Need Help With a Tuner

[Hunter]

Do any of you know who made the tuner shown in the attached picture? If so, would you mind responding to the questions below.

The tuner came on a used barrel I bought and I don't understand how it's supposed to be used. I believe the seller said it was made by skeetlee.

I contacted Lee and described it to him (gave him the dimensions shown below) and he said he was "not familiar [sic] with what [I was] saying," and that he had "made a couple that use an internal o ring that causes the friction." He also said he thought Dale Wollum "made those tuners." I then contacted Dale and he said he had been told the tuners I described had been made by skeetlee, and that he thought the tuner used an O-ring on the barrel to give friction. I don't see any O-ring on the barrel or in the tuner.

The tuner is about 2.5" long and has a "band" at the breach end that's about 3/8" long with an OD of 1.162"; the OD of the tuner just past the "band" is 1.0374" and the OD at the muzzle end of the tuner is 1.184"; the ID of the tuner at the muzzle end is. 840" -- the only marking on the tuner is a round "dimple" on the "band"); it looks like it has 28 TPI. It appears to be designed to hold its setting with nothing more than friction.

In addition to wondering who made the tuner, I'd like to know if it needs an O-ring and how to set/use the tuner.

UPDATE -- Contrary to what I said above, as I was making the picture, I saw that there is a thin O-ring on the barrel; however, it doesn't appear to allow much rotation of the tuner before the tuner becomes very easy to turn -- in other words, after 1/4 turn from "tight," the tuner becomes very easy to turn.

So, my questions are:

1. Who made the tuner?
2. Does the O-ring keep the tuner from moving under recoil?
3. How much rotation should be expected in trying to use this tuner?
4. Are you changing the tuner as you shoot, or are you finding a "good window" and leaving it alone after have found that window?
5. Is the tuner effective with nothing more than an O-ring providing friction?

 

[Dusty Stevens]

Theres been a million tuner designs. A few work. Youll pull your hair out on one that doesnt. Ive heard of some that if you adjust em 1/8 turn theyll move poi off the paper at 200! Point is if nobody knows who made it it was probably a one off made as an experiment and you may not ever find the maker unfortunately. But you can adjust it like any other tuner and see what you got. They all adjust the same way the difference being effectiveness on target and thats what you gotta find out!

 

[rkittine]

Not trying to steal your threat, but I am really new to this. Could you also add to your list of questions, HOW DOES A TUNER WORK?

Thanks Bob

 

[Mike Bryant]

To my understanding, the tuner changes the vibration pattern of the barrel when it's fired. Two different camps on the use of the tuner. Camp 1. Is to adjust it to a sweet spot where your barrel shoots it's best. Then leave it alone. Gene Bukys is an example of this method with his tuner. Camp 2. Adjust the tuner throughout the day as temperature and humidity changes. Richard Brensing is an example of this method. Gene uses his own tuner design. Richard uses one that Darrell Loker makes. It's really easy to make a barrel go out of tune by turning a tuner. I uses Gene's method when I use a tuner. Not sure exactly how they work, but they do make a difference whether good or bad depending upon where they are set. I prefer a tuner that locks down on a threaded muzzle with a cross bolt as opposed to those that use lock ring washers or other methods to secure them to the barrel. With the cross bolt you know it's not going to move unless you want it. I have yet to see the need to move a tuner even a full thread to find the sweet spot for the tuner.

 

[JerrySharrett]

Tuner facts;

Tuners WILL change the performance of a barrel.

Light weight tuners work OK to make minor performance changes as a match day goes on BUT will not necessarily bring a barrel to its best total performance.

To use a tuner to adjust a barrel,to its maximum accuracy, for a LV, as an example, it must weigh about 10 ounces or more. Heavier weight barrels may require more weight,AND, IT MUST be of a fixed design. None of this ball-detent type like some rimfire shooters tried a few years ago.

