NC/Br Shooter
Silver $$ Contributor
If it's border line needing a retune. Re-establish the seating depth with tuner on zero. or in the middle
Adjust seating depth or twist the tuner after buying a new lot of bullets
- Thread starter Raydee
- Start date
JEFFPPC
Gold $$ Contributor
After 20 years with tuners, my thoughts. If you use the tuner to get a load when the load goes away from you it might well be.....away away. If you get a load with the tuner in what I refer to as neutral you can very quickly 95% of the time with s small adjustment on way or the other be back on small groups.
Jeff, you do speak in code. Like Apollo in Heraclitus fragment B5: The lord whose oracle is the one in Delphi neither says nor conceals but gives a sign.
JEFFPPC
Gold $$ Contributor
Many never understand. Fear not, your not alone.
Shooter13
Gold $$ Contributor
I'm no expert, you can see that by my scores. BUT I do both, yep, both, I do a seating depth test and yes you can see the difference THEN and only then do I do a tuner test and again, yes, you can tell the difference.
Changing the seat depth will alter the tune. So it does make sense to at least check on either side of the tune maybe one increment to see if it helps or hurts.
Let me rephrase this question by saying I’ve not had the opportunity to use a tuner so I guess that makes me a non tuner guy so that leads me to ask; What determines a neutral position ?
Jmho but, there's no "neutral position." You're either in tune or you're not.
I have always started my seating depth tests with my tuner all the way to the back {as much as it will screw onto the barrel}
Once I have a seating depth load that is looking very good {I pick the one in the middle of the three best groups} then I start advancing my tuner to see the change and get the tightest group of the selected load/seating depth.
At that point I never chase the lands and depending on temperature or new batch of powder/projectiles only ever need the slightest turn in or out to bring things back tight.
That tune seems to last the life of the barrel for me…
I have seen folks changing tuner settings during matches up/down and get more and more frustrated as time and shots go on. A small tweak but never anything major will usually suffice for any adjustment you might feel necessary to suit conditions but it won’t need to be very much and usually it is better to leave things alone once you start a string.
I originally thought that barrel throat wear may be the problem but I recently started a new lot of bullets and thought a slight tuner adjustment would get my groups back in shape but at my last match my groups were all over the place.
With the new lot I am going to set my tuner back to the zero position, like I did with my original tune, get the best groups with seating and then fine tune again like I originally did.
With the new lot I am going to set my tuner back to the zero position, like I did with my original tune, get the best groups with seating and then fine tune again like I originally did.
urbanrifleman
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This would seem to me to be incredibly good advice.
Bottom Fodder
Silver $$ Contributor
Ok so what is the tuner actually doing when it tunes/ retunes the load / rifle does it change the harmonics of the barrel, the exit timing? Would a tuner be more effective on a long slim barrel and less effective on a short stiff barrel? Yes I seen rifles go out of tune and with a tuner adjustment go back in tune so I’m not disputing if they work or not But knowing what they do could help not only the op of this thread but me and others
The guys who build tuners say the tuner aligns barrel harmonics with exit time and tuners are more effective on the longer slender barrels. The learning curve of finding exactly what the tuner does is sometimes a long and winding road since atmospheric conditions are at play all the time. I gained what little I know by paying attention to and shooting in the different conditions. One of the huge revelations for me was how little of an adjustment it might require to bring the tune back. There are a few theories out there that seem to work IF the load development was at it's maximum accuracy before attempting adjusting the tuner. The main two that I hear mentioned is if temp goes down since the last session where the rifle was in tune turn the tuner OUT away from the action and vise versa. Hence the term "down & out" The other is if the group shows vertical turn the tuner IN towards the action and vise versa. Whether this holds true I cannot say but in my experience it has held true so far except for one occasion when conditions may not have been as it seemed..
In very simple and easy to understand terms, tuners allow us to change phase time, which lets us move the top or bottom of a single wave form(or a very few if you keep going), left or right to coincide with bullet exit. That's also why such small adjustments make so much difference. To alter the actual frequency enough to make the angular change that we see on target happen, it'd take huge adjustments or even adding weight to the tuner. So, in a nutshell, it's not frequency that we are altering, but phase.
I don't get into discussing hunting or pencil bbls, as 99% of my work and experience is with BR and long range target rifles. Within that context, to say that tuners are "more" effective on lighter bbls is true but to a very small degree, only. Keep in mind that a say 1.250 straight is not necessarily stiffer than a LV or HV contour. Yes, it is per inch but because length is way way important to overall stiffness of a bbl than diameter, this notion just gets way too much focus/attention. I've tuned 16" long 1.450 bbls with quite similar results as a 22" LV bbl as well as 1.25 straight 30" bbls. The difference is measurable but it's not by much at all. IE..short range br bbls of say 21-24" long in both LV and HV, anti-nodes are predictably at about 8 marks apart(top to bottom) with my tuner, where a 30" 1.25 or HV is typically 10 marks.(each mark .001") Each tuner make/design has a pretty huge impact on how much it should be moved. I can tell you very specifically ABOUT MINE but I can't predict how far you should move every tuner that has come along since I started down this road. There have been a bunch!
I've done a metric ton of tuner testing and development so that I CAN answer specific questions with a very high degree of certainty. My testing includes vibration analysis testing. There are still things I/we might learn on this subject but frankly, when you combine that side of testing with real world testing since 2008....and they agree virtually 100% of the time, it's not a coincidence.. No, I won't post vibration analysis tests. First of all, I couldn't interpret all of it for myself, so I paid people for that. Second, if ya want those kind of test results, ante up and do it. I share, very freely, the nuts and bolts of using a tuner on here and I get bashed for it often enough. I'm still waiting for any of those guys to post vibration analysis reports though. I absolutely refuse to pay for anyone else's... especially a competitor's, due diligence and testing. Lots of people have jumped into the tuner market since I started and I saw that handwriting on the wall, a long time ago. I literally protected myself..from myself on sharing of that testing, with NDA's. I knew I wouldn't keep my mouth shut without them. Lol!
The predictability of results is absolutely remarkable! Read that again....
If you're not getting predictable AND repeatable results with your tuner, chances are, you're moving way too far at a time because you were given poor or just plain wrong testing instructions. It could be a poor design but since they all work on the very same principle, user error is most likely. Did your tuner maker do his due diligence BEFORE giving you instructions on how to use it? I've posted my sine wave test and results on here many times. I CAN NOT OVERSTATE how critical THAT test is...with ANY tuner. I literally call it your owner's manual and I state..." If you want a crappy owner's manual, just do omit something from it and do it your way. But...it's not my manual if ya do. It is the initial shortcut. Done right...every single aspect of that test tells you how to use your tuner!!! And...you shot it yourself! So, I can't possibly lie about it. I just predict what you'll see before you shoot your own test. The choice is yours. They are based on physics. It ain't voodoo, ain't magic and using one is NOT hard at all. IMHO, they are the simplest way to keep a rifle in tune...if not tune period.
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