Hell...every tuner user's knowledge is bumping him in the butt! Lol! He doesn't agree with the logic that moving a tuner on a perfectly tuned rifle can make it worse, is evidence that the tuner is working. Erik gave him what I thought was a good example of tuning a guitar and if you start with the guitar in perfect tune, moving the tuner pegs either way can't help it but it does prove that it affects tune. Pretty good analogy, IMHO. Same with guns...If you start out in perfect tune, moving a tuner will not make it more than perfectly tuned. That seems so simple to understand to me but not to all.
Litz and Cortina - follow up on barrel tuner discussion
- Thread starter RegionRat
- Start date
Bill Norris
Back in the Day
At the end of the day with the discussion ending there it seems there is much more to learn about tuners and why they work than even John Meyers had shared with Erik. Bryan says he is up to the task of more testing in the future with Erik.
BoydAllen
Gold $$ Contributor
I suggest that Litz not spend his next time on tuners doing another test but rather observing what some successful tuners do when setting up a new rifle or barrel. He might also consider doing a test with the kind of equipment that has been used sucessfully with tuners, with the rifles shot in the manner that they usually are. The think that he seems to have overlooked is that test design is all important, and he is really too inexperienced with tuners to design a proper one. He also seems to lack respect for top shooters in other shooting sports. One thing that I have found in sling shooters in the past was that sort of attitude, not all, but some. His mention of hobby and fun, seem to diminish the importance of what recreational shooters have discovered. I would say that that is obvious bias, not a good thing to bring to the design of a "scientific" study.
It occasionally happens that a particular load is very close to optimal for a rifle/barrel combination. In that situation, a tuner may be of marginal benefit. That is not the majority of cases, however.
BoydAllen
Gold $$ Contributor
Have you spent much time shooting rifles that had tuners? (serious question, there are a lot of excellent shooters whose records I am not familiar with) In the experience of several people that I know who have improved their results by using a tuner, a properly set tuner will broaden the node, increasing the span of charge weights within which top accuracy is produced. No one that shoots them competitively ignores load development, they take various approaches but all of them involve coming up with a load that produces the highest level of accuracy. Of course the load is close to optimal. The tuner is icing on the cake. It makes a good thing better. Yes, I have shot a tuner in competition, and that was my experience as well. Of course no tuner will read flags, so there is only so much that one can do with equipment, and that has been my personal experience. I believe that even with the perfect rifle and load, tuner or not, it all comes down to how well you can read the flags, and choose a condition to start your record group.
Agreed. The tuner just perfected what was already close but the load still left something on the table and the tuner helped that.. As most know, I'm a tuner maker. While there are benefits of having a weight at the end of the bbl, I'd love to be able to claim that tuners will miraculously make your perfect tune even better but that's just not the case. They do however allow you to extract the potential from your rifle and chosen load ..whatever that might be. And, they allow you to maintain peak tune as conditions change, that have an affect on tune.
Like others, I got into tuners way before I started selling them, looking for an edge. I had been playing with one in 2007 and I saw some potential but had not harnessed it yet. I took a rifle and load combo to the IBS nats in 2008, that shot great around here but wouldn't shoot in a bucket 500 miles north and with a hurricane system on top of us(hurricane Ike). That's when I started getting serios about them and I think it was the last year I've shot without one. At the time, of three different makes of tuners, it was clear that they certainly affected group size and shape but each mfg had vastly different instructions for using theirs and what I found was that they were all wrong. I just spent the time doing the testing it took to quantify the value of each adjustment on target and saw that it just repeated, over and over at essentially the same intervals. That mistakenly led me down the path of tuners affecting frequency as being the way they worked. Vibration analysis and some info from another shooter is what set me straight on it, that it's phase time that is the driving force that tuners allow us to manipulate. That allows us to time bullet exit with optimal muzzle position. I started making tuners as soon as the patent on the Browning Boss system expired(2014)because they IMO were too important not to! Once you harness how to use them, they're a game changer. I honestly do believe that and have spend tens of thousands of dollars in testing and developing them to the best of my ability. I've been very fortunate to have the help of engineers in the field to be of great help. A couple happen to be shooters and knew what we were after vs strictly a by the book approach that has no regard for the intended use. That's huge in itself. So, when I say something about tuners, it's based on real science in addition to testing. Still testing and there's more to come but it's a long forgone conclusion to me and most tuner users that they absolutely do work. There may be a workable formula to apply that is absolute in knowing exactly how and when to move them but the target easily answers that in most cases. That's why I have a very specific test that I have my customers do when going about initial tuning and using it. But as far as the formula...handloaders have been chasing that formula since handloading for accuracy has existed. I think it's more plausible now than ever, so if John Meyers has what he believes is a 100% formula for it, I can believe it but I question the 100% part of that a little bit. Still, I think the high 90's %...we're there already.
