tightening Hoehn style tuner.

R

Rich In Kansas

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How do you all tighten your tuner. After all these years I thought I knew, but been having troubles keeping it from coming loose. Gives some heck of a wild shots. Do you just snug it down tight or use a torque wrench? Rich
 
Tuner tightness

Rich
I just tighten mine pretty snug.I tried using a torque wrench at 20lbs.-15 lbs. ect. but saw no difference in accuracy.So i just tighten it down.
I had heard that a person could tighten them down too tight and actually distort the barrel.So one day while i was at Butch Hongisto's shop i asked him about it.He said that was complete BS and he had tested it. He told me that he had used an old lathe with a rifle barrel held in the chuck and had placed a closely fitting metal spud in the barrel. He said he then tightened the chuck as tight as he could and the spud pulled from the barrel the same as before.He said he then used a 3 foot cheater bar to tighten the jaws with the same results. So anyway Butch says you cannot tighten your tuner screws enough to distort the barrel. After that i never worried about it.
Colt.45
 
Barrel tuner

The barrel tuner i have has a plastic sleeve that fits onto the barrel first and then the tuner fits onto the sleeve. This gives a good grip to the barrel and tuner. you would have to get someone to make one up so that it fits on to barrel like a glove, but it works for me.

Andy
 
Well I can tell you that Calfee would strongly advise against any type of sleeve. Assuming the tuner is properly bored for a snug fit prior to tightening, I use Bill's suggestion which is to hold the short end of the allen wrench so as not to over-tighten...never had a problem.
 
Perhaps a little more explanation. Back in 2000 when I had a very good barrel going bad I slugged it with pulled bullets. Up to that time I had snugged my tuners down very tight. I had a older Time tuner on it, the really long one. I could feel a real constriction near the muzzle, but because the tuner was so long I could not see exactly where the constriction was. So I removed the tuner and no constriction! I retested several times with the tuner on and off and sure enough I could feel a constriction. Now we have had discussions on this board in the past about whether these constrictions can be detected by any means and I really don't want to get into that here. Many folks have said they cannot detect the constriction by many means but I am only talking about one method, using a bullet in a clean barrel with no oil etc. and pushed with a cleaning rod without a jag. The threaded tip fits nicely into cup in the base of the bullet. Because my barrel demised after 40,000 rounds or so I had wondered if this overtightened tuner had caused the problem. I really think it was because of over aggressive cleaning. Anyhow I did some testing with several barrels and tuners and found I could feel the constriction if I used in excess of 9 inch pounds of torque. Ok, laugh if you want, but that is not the important part of this post. Since 2001 I have used 9 inch pounds to hold both Time and Hoehn tuners on two rifles with no problems. Then about 2 months ago I attempted to fix a problem I didn't have. One of my barrels with the Hoehn tuner is not stainless, it is chrome moly and although I had it waxed at one point I had been using grease for a while. So I took the tuner off and waxed the barrel. The tuner came off twice at a match after that. Boy did I get some wild shots. Anyhow I removed the wax, used some trimite to roughen up the end of the barrel and used 15 inch pounds of torque. Same thing happened again yesterday, came loose. So after some 7 years or so of using 9 inch pounds successfully, all of a sudden the tuner won't stay on. I guess now I am going to examine the tuner more closely for cracks in the body, perhaps get new screws at Ace hardware, re-clean and try again. But I am still uncertain what torque setting to use. Rich
 
Re Question

It might be a silly question but have you checked thread? maybe get some new allen screws and see what that does. just a thought.

As to the sleeve for my barrel tuner since this is the only one i have tried it works fine and never had a problem with it. I am looking to get a Hoehn tuner when i get back from the WBC in Milan, since the one i have you cannot add weight. So I will be interested to see how it works out.

Andy
 
Lynn, you read my mind, we were joking about using JB after the match yesterday. Good stuff if you never want to remove the tuner. But like gluing in an action, I don't care for such permanent solutions. Somehow I suspect I didn't get all the wax off the barrel or some got inside the tuner sleeve. I used Acetone and alcohol to clean the barrel and tuner. And then trimite. Seems like that should have removed the wax.
Andy, no I didn't check the threads. As I stated I am getting new screws at Ace hopefully. Rich
 
Colt.45 said:
why would calfee say "no sleeve"? Just wondering what one would hurt?
Colt.45
Click to expand...

As I recall, the opinion is that either a sleeve between the bbl and tuner or an ill fitting tuner, one that is bored too large, is not an efficient tuner as in the barrel vibrations are not best transmitted. As in most things I assumed it was tested, always seemed logical to me.
 
Tuner

Hi Rich, It seems some barrels are hard to hold the tuner on with the clamp screws. In this case, I have cleaned the barrel and tuner with acetone and then put a drop or two of mild thread locker on the barrel. Never had any problem with tuner coming loose and they can be easily removed with a block of wood against the back of the tuner hit with a sharp hammer blow. Works for me. Gene
 
RE DAVIS said:
Hi Rich, It seems some barrels are hard to hold the tuner on with the clamp screws. In this case, I have cleaned the barrel and tuner with acetone and then put a drop or two of mild thread locker on the barrel. Never had any problem with tuner coming loose and they can be easily removed with a block of wood against the back of the tuner hit with a sharp hammer blow. Works for me. Gene
Click to expand...

I've had the same experience.

Picher
 
Pitcher, RE Davis, thankyou. I had thought of this but wondered if thread locker would work well without the grooves of a screw to adhere to. I think this is what I will try.

I checked the screws today and they look fine, but I will replace them anyhow. The body of the tuner doesn't show any cracks and it is so beefy I doubt if it could crack without an 8 pound sledge. Rich
 
What am I missing? It seems on my Hoehn tuner both sides of the collar are taped. Otherwords the bolts do not slip through one side and thread into the other. This seems to me the head of the bolt could tighten up before the otherside is drawn up. This could cause my problem of the tuner appearing to be tight when in fact it is the head drawing up without pulling the other side tight. My first thought is to drill out the side the bolts go in to have a slip fit. Anybody else ever noticed this? My bolts seem to be 5-40 1/2 inch. I may try to get hold of Ron. Rich
 
threads

There shouldn't be threads but on one side. What has probably happened is in tighting you have formed a burr that goes all the way around where the head of the bolt is. This happens alot when working with soft metals like aluminum and hard bolts like allen head.
Take a round file or a countershink and bevel the holes to cut this ridge out.
If you are a reloader you can use your beveling tool.
Larry
 
Larry, you are right on! I used a magnifying glass and light and the hole is not threaded. I cleaned up the hole and mounted the tuner the usual way without resorting to thread locker. Will test it before my next match and see what happens.
 
tuner

Glad I could help. Sometimes you can take a lettered drill index and find the next size up and drill the hole thing out on that side to give it a little relief. The bold was using that burr to tighten up and not really tighting your tuner.
Any time
Larry
 
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