That, and the fact that the bullet has already gone through the target by the time some of this even happens.
What you just said in your initial post seems to be at odds with Bill Calfee. He asserts that you can indeed stop the muzzle with the correct weight for that barrel, and if you accomplish this, will need no further tuning with your ideal load after that.
I, for one, am willing to try this. I already have a barrel prepped at 4 pounds, and, hope to be at the range this week end.
Many shooters ask me why I would bother, since what I have been doing for the past three years works pretty darned good. The answer, good ideas are worth trying. But, if I still have to tweek the Rifle, I would just as soon use what I have now. After all, that was the entire concept behind my tuner design in the beginning. Have something that was user friendly at the firing line, allowing me to use the same load, seating depth, and neck tension all of the time, and just fine tune with the tuner, at the line, where it counts.
Time will tell..........jackie
Jackie, I'm not at odds with Bill's thoughts at all. We are talking about the same thing just using different terms. I think you have banged on enough metal rods (shafts) to know you can't stop them from vibrating regardless what you do-unless you happen to melt them down into a liquid and keep them liquid.
I feel that in Bill's situation, using low velocity rimfire ammunition that is always the same velocity (+/- about 10 fps) that the barrel seems to "stop".
A friend of mine and a fellow Texican of yours just got back from the Cactus. He had a fixed formula for tuning. He, at the Cactus. like you at Rachels Glen, found a situation that was odd to what had been the normal happening. Why? The window was open, just not wide enough to accommodate the environmental changes that occurred in those instances. I feel that a better balance of barrel profile and tuner weight would have moved that window further open.
With a tuner, all that is happening is that the "window" just gets opened further. But it is still a window in that it has limits. Barrel weight, barrel profile, the barrels physical properties (spring, etc) all must be balanced with the tuner weight and its location to make the gun shoot. In all of this, the load parameters (powder type, weight, bullet jam, etc.) must also be kept constant or the whole window closes.
I have a 6-groove Shilen, a 5-groove Spencer and a 4-groove Krieger that were turned to the same dimensions. Using the same tuner, they all reacted differently to tuner adjustment. I don't think, knowing what we know now that a "cookbook" can be written that would allow a barrelsmith to produce the equipment (barrel and tuner combination) that would be a one size fits all.
All that being said, Bill Calfee, Bill Myers and others have come up with rimfire sporter barrels with a Schnabel on the end that come pretty close. (Rimfire Sporter class doesn't allow
adjustable tuners.) But that is rimfire--low velocity-sub sonic and very predictable.
Course it might take more than 4 oz of material to get it there. 