Erik sent me a couple prototype tuners late in 2012. I sent some barrels to Bob Greene and had them chambered and threaded. Started testing on my (then new) .300 WSM in February 2013 and was satisfied enough to take it to F-Class Nationals in August where I took fifth. Also won the California State LR and Twentynine Palms LR Regional in November. I took second in the Arizona LR that same month with a credible score, except that David Gosnell broke the range record that weekend. Oh, well.
Haven't shot a long range rifle without a tuner since.
Haven't shot a long range rifle without a tuner since.
Not really, Boyd. Maybe eighteen thousand rounds in eleven barrels over the last ten years. But, I stopped shooting for about seven years, so that significantly reduced the overall count.
I watched John’s first official match, where he won and had set a record in Bastrop around 2010, and many since then. John does claim something which he requests remain a secret, but I honestly think the real, and true, and indisputable secret that’s hiding in plain sight, is to STOP SHOOTING when your abilities are stretched. John’s ammo box actually said stop shooting, I believe it was his.
Erik, John, Mark Walker, … Brian, you name them, they do not challenge the wind to a pissing contest. They don’t jump back in just when they “might” be ok, to get a possible quick sense of accomplishment. I have watched them, and they don’t approach LR Ike bull riding or surfing, it’s not about being macho and taking whatever gets dished out, just because you have started.
Tim Vaught can take the whole 30 minutes. It is maybe less pleasant to stay intently focused for as long as it takes, but that I believe is the real secret. Realistically assess personal limitations, then wait for it to it return within them. If it never comes back, see what happened to the neighbors, and factor that in to the hold.
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Unfortunately I have not had much time to get started in my testing
with the weather we have had the last few months. At least I have what
Mike sent me, mounted up for a dog and pony show for tomorrows
first match of the year......Mike, if you see this. re-post your sine wave
test or put it in a PM to me. I've chased thru a few threads and just
can't find it......Thank you Sir !!
with the weather we have had the last few months. At least I have what
Mike sent me, mounted up for a dog and pony show for tomorrows
first match of the year......Mike, if you see this. re-post your sine wave
test or put it in a PM to me. I've chased thru a few threads and just
can't find it......Thank you Sir !!
Attachments
ImBIllT
Silver $$ Contributor
I do think that most serious shooters need to buy a probability and statistics text book.
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Probably true but it's just remarkable how predictable group shapes are with a tuner. Only a few times out of well over 1000 targets sent to me of my test, have the results not been pretty much exactly as you can predict. At least a couple of those were gun problems or tuner left loose. Astounding how predictable! I'm not a statistician so someone else would have to calculate the probability of me being able to consistently predict the shape of groups for 4-5 marks on either side of a sweet spot near 100% of the time. Think about that for a minute. I'm not the shooter either. That's more than a coincidence or noise.
Just like this except yours will be numbered zero thru 14. Fire 15, 3 shot groups at 100 yards and send me a picture. I'll help ya out. First call me and let's make sure everything it setup right before you do the test. We'll get ya lined out. Your test is the one that matters. You'll see the groups change shape and the poi change relative to the top and bottom of the bbl swing.