In 2005, Scott "Fudd" Hamilton and I did a lot of design development for center fire tuners. I shot tuners in all the major shoots that year...even in IBS, where tuners had not yet been officially approved. Jim Borden helped me with a design to meet the then IBS rule wording.

Conclusion, if you want a hobby, by all means install a tuner . You can obtain some positive results but it will take a lot of extra effort on your part.


.

 

[Dusty Stevens]

One thing i go by on tuners- you cant make a barrel shoot better with one but you can sure make it shoot worse. Since i cant devote that much time into each barrel i just tune the old fashoined way. If i couldnt change my load id probably use one

 

[crb]

A 5+ oz tuner will make a heck of a change in the balance point of the rifle. If you are already on or near the limit you may not be able to get the cg back where you would like it. Then you end up with the forend stop more rearward than you might prefer.

 

[Tim Singleton]

I haven't used a tuner much at all. But I was surprised what slight adjustment will do. These two groups were shot just long enough a part to make a slight turn on the tuner. I didn't miss a pickup
Is this common? Maybe what seemed slight to me was still to much at one time

 

[Joe McNeill]

Tim,
Which group was first? I plan on trying a tuner this year to see what it will do. I have listened to the
pro's and con's and decided to give it a try. Why not right?
Regards,

Joe McNeill
SW Arkansas

 

[mwezell]

What Richard said is very true in most cases. The first thing to do with a tuner is to learn it inside and out and on a specific barrel with a specific stiffness. It should be expected that as little as .001" of tuner travel will make a clear difference on paper. This depends largely upon barrel stiffness and tuner weight. If it were my tuner design, I'd be quite confident in giving more specific usage data...but unfortunately, you have a tuner of unknown make and details matter. This creates a lot of confusion and outright poor information when posters try to help by offering their experience with tuners of different designs and on barrels of unknown relative stiffness. They all work on the same principle and the single most common mistake made is making too big of adjustments. ---Mike Ezell

 

[Tim Singleton]

Tim,
Which group was first? I plan on trying a tuner this year to see what it will do. I have listened to the
pro's and con's and decided to give it a try. Why not right?
Regards,

Joe McNeill
SW Arkansas

The one on the right was first. The tuner is a Buckys I turned it approximately 1/8"

 

[jackie schmidt]

I might be one of the first shooters who enjoyed considerable success with a tuner.

I also am one of the shooters instrumental in getting the NBRSA to allow tuners. At the Nationals at the members meeting, when the item came up, I had a very prominant shooter tell me, "Most of these guys wish you would just go away".

I am also responsible for the development of the so called "snubber" tuner, which acts as a vibration dampener as well as tuning the barrel.

The way I use a tuner is I put my favorite load in a barrel, then tune it with the tuner to shoot as well as it will. I try to avoid turning it after that. I tune 133 by watching humidity, going up as the humidity goes down.

I use the tuner a little different on my 30BR score rifle. If I catch myself caught in that "horizontal" tune, where just the slightest pickup will push the bullet more than what it should, I will turn the tuner to put a little verticle in the load.

I use a 36 TPI on my tuners, which typically weigh around 5 ounces. It generally takes 1/4 turn to see a change. My tuners, which are one piece, do clamp firmly to the barrel.

Here is my original design. The thread is .900 36 TPI.
http://benchrest.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=17276&stc=1&d=1453265217

 

[jackie schmidt]

Here is my 2d design. The first design rn corporates a hard rubber marine bearing tightly pressed onto the tuner body. The second design uses a piece of hard rubber with a hole bored to press tightly onto the tuner body with contact cement.

http://benchrest.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=17277&stc=1&d=1453265401

 

[jackie schmidt]

LV with tuner.

http://benchrest.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=17278&stc=1&d=1453266954

 

[JerrySharrett]

On tuner adjustments. A tuner of significant weight, a linear movement of about 0.005"-0.007" will make a noticeable change.

