Thats interesting, except for a couple things that i truly wish the tuner crankers would kindly answer.
First, why do so many of the very top gunsmiths and shooters both, absolutely, disagree with this and have a quite substantial body of acomplishmentto back it up?
Secondly, why do the better of the sporters shot in IR 50 shoot so very well in a variety of weather and temperatures given they are tuned properly durring construction and then essentially untunable post build?
Tim, I won't turn this into an argument, but isn't bringing two or more lots of ammo to the bench, a tuning method? How is it different than moving the tuner if either method produces a competitive rifle/load?
How is changing ammo any different than changing the load in cf? We have referred to changing the load as tuning, for forever.
IME, a good tuner setting...like a good load, is quite forgiving. Tuners widen tune windows by slowing everything down, by the very fact that they add mass to the end of our little cantilevered beam. This, in turn, makes the gun less susceptible, but not immune, to tune related issues brought on by atmospheric changes. Hence, a wider tune window. But, adding a mass at the end of a barrel does not stop atmospheric changes from having the same effect on the gun and/or the internal ballistics related to the ammo. i.e., powders/primers behaving differently at different temps. When these changes become apparent performance detriments on the target, what do we do? In cf, we change the load. In rf...we change the load, too...if we have another lot to "try", or to "go to".
Shooting with tuners in cf, for several years now, I have absolutely no doubt, that I can produce consistent and repeatable results from tuner cranking. I must admit that I very much dislike that term, as it implies large tuner movement, when that's the single most(by far) common mistake I see with new tuner users, or those that have been told that they need to move the tuner some great amount to matter. IME, every time, that's false.
Anyway, if I can produce consistent and repeatable..good results using a tuner on a cf rifle, how or why would one think it wouldn't be possible on a rf rifle? I can tell you that there are differences in what I've found to work, between rf and cf...but they are very, very similar. The way I go about keeping a rf gun tuned, with a tuner, came directly from what works for me on a cf gun.
Given a good load(ammo), I can make the gun shoot tiny dots, big ugly round groups, or anywhere in between....using only the tuner. I can repeat the same results, time after time, after time. There is nothing about a rifle that fires a rf cartridge that prevents this from being just as true. You must start with a good rifle, good ammo, and move the tuner in very small increments. Once you establish what completely in tune and out of tune look like on paper...and correlate that to amount of tuner adjustment, I've never seen a case where I'd need to move the tuner more than within that range of adjustment, with any ammo or load. With my tuners, that range has always been between 2-6 marks on the tuner, without exception. The biggest contributing variable is barrel stiffness, but rf's do require very slightly more movement to accomplish the same thing. So, as you can see, staying within this small range of movement keeps things simple. More importantly, consistent and repeatable.
Obviously, there are different camps, some with strong opinions on the subject of tuners.
I'm posting this because its what I have found to work. Its worked the same way on dozens of rifles, for me, personally, and many more. I won't be debating it further, as its intended not to be argumentative, but as information that is free to be used or shared....or not. --Mike Ezell