For generations, the Army and more significantly the Marine Corps assess a rifleman’s potential for “specialized” infantry, presently and into the future, rather quickly and conclusively.
This would suggest that a great deal of tests is not “statistically” necessary, and also that rarely if ever does a pretty good shooter practice his way to the top, so the military is basically saying both Brian Litz’ large sample theory, and the match aspirations of guys like me, are both equally out of luck.
The left side of my brain says the military is absolutely correct on both counts. Indeed, talent surfaces early on in competitive matches, and remains. But the right side of my brain doesn’t care, and is going to shoot its best matches whatever they are til dead.
BoydAllen
Gold $$ Contributor
Thanks for the info. Too many names and screen names for this old brain to keep up with. So did you set and forget or move at matches? Whose tuners did/do you favor?
"...the way that we tested, which is the way the instructions said to test, those were the results..." Litz @ 55:00 min
Not the instructions for my tuner!
I'm half way through the video, and there has been zero discussion about his test being flawed from the beginning. Primarily that Litz started with the tuner tight against the barrel at "sweep 0" as he calls it. Then instead of adjusting in small increments, the next test was a full 360 degree rotation to "sweep 2", then another 360 degrees to "sweep 3" and so forth. After evaluating which "sweep" performed best, only then did he test in small adjustments for example 3.1, 3.2, 3.3 etc.
I'm only familiar with the EC tuner, but all of the testing should be completed in small increments within about the first 360 degree rotation or "sweep 0". Not continuing unscrewing several full rotations.
Litz's test was asking the wrong question.
edit: A few min later Eric does softly mention the testing via sweeps and he never said to test that way, but Erik failed to bluntly say the test was not testing the correct method.
Not the instructions for my tuner!
I'm half way through the video, and there has been zero discussion about his test being flawed from the beginning. Primarily that Litz started with the tuner tight against the barrel at "sweep 0" as he calls it. Then instead of adjusting in small increments, the next test was a full 360 degree rotation to "sweep 2", then another 360 degrees to "sweep 3" and so forth. After evaluating which "sweep" performed best, only then did he test in small adjustments for example 3.1, 3.2, 3.3 etc.
I'm only familiar with the EC tuner, but all of the testing should be completed in small increments within about the first 360 degree rotation or "sweep 0". Not continuing unscrewing several full rotations.
Litz's test was asking the wrong question.
edit: A few min later Eric does softly mention the testing via sweeps and he never said to test that way, but Erik failed to bluntly say the test was not testing the correct method.
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Shooter13
Gold $$ Contributor
Nope, ain't doing it.
I am fortunate that the local range where I develop loads is a little over 1400' and I can obtain similar temperatures to most ranges where I've competed. When I went to Raton (6600'), we had a practice day and I did reset the tuner. Most of this was with .300 WSM which is a very tolerant cartridge. Seating depth and charge weight both have very wide windows. Combined with a fairly broad tuner range, it often performs quite well. My .284 Shehane does not behave like that and needs more attention.
I shot the Southwest Nationals February in Phoenix and, despite being able to tune in similar conditions, believe that it was out of tune during the match. There is usually no opportunity to evaluate settings during an F-Class match, so had to suffer with it.
I am still shooting Erik's tuners. He sent me one of the V2 tuners and will have some barrels threaded for it when chambered.
You're spot on brother! It just proved that the tester really didn't know how to use what he was testing. I don't mean that as bad as it may sound because no one knows how to do something until they know how to do it. IOW, no matter the education level an individual possesses, he's uneducated in that specific area and experience/testing has no replacement. Now, he might be able to reverse engineer it and figure it out but starting from what was clearly a blank slate and no real idea of what he was doing...he got the correct results due to the input being garbage(GIGO) vs having a much more informed way of doing it from the start.
One big reason I made my tuner so that the threads are hidden has nothing to do with cosmetics. Rather, I think if the mind sees an inch of threads or so, it assumes you need to use at least a fair portion of them. That is not the case with tuners.
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