One complication with a tuner on ccenterfire, it will show up several sweet spots. sometimes 2-3 in just one full turn. By the time you decide on the sweetest sweet spot you have mostly shot the barrel out. Not so on rimfire where they some times get 25,000-50,000 rounds in a barrel before it is shot out.

If you install a tuner, find a spot where the barrel is shooting competitively and leave it there. To try to find "the best" for that barrel will take up most of the season.

.

.

 

[Mike Bryant]

On a tuner with a 32 tpi thread which the Bukys tuner has, it takes a little less than .1" of movement around the circumference of the barrel to make a .001" movement of the tuner length wise on the barrel. About a tenth inch of movement around the diameter of the barrel is what I'll make when setting up the tuner shooting two shots each time. If it doesn't go in one hole, I'll adjust the tuner until it does. Once two shots go in the same hole, I'll shoot another shot. If it goes in the same hole then I'll mark that spot with a marker on the barrel using the cross slot on the tuner as the reference point. The Bukys tuner weighs about 3.5 ounces which is the same weight of the tuner I'd been using made with the marine bearing after Jackie's pattern. It doesn't take very many shots to get a tuner set where it needs to be. Setting a tuner and leaving it alone hopefully for a wider tune window seems to work, but so does how Richard is using his Loker tuners. To learn how to use a tuner like Richard is doing takes time and a lot of shooting. He's won or placed very high at every match I've shot with him last year. His method does work. I went to using the Bukys tuner instead of the marine bearing tuner that is made after Jackie's pattern mainly because cleaning solvent attacks the brass in the bearing and gets the tuner pretty nasty. It takes time to get a tuner set. I've seen lots of people at matches with the muzzle threaded, but no tuner. If you don't take the time to get it set where it needs to be or learn how to use it, then you're probably better off to not have it on the barrel. A tuner is certainly worth trying, but you'd better be prepared to have the time to allocate to using it.

 

[mwezell]

On a tuner with a 32 tpi thread which the Bukys tuner has, it takes a little less than .1" of movement around the circumference of the barrel to make a .001" movement of the tuner length wise on the barrel. About a tenth inch of movement around the diameter of the barrel is what I'll make when setting up the tuner shooting two shots each time. If it doesn't go in one hole, I'll adjust the tuner until it does. Once two shots go in the same hole, I'll shoot another shot. If it goes in the same hole then I'll mark that spot with a marker on the barrel using the cross slot on the tuner as the reference point. The Bukys tuner weighs about 3.5 ounces which is the same weight of the tuner I'd been using made with the marine bearing after Jackie's pattern. It doesn't take very many shots to get a tuner set where it needs to be. Setting a tuner and leaving it alone hopefully for a wider tune window seems to work, but so does how Richard is using his Loker tuners. To learn how to use a tuner like Richard is doing takes time and a lot of shooting. He's won or placed very high at every match I've shot with him last year. His method does work. I went to using the Bukys tuner instead of the marine bearing tuner that is made after Jackie's pattern mainly because cleaning solvent attacks the brass in the bearing and gets the tuner pretty nasty. It takes time to get a tuner set. I've seen lots of people at matches with the muzzle threaded, but no tuner. If you don't take the time to get it set where it needs to be or learn how to use it, then you're probably better off to not have it on the barrel. A tuner is certainly worth trying, but you'd better be prepared to have the time to allocate to using it.

Good post Mike. I agree with what you said and my experience with tuners is very much as yours. The only thing I see differently is that, IMO, tuners SIMPLIFY tuning if adjusted as you describe, rather than complicate it. The trick is very small adjustments when moving it. If one grabs it and moves a 1/4 turn, or other random but large amount..the I agree that it'd be harder to "stumble upon the sweet spot. As Jerry mentioned earlier, though, there are typically about 3 sweet spots in a single revolution, so you can get lucky with big adjustments. Just be very methodical and make very small adjustments with it and you'll find a sweet spot in very short order, IME.

