The book is actually pretty good. There’s is a chapter on barrel life that is worth the cost alone. It’s nothing we don’t sort of intuitively know, but it’s really nice to see it presented as hard data.
Very much so, and I don't think I ever over state what tuners do. In fact, I often need to correct people that expect too much and believe a tuner will improve upon perfect tune or your smallest groups. That's just not what they do. The simplest way to put it is that tuners do what changing loads can do. I really don't know anyone that would tell you that changing loads doesn't work nor is repeatable. Of course it is/does. Tuners aren't the only way to tune. They are one way. I find it much easier to do with a tool at the end of the bbl rather than in the reload room. And, I find that more people will test that way as opposed to going back and forth to the range testing different loads in different conditions and such.
But it kinda backfired. Lots of folks have all the books and respected the work up til now. Its hard to sell a book to a guy thats ever shot telling him changing loads is a waste of time- heres a bunch of stats proving it
Yea, I'll bet charging for a class now may be more difficult. He'd have to pay me to sit in his class.
Well...it does make me question things that I never would've questioned before from him. This was so shoddily done, how can anyone not question other writings and how he comes to conclusions that he's published and are trusted, by many? It's just disappointing, like respected vendors copying or selling products that are blatant copies of someone else's work. Once called out, it's no longer a mistake.
Damon, I won't claim it to be something I've tested exclusively for and I'm far from being an expert in this area but I've seen many times where powder charges seem to have "plateaus", where the charge is increased but the velocity did not. I've also seen those effects on target. It's an area that should be tested more due to the many people that have seen it with regularity. Perhaps he covers it more thoroughly in his book than with tuners. You can probably guess this, but I'd rather not send any money to anyone that publishes a book with a chapter dedicated to attempting to diminish the value of years of work I've done with tuners...directly or not. Sorry, but not really.
O K, so if "flat spots" don't exist could you explain why and how we get three different charges in a row that will hang really close to the same velocity over and over with several different rifles and loads ?
Three in a row is one high, one average, and one low in sequence. Brian’s testing showed that with repeated passes through the charge ladder, these flat spots disappeared as the shot counts increased.
I would want to see this within my own testing before I accept it.
I'm still a Farrah Fawsett man. She looked good 3 times in a row, over and over again.
Another conclusion that he stated REPEATEDLY in the tuner podcast, was that in EVERY case, they found that the WORST initial tuner setting, after a volume of rounds fired, ended up being the BEST setting. According to his own data, tuners DO work, just opposite of your first impression.
Well, there you go. He has proved that tuners work. Wonder why he said they don't ? Oh, I see now statistics came into play.
I understand exactly what you are saying but it makes no sense at all. Sometimes you see the flat spot in velocity but the flat spot may not be visible on the target.
You may have heard the term "positive compensation". It describes a situation in which bullets leaving the bore within a certain velocity range don't necessarily print higher/lower on the target face. Slightly faster bullets will leave the bore slightly earlier in the harmonic cycle when the muzzle is early in the upswing. Slightly slower bullets will leave a tick later in the harmonic cycle when the muzzle is closer to the top of its upswing. As a result, the slightly slower bullets leave the bore with a greater launch angle, such that they still print at the same height on target as the slightly faster bullets that exit the bore with a lesser launch angle. My understanding is that positive compensation is thought to work over a velocity range of somewhere in the neighborhood of perhaps 20-30 fps.
Shots at the exact same velocity should hit at the same vertical.
