Ouch! This one hurts!

[Hino895]

I was shopping for tungsten pellets the other day for a custom buffer and was terribly shocked.

 

[gunsandgunsmithing]

Could the substitute for lead in shot shells bismuth be used or is it not heavy enough to work properly?

Its not nearly as dense as tungsten but the right alloy and matrix might work. I actually called about it today and dicscussed it a bit. It wasn't much cheaper before but is worth a look now so the tech guy is supposed to call me back next week. I plan to at least test it now. There are pros and cons to it vs tungsten. Not sure yet.

 

[jpjulian]

FWIW, another application tungsten powder is commonly used in is custom golf clubs. There's a few ounces in a custom driver. So roughly $125 more for your custom driver, by this added cost alone. That one won't affect me! Lol! Quantity affects price a good bit. In small quantities, it was rough $100/lb BEFORE this price increase. So, we'd be talking $500ish/lb now. I do buy in enough quantity that it allows me to buy direct and get the price down a lot from that but it's still just astonishing. It really hurt my feelings!

I bought a new driver last month. Last year's model as the 'New & Improved' model for this year is over $700.

 

[Fuj]

Ya' know Mike, Did you ever try the opposite end of the weight spectrum ??
How about aluminum powder with larger reservoirs. Or a simple plastic, akin
to the extremely fine powder coating materials ??

 

[gunsandgunsmithing]

Ya' know Mike, Did you ever try the opposite end of the weight spectrum ??

Yes.

 

[gunsandgunsmithing]

Ya' know Mike, Did you ever try the opposite end of the weight spectrum ??
How about aluminum powder with larger reservoirs. Or a simple plastic, akin
to the extremely fine powder coating materials ??

I'll elaborate just a bit, Gary..
I've tested different weights as well as medias over the years. Even with the two models I offer, there is a pretty drastic difference in how they work that is in part due to weight and in part due to the amount of dampening the media offers. The lighter model is 2 ounces less overall weight and has less dampening media, but it's moved a bit further forward relative to the tuner's center of gravity. Even with this, the difference is enough that the standard tuner has 32 marks and the lighter model has only 10, so a lot of difference there. Five of us did blind testing when I came out with the lighter model and 100% said that the newer model needed to be mover between 3-3-1/2 times as far to get the same affect on target...hence the 10 marks vs 32 on the two models, even with the same thread pitch etc.

Trust me, this is just the very tip of the testing I've done with different stuff. It's why when I give instruction on here or elsewhere, I'm always very careful to make it clear that my instructions are what works best with MY tuners. Because it's amazing how much a slight change can affect proper instruction.
The initial testing to quantify the value of each increment of tuner adjustment on target, took literally thousands of rounds, by itself. So, it was important to me that the instruction I gave for my standard tuner applied to any new model. The obvious easy button was to adjust the number of marks on the new ones to give similar results on the target. That was relatively easy to do with the help of others and it was far less subjective like that. Even still, there are differences and I still suggest the standard model whenever possible to make weight and maintain good gun balance.

I say all of that to say, it's amazing how small changes affect the performance of the end product. Bismuth is worth testing but based on experience, I'm not optimistic that it will be dense enough to give the same results to dampening that tungsten does.

That said, even without any dampening aspect aside from weight alone, tuners work, but the dampening is well worth the expense or I wouldn't have gone to the time and expense involved with applying it from the get go. It would have been far easier and cheaper to make a solid mass, like virtually every other make out there. That would be the real easy button! It would take far less machine time and completely do away with the expense of the tungsten or other dampening aspect built into my tuners. FWIW, I've found zero benefit from rubber or o-rings on the outside of a tuner for dampening. Best thing about it I can find is a grippy surface to hold on to. But nothing to its performance at all.

I appreciate you using my products and same for the literal thousands of others that do as well. Most of ya'll have told me what I've seen from the start, that my tuners are the easiest to use they have found. The dampening aspect is a huge part of why that's true.

I truly wish it were as simple to replicate as it might sound with something else...but it's just not. Could a lighter tuner be functional? Absolutely. Would it be as good? Well, if I thought so, I'd have gone the easy route a long time ago.

For now, I just have to bite the bullet and use what I KNOW has tested better than anything else, but I'm always thinking about this stuff and there are other possibilities but are more radical and have their own drawbacks, aside from the cost of tungsten powder.