My tuners are threaded 32 tpi and have 32 reference marks around them, equaling roughly .001" of linear travel per each mark. Once you are in perfect tune, if it ever goes away, it's almost always a single mark or even less that brings it back in.

 

[Mike Bryant]

From what I've seen with the tuner, I haven't seen the need to go even as much as a full turn to get it to come in tune usually less than a half turn or less. I'm probably turning it about the same as the mark on your tuner Mike when I make an adjustment. I've been using them now for about two or three years. I'll have to do some playing with them to learn it a little more. Setting it and leaving it alone for the life of the barrel works and adjusting your load to tune, but there is certainly something to be said for the way Richard has been able to shoot the same load from Phoenix to Kansas City by just using his tuner to tune the rifle.

 

[mwezell]

From what I've seen with the tuner, I haven't seen the need to go even as much as a full turn to get it to come in tune usually less than a half turn or less. I'm probably turning it about the same as the mark on your tuner Mike when I make an adjustment. I've been using them now for about two or three years. I'll have to do some playing with them to learn it a little more. Setting it and leaving it alone for the life of the barrel works and adjusting your load to tune, but there is certainly something to be said for the way Richard has been able to shoot the same load from Phoenix to Kansas City by just using his tuner to tune the rifle.

I think I was either unclear or you misread what I said. What I meant to say is that tuner adjustments are generally TINY! It's truly amazing how small of an adjustment needs to be made to obviously affect tune. I wish we could get to the point where we talk in terms of barrel stiffness when we discuss tuners. It's really the only way to compare notes. Not only that, but further confusing matters is all of the different tuner designs, weights, and thread pitches. If everyone used my tuner, and the same length and contour barrels..it'd be much less confusing, as there'd be fewer variables in describing how to adjust them. FWIW, Dan Lilja has a barrel stiffness calculator on his site. It simply gives a relative number for stiffness based on barrel length and contour. It uses other factors as well that make it pretty precise, but I hope we all get the point. There's simply no way that a 4oz. tuner on a 20" hv contour barrel will act exactly like a 8oz tuner on a 24" lv..or similar..so it'd be nice, IMHO, if we could begin using a relative stiffness number, for starters.

Then, we also have factors like tuner weight, that I already mentioned, and location..behind or in front of the muzzle, and how far either way. As you can imagine, it's really just simple leverage, so I think everyone can understand why it matters.

Amazingly enough, even though there are these important factors, we still have a pretty forgiving tool with tuners, in this regard. There seems to be a pretty wide window of weights and locations that actually DO work well on a pretty wide range of barrel stiffness numbers. But, they don't correspond to instructing their use the same with all of the variables. So, the only way to know for sure that you're not skipping over a sweet spot on the tuner, is to move it in very small increments and to be very methodical..and keep good notes while doing it.

IME with most of the commercially available tuners on the market, I recommend .001" liner travel as a good rule of thumb when testing. You can quickly determine what effect it makes, or doesn't make, given your individual rifle and tuner. This is particularly true if you have a known good rifle and load combination to test while establishing how much movement you need to work with between groups fired.

My process is so simple and effective that I can have virtually anyone "trained" on using a tuner in a matter of minutes if they already have a known good rifle and load to begin with.

What I start out looking for is the range of tuner adjustment needed to take the rifle completely in and out of tune. For the sake of this discussion, that's all you need to know about them. I start by shooting 2 or 3 shot groups in good conditions, at 1 mark intervals. On my tuner, 1 mark is equal to .001" of linear travel. So, if you start on zero and go to the number 2, you moved the tuner .002". Simple..right?

