BoydAllen
Gold $$ Contributor
There is one more issue regarding tuner weight that can be very important, rifle balance. Short range group rifles are most commonly built to 10.5# weight limits with a single rifle being used for LV, HV, and Sporter. Many shooters prefer to shoot free recoil, and in those cases rifle balance is critical to performance, as are stock and bag design. The weight in front of the point where the front bag supports the rifle acts to lessen the down force on the rear bag, and even without a tuner, this can be an important issue for 10.5# rifles. For these rifles balance is the limiting factor for tuner weight. One of the more interesting things that is overlooked is the relationship between barrel length and stiffness. People generally understand that for a given contour that shorter barrels are stiffer but I am pretty sure that they do not appreciate just how fast stiffness increases as length decreases. Dan Lilja has a barrel stiffness program on his web site that can be instructive to play with. My point is that if a barrel is stiff enough at a longer length and there is some room to remove weight by decreasing diameter slightly, if you shorten a barrel, you might be able to make it smaller and still have the same stiffness as before you cut it off. This weigh bonus could be put into sorting out rifle balance, with or without a tuner. Here is a link to the page on the new Lilja website. http://riflebarrels.com/computer-software/
When I say room to remove weight by decreasing diameter I am talking about the minimum diameter that is required so that the number of shots fired in a match will not heat the barrel to the point where accuracy suffers. Of course fluting can also be done to deal with weight issues but am primarily concerned with what can be done without fluting given the cost and accuracy life of competition barrels. I do not have any solid information about how slim a barrel may be at a given length, without compromising performance. I have spoken with a shooter who has worked with barrels that were lighter than are considered "normal" for short range group work, and he told me that those barrels performed very well. The reason that he used them was because of stock availability issues when he was stationed overseas. A heavier stock required a lighter barrel.
When I say room to remove weight by decreasing diameter I am talking about the minimum diameter that is required so that the number of shots fired in a match will not heat the barrel to the point where accuracy suffers. Of course fluting can also be done to deal with weight issues but am primarily concerned with what can be done without fluting given the cost and accuracy life of competition barrels. I do not have any solid information about how slim a barrel may be at a given length, without compromising performance. I have spoken with a shooter who has worked with barrels that were lighter than are considered "normal" for short range group work, and he told me that those barrels performed very well. The reason that he used them was because of stock availability issues when he was stationed overseas. A heavier stock required a lighter barrel.