what makes a barrel shoot better in wind?

S

starik

Guest
What makes a barrel shoot better in the wind than other barrels?
Is it the twist rate?, The number of grooves?, The length? the chamber? the muzzle?. Can a barrel which shoots great in perfect conditiones shoot bad in windy day? your opinions please.
Guy.
 
Hummmmm

The variable I think most important is the ability of the bullet to stabilize quickly after it leaves the barrel. The average bullet will scribe a corkscrew path for some distance after it leaves the muzzle. Then if the barrel has the right twist for the weight of the bullet, it will start to spin true and “go to sleep”. The longer the bullet “screws” around, the more the wind will affect it’s path.

Like a child’s top that “hums” when it is stable, the bullet is suppose to go to sleep and hum soon after it leaves the barrel. The sooner the better.

That hummer barrel we all dream of having, will put those little babies to sleep as soon as they leave the barrel.

What makes a barrel hum? My guess is, it’s a combination of things. With the right mix, and the right vibratons, ya got a hummer. They are rare, and if you get one, you are lucky.

Joe Haller :)
 
Very Interesting Joe .... have there been any estimates or measurements taken as to how far the average bullet corkscrews before stabilizing (like how mant feet?)

Fred
 
starik said:
What makes a barrel shoot better in the wind than other barrels?
Is it the twist rate?, The number of grooves?, The length? the chamber? the muzzle?. Can a barrel which shoots great in perfect conditiones shoot bad in windy day? your opinions please.
Guy.
Click to expand...

Lots, and I mean lots of very good barrels are not good wind barrels. Many very good smiths will tell you that #'s of lands, depth, width, taper of bore will all conribute.
 
Friend Starik

Friend Starik:

I'm posting on your thread only because I see this is your first post, and, you have asked a very interesting question.

Good luck.

Your friend, Bill Calfee
 
I agree with Joe 100%, and I know that it may seem like I am drifting away from the topic, but what I am about to say is very pertinent when it comes to all matters concerning precision accuracy. What I will ad is this; if you have a truly great combination of everything else except for one thing, you may never know the true potential of just how good everything else really may be. In other words: if you have the proper barrel length, number of groves, grove depth, rate of spin, bore diameter in relation to lands diameter, chamber cut and everything else is dead on, plus the lot number of your bullets is perfect for your gun, if for some reason some minor little thing is off, like the torque on the action screws is too loose or tight, or the barrel is vibrating at an inconsistant rate while the bullet exits the muzzle, you may never actually realize just how good a combination you really do have.

Oh, you may be able to put together some awesome scores under certain conditions, but everything will soon fall apart under those not-so-certain of conditions.

As Joe said: in the perfect scenario