I simply fire my 2-3 shot groups at each mark. You can continue doing this for as long as you want..or until the barrel is done..but there is typically no need in firing all of those rounds. As mentioned earlier by I think Sharrett, there will be multiple sweet spots in every single revolution of the tuner. IME, there's no need to try and find which is best, if one is even better than another, I can't shoot well enough to tell it with my br rifles...or anyone else's that I've ever shot, for that matter. Whatever difference there may or may not be between sweet spots is way, way , way smaller than all of the other variables that we deal with..with or without a tuner. In other words, if there's a difference, it gets lost in the noise.

As was said already, there will be multiple sweet spots...like 2-4 of them in a single revolution. Lets think about that for a minute...Since the tune repeats over and over again, AND because it simply goes in and out of tune gradually in either direction that you turn the tuner, there's a predictability here. My tuners have 32 marks on them. Lets say that moving my tuner from 0 to 4 takes it from shooting its best to its worst. That also means that it'll do the same thing if I move it from 0 to 28..best to worst in both directions. Stay with me on this, please. Since there are 8 marks between worst to worst, there are also 8 marks from best to best..in terms of sweet spot or completely out of tune. Now, as I said, my tuner has 32 marks on it. So...theoretically you can turn it a 1/4 turn and be at another sweet spot!! That's assuming something..that the tuner's affect is linear throughout its travel..which it is not, but it is close. So it'll change a bit with travel..i.e. a turn or multiple turns in either direction...just not by a whole lot. But it is enough that you likely will not be in perfect tune by simply moving it in 1/4 turn increments, at all.

But this does explain why some people swear by moving the tuner in larger increments than what I recommend, though..at least to a large degree....because they got LUCKY! I have sold hundreds of my tuners now, to both rimfire and centerfire shooters, as well as even some air rifles shooters. It doesn't matter what's being fired from it, it's still a cantilevered beam and it will vibrate similarly. I have sold several to shooters who called me up or posted on forums to tell me what a great job I did in having it set at it's best setting when I shipped it!!! Of course I just grin and say thank you, but I didn't do anything special to predict the setting for a gun that I've never seen or shot..It was simply that the tune repeats and I got LUCKY! It happened a lot, actually..but if 4 marks takes it from in perfect tune to completely out, the odds were 1 in 4 that it'd happen, since the tuner also has 32 marks around it.(remember, I said stay with me)

I agree with you, Mike..there are certainly some shooters that do well by setting the tuner, locking it down, and adjusting powder charge, and do very well like that. It's not how I do it, because I think it's leaving a huge benefit of tuners on the table, That being the ability to tune the rifle at the bench, and even to the point of going pre-loaded to matches! I won't argue with anyone that has good success by that method. I do believe what they are seeing is a real benefit of a tuner. That being a wider tune window before needing to adjust the load..so It's real and that IS a benefit of tuners that makes them very much worthwhile, IMHO, alone.
As I said, that's not my preferred method for using one, but if it ain't broke, don't fix it. Obviously, there are some shooters that do it well. Thing is, many of those same shooters were already very good at keeping up with tune issues, WITHOUT a tuner. Tuners just made their life easier here.

My method is to go pre-loaded and tune, if need be, on the first target. Seldom do I need to tune during the match, but it does happen at times. Basically, WITH MY TUNER, on my rifle, I have learned what it looks like when it goes or just starts to go away on me. This is no different than how I use to adjust powder change or seating depth, and for the same reasons, before I began using tuners. It's no different, just a different method of keeping the gun in tune. Commonly, shooters without tuners need to adjust as the day goes on, or when they travel, or when a big swing in temps/humidity occur. With a tuner, the gun is not impervious to those changes, but it is much less affected due to the wider tune window all properly made and mounted tuners give.

Throughout the day, during a match, if I see the gun going away, my typical tuner adjustment is 1 mark or even less. That little bit can most certainly be seen on the target and fine tuning this way can keep my gun shooting at it's FULL potential. No more need to tune for that 1/2 bullet of vertical to keep it from falling off and shooting a big group. I sometimes do though, if I feel like I'm getting too much drift.

