Re: Timing a muzzle brake?
If buying a prefabbed brake the above is spot on.
If you have the luxury of making your own might I offer this:
I loath installing brakes as the timing is the biggest concern I have. Threading and whatnot is the easy part. Getting the ports clocked "Jonny on the spot" however has historically been a biche for me.
So I solved the problem by flip/flopping the orders of operations. I machine a blank with the threads/center hole done and install it. Knock out the finish contour so it's a seamless transition to the barrel and pull it from the machine.
Then it goes in the 4th axis assembled on the barrel with the action also installed. In my case I use a 5C collet to captivate the end of the brake and support the barrel in a steady rest adapted to fit the table like a tail stock does. Then its easy. You find your center, index the whole assembly off the raceways of the receiver and get busy.
With a manual mill the same is accomplished by using either a rotary table or a simple "spindex" indexer. It'll take a little longer to do, but its pretty simple and goes quickly once you get the hang of it.
The beauty here too is being able to fiddle with port geometry. Once upon a time I was encouraged to play with venturi effects on the ports. Small at the bore, increase in size at the OD.
For now I just rake the whole assy back a few degrees and call it good. Seems to work pretty well.
Directly below is a 9 shot group fired at last weekend at 200 yards from a M700 that I recently blueprinted, barreled (308 Win), and fitted a brake to. The owner/shooter is Chris J. He goes by "Chef Jones" here on the hide.
These are how they come out once finished.