesting showed the best single hole groups repeated on the six different settings that produced those. The mediocre ones didn't improve, but the holes did change their POI pattern but still didn't improve. So I didn't really feel the need to retest the worst ones, but didn't see how they could improve to be as good as the single hole groups.
@Ledzep
Here is an example of the group walking based on the first set of 200yd data you posted. Assuming we can pretend that data is the true population.
The mean radius tends to favor smaller values than what is true and occasionally large values as seen by the n = 2. It is more likely to have smaller groups than not.
Here is an example of the group walking based on the first set of 200yd data you posted. Assuming we can pretend that data is the true population.
The mean radius tends to favor smaller values than what is true and occasionally large values as seen by the n = 2. It is more likely to have smaller groups than not.
Last edited:
I don’t agree. I think they don’t work, because I went out trying to prove that 1) they do and provide x benefit and 2) the hornady podcast was stupid and 30 round groups are stupid. Naturally, I thought maybe I did it wrong and went looking for some data that proved they work over a larger round count, to see how they did it - but that’s hard to find.
Buy one and test yourself is a big investment to ask, when a tuner is $200(assuming no machining), ammo is $1-2 a pull (and you need, at minimum, how much to test it yourself? Sources vary). You’re in it for $300 just to prove that the guys with ballistics labs are wrong, and your five shot group got smaller by a tenth.
Generally, the burden of proof lies with the person making the claim (in this case, tuner make group smaller).
I’d say shoot a 20 shot group of the best and worst sometime, but I’d hate to inflict the frustration it has caused me on another.
What’s the scale/ colour coding on that?
Is n the number of shots per group?
Ah, I see now. So when your group size is 20 shots, it does (at least for this data) hit population mean radius. But for 2 shot group sizes, it tends to assume a smaller mean radius then the true mean radius, with some random ones that are quite large.
Yep. Same issue with SDs. It’s almost always underestimated.
Well Erik has several videos of guns that aren’t BR accurate getting “tuned” so according to him you don’t have to have a gun that’s capable of shooting BR/F-Class quality groups. I’m sure he would argue it must at least be consistent whatever the group size is…. However, if I remember right, the group sample size in those videos isn’t meaningful.
Maybe we should give all the tooner folk a couple weeks to get together amongst themselves to come to a consensus on what’s required, how to use them, and what they actually do.
Normally I try to have some kind of productive contribution, but these threads always remind me of this:
I've seen this guy somewhere before....
That's the thing. Everyone has already done exactly what you ask. And anyone with significant amount of data almost always ends up with at best inconclusive results and mostly that it doesn't work.
The request for data isn't because they don't already have their own. It's because people constantly claim they have the proper data to show that it works. So people ask to see it. And the few times the data is actually shown, it's either not enough samples or it was collected and/or analyzed wrong.
Case in point......a user above thinks burning out 3 barrels is enough data to make conclusive statements. It's barely enough to make some basic observations to develop future testing around. Averaging 14 shots a weekend for seven years isn't data. It's barely a hobby.
Hey now…. Didn’t you listen to the podcast, Or read the book he is mentioned in?
I don't wear underwear when I shoot and I get good results. Full disclosure, I don't go "commando" just to get better groupings. TMI, I know, just throwing that out there.
Giving mental images that last forever? Priceless.
Dude again you have no clue . Please stop your ridiculous assumptions and slander . Do you really think that one gun is the only gun that is shot in seven years ? That is just one test . Get over it . you don’t even use tuners , yet you want everybody else’s data , tree Rex was told why his test didn’t work because he had no amplitude saying we are the Zealots, quite frankly it is the other way around . Yet he still argues and tries to sound superior as do you and tokay . You and others have been given years of info and data on a silver platter , take it or leave it . You guys need to get a life . Put your money where your mouth is or walk away . But I will not give my demo gun to you or build one for anyone who hides behind a fake screen name . I have set up a valid test and you refused so deal with it DAVE.
Last edited:
Again, for me, and I am the stupidest one here, not bragging, just stating a fact, I go back to the Hornady podcast that this thread is about.
It's not that tuners specifically do not improve groups. They do but, in the data collected by the Hornady guys, there is not any difference or marked improvement over any other device on the end of a barrel. Or from one setting of the tuner to another, at least in any group of sizable analytic validity. IOW, they have not been able to tell in their work if changing setting on a tuner is working any better than just having a brake or suppressor on there.
I certainly do not mean to detract from the Hornady guys , I shot with Joe Theilen and Christina Theilan and the team Hornady for years , loved hanging with them but I will defend what I do and how I do it to the bone period .
That's not at all what I took from the podcast. The testing mentioned at the 52 minute mark would seem to suggest the opposite. I understood the implication was the muzzle device had an effect, but changing weight did not (on precision).
Separately, saw this and thought it was neat. It's a cool brake, but maybe not $500 cool unless it actually does shrink my factory ammo groups 50%.
Another good example of people being all over the map.
That one is literally in black and white saying you'll usually see a 50% decrease in group size. And also saying it works with factory ammo and ammo not made for your rifle. Which others claim doesn't work that way.
And what exactly is it that you do, since you have no product to sell and people can’t enlist any service from you?
Yes I have , I don’t think the test structure was in question although I would have done it differently ( smaller increments ), It is the results that I am not sure how Brian came to the conclusion from those results . As well as it was later said as absolutes. Hornady claims that was just their results and not absolute and that was wise to claim . As I have stated before a tuner moves the phase of a movement so if there is no movement then there will be no effect from the tuner . This is why a 6 grain ladder is so important. You have to know what pattern you are adjusting. If all powder charges on a ladder hit level then a tuner will have no effect especially with low recoil forces such as the 22 , 6 mm , 6.5. If there is around 1.5.- 2 inches of amplitude on a 100 yard target then it is a good candidate to show tuner function.