Sorry for such a long post. I hope some of you will appreciate it, though, as it is what I have found with tuners and how/why I am 100% convinced that I'll never shoot one of my guns in competition again, without a tuner.

The main point I had hoped to make before going on and on was in regard to making VERY small adjustments with tuners and being very methodical when starting out. By FAR, the most common mistake I see is people making WAY too big of adjustments with them.--Mike Ezell

 

[jackie schmidt]

I think I was either unclear or you misread what I said. What I meant to say is that tuner adjustments are generally TINY! It's truly amazing how small of an adjustment needs to be made to obviously affect tune. I wish we could get to the point where we talk in terms of barrel stiffness when we discuss tuners. It's really the only way to compare notes. Not only that, but further confusing matters is all of the different tuner designs, weights, and thread pitches. If everyone used my tuner, and the same length and contour barrels..it'd be much less confusing, as there'd be fewer variables in describing how to adjust them. FWIW, Dan Lilja has a barrel stiffness calculator on his site. It simply gives a relative number for stiffness based on barrel length and contour. It uses other factors as well that make it pretty precise, but I hope we all get the point. There's simply no way that a 4oz. tuner on a 20" hv contour barrel will act exactly like a 8oz tuner on a 24" lv..or similar..so it'd be nice, IMHO, if we could begin using a relative stiffness number, for starters.

Then, we also have factors like tuner weight, that I already mentioned, and location..behind or in front of the muzzle, and how far either way. As you can imagine, it's really just simple leverage, so I think everyone can understand why it matters.

Amazingly enough, even though there are these important factors, we still have a pretty forgiving tool with tuners, in this regard. There seems to be a pretty wide window of weights and locations that actually DO work well on a pretty wide range of barrel stiffness numbers. But, they don't correspond to instructing their use the same with all of the variables. So, the only way to know for sure that you're not skipping over a sweet spot on the tuner, is to move it in very small increments and to be very methodical..and keep good notes while doing it.

IME with most of the commercially available tuners on the market, I recommend .001" liner travel as a good rule of thumb when testing. You can quickly determine what effect it makes, or doesn't make, given your individual rifle and tuner. This is particularly true if you have a known good rifle and load combination to test while establishing how much movement you need to work with between groups fired.

My process is so simple and effective that I can have virtually anyone "trained" on using a tuner in a matter of minutes if they already have a known good rifle and load to begin with.

What I start out looking for is the range of tuner adjustment needed to take the rifle completely in and out of tune. For the sake of this discussion, that's all you need to know about them. I start by shooting 2 or 3 shot groups in good conditions, at 1 mark intervals. On my tuner, 1 mark is equal to .001" of linear travel. So, if you start on zero and go to the number 2, you moved the tuner .002". Simple..right?

I simply fire my 2-3 shot groups at each mark. You can continue doing this for as long as you want..or until the barrel is done..but there is typically no need in firing all of those rounds. As mentioned earlier by I think Sharrett, there will be multiple sweet spots in every single revolution of the tuner. IME, there's no need to try and find which is best, if one is even better than another, I can't shoot well enough to tell it with my br rifles...or anyone else's that I've ever shot, for that matter. Whatever difference there may or may not be between sweet spots is way, way , way smaller than all of the other variables that we deal with..with or without a tuner. In other words, if there's a difference, it gets lost in the noise.

As was said already, there will be multiple sweet spots...like 2-4 of them in a single revolution. Lets think about that for a minute...Since the tune repeats over and over again, AND because it simply goes in and out of tune gradually in either direction that you turn the tuner, there's a predictability here. My tuners have 32 marks on them. Lets say that moving my tuner from 0 to 4 takes it from shooting its best to its worst. That also means that it'll do the same thing if I move it from 0 to 28..best to worst in both directions. Stay with me on this, please. Since there are 8 marks between worst to worst, there are also 8 marks from best to best..in terms of sweet spot or completely out of tune. Now, as I said, my tuner has 32 marks on it. So...theoretically you can turn it a 1/4 turn and be at another sweet spot!! That's assuming something..that the tuner's affect is linear throughout its travel..which it is not, but it is close. So it'll change a bit with travel..i.e. a turn or multiple turns in either direction...just not by a whole lot. But it is enough that you likely will not be in perfect tune by simply moving it in 1/4 turn increments, at all.

