Gunsmith question

[carlsbad]

I tell all my customers I do.

 

[br1111]

perfect gun befo

View attachment 1140041

perfect item for the gun grabbers. they need to test fire it before they destroy it.

 

[Alex Wheeler]

How many gunsmiths index your barrels to have the bore at the muzzle at the highest point in the curve at 12 o'clock (I have heard that all barrels are somewhat crooked)? Do you think that this is worth the effort? Is it very difficult to do? Thanks in advance.

I time them all. Theres more than one way to time them. I do think its worth the effort. Its not difficult, ads about 5 minutes to the job I figure.

 

[clowdis]

Just how do you tell if a barrel bore is .010 bowed?

 

[Shooter13]

...And elevation. I think optical performance is the biggest benefit of indexing. Scopes work best when you can look through the apex of all of the lenses and theoretically, poa should be more reliable as well.


There are several arguments for doing it but all are subjective, IMHO. I've done it both ways rather extensively and personally, can't tell you that one way will shoot any better or maintain tune any better than the other. I will index if a customer requests it but I believe it is mostly if not completely, a wastes of time. I do add a bit to the price of the work but am happy to do it either way...but I do not index my own. Another point is, there are some newer barrels that are phenominally straight compared to average.

But...if you think it matters, then it matters.

And there you have it from the UBR Nationals winner...........................

 

[AlNyhus]

How many gunsmiths index your barrels to have the bore at the muzzle at the highest point in the curve at 12 o'clock (I have heard that all barrels are somewhat crooked)? Do you think that this is worth the effort? Is it very difficult to do? Thanks in advance.

Absolutely worth the effort, James.

'Clocking' the muzzle at either the 12 or 6 o'clock position helps remove the horizontal.

 

[ebb]

Mr Nyhus I don't see how it can be any other way than you have said. Yet who care prove it one way or another? Just like 90% of all the firearms/reloading questions asked here or any place.

 

[CarlGeorge]

I'm new to the long range game.....so I'm only reporting what I've been told.......

I just picked up a month ago my first long range build. It was put together by Emil Kovan.

Relatively speaking, I don't think timing/indexing seems very hard. I say this because based on his rate sheet Emil doesn't charge very much to do it.

When I picked it up he said he indexed the barrel to 6 o'clock - and that's his preference. (As opposed to indexing them at 12 o'clock.) When I asked him why he said "Gravity" - although I didn't ask him to elaborate. I wish I would have....although I'd already taken a bunch of his time and didn't want to be greedy.

Maybe he could put together an article on the topic. There's an article on here he did about F-Class cartridges which I thought was excellent.

CG

 

[Stan Taylor]

I'm going to have to run to the store and get some more popcorn this is getting good.

 

[CharlieNC]

My last two barrel installs were prefits using barrel nuts. Like many others, my load workup involves identifying the charge weight node where deviations result in minimum vertical change in point of impact. In both cases there is also a near perfect correlation with movement in the horizontal direction as well, and for one of the barrels the horizontal moved more than the vertical! To me this suggests timing is a major issue in terms of how to take advantage of compensation via barrel harmonics, and that timing can be used to engineer the vertical vs horizontal response when tuning loads. I'm all ears if someone has a better explanation.

 

[AlNyhus]

Mr Nyhus I don't see how it can be any other way than you have said. Yet who care prove it one way or another? Just like 90% of all the firearms/reloading questions asked here or any place.

Given that the muzzle vibrates in a figure eight pattern (oscilloscope tracings seem to bear this out, for the most part), the points that the muzzle moves the least is at the 12 and 6 o'clock 'dwell' positions.

I've personally seen two examples of fussy barrels that turned into killer good barrels with repeatable tuning characteristics after they were 'clocked'. Both of these were on BR rigs capable of 5 shots groups in the high .0's and very low .1's.

Good shootin'. -Al

 

[ebb]

Thank you.