But this does explain why some people swear by moving the tuner in larger increments than what I recommend, though..at least to a large degree....because they got LUCKY! I have sold hundreds of my tuners now, to both rimfire and centerfire shooters, as well as even some air rifles shooters. It doesn't matter what's being fired from it, it's still a cantilevered beam and it will vibrate similarly. I have sold several to shooters who called me up or posted on forums to tell me what a great job I did in having it set at it's best setting when I shipped it!!! Of course I just grin and say thank you, but I didn't do anything special to predict the setting for a gun that I've never seen or shot..It was simply that the tune repeats and I got LUCKY! It happened a lot, actually..but if 4 marks takes it from in perfect tune to completely out, the odds were 1 in 4 that it'd happen, since the tuner also has 32 marks around it.(remember, I said stay with me)

I agree with you, Mike..there are certainly some shooters that do well by setting the tuner, locking it down, and adjusting powder charge, and do very well like that. It's not how I do it, because I think it's leaving a huge benefit of tuners on the table, That being the ability to tune the rifle at the bench, and even to the point of going pre-loaded to matches! I won't argue with anyone that has good success by that method. I do believe what they are seeing is a real benefit of a tuner. That being a wider tune window before needing to adjust the load..so It's real and that IS a benefit of tuners that makes them very much worthwhile, IMHO, alone.
As I said, that's not my preferred method for using one, but if it ain't broke, don't fix it. Obviously, there are some shooters that do it well. Thing is, many of those same shooters were already very good at keeping up with tune issues, WITHOUT a tuner. Tuners just made their life easier here.

My method is to go pre-loaded and tune, if need be, on the first target. Seldom do I need to tune during the match, but it does happen at times. Basically, WITH MY TUNER, on my rifle, I have learned what it looks like when it goes or just starts to go away on me. This is no different than how I use to adjust powder change or seating depth, and for the same reasons, before I began using tuners. It's no different, just a different method of keeping the gun in tune. Commonly, shooters without tuners need to adjust as the day goes on, or when they travel, or when a big swing in temps/humidity occur. With a tuner, the gun is not impervious to those changes, but it is much less affected due to the wider tune window all properly made and mounted tuners give.

Throughout the day, during a match, if I see the gun going away, my typical tuner adjustment is 1 mark or even less. That little bit can most certainly be seen on the target and fine tuning this way can keep my gun shooting at it's FULL potential. No more need to tune for that 1/2 bullet of vertical to keep it from falling off and shooting a big group. I sometimes do though, if I feel like I'm getting too much drift.

Sorry for such a long post. I hope some of you will appreciate it, though, as it is what I have found with tuners and how/why I am 100% convinced that I'll never shoot one of my guns in competition again, without a tuner.

The main point I had hoped to make before going on and on was in regard to making VERY small adjustments with tuners and being very methodical when starting out. By FAR, the most common mistake I see is people making WAY too big of adjustments with them.--Mike Ezell

Mike, I said in my post that I generally saw a change in 1/4 turn. With the 36 TPI, that is roughly .008. Keep in mind, that .008 will go from a flat horizontal tune to a bullet hole of vertical. That means the sweet spot will be somewhere between.

That jives pretty close to what you are experiencing.

By the way, on my 30BR, I do not use HV taper barrel profiles. . I use a standard LV taper with all of the "straight" left on.

Even when I set my original 18 twist barrel back to 19 3/4 inches, it still responded to the tuner in a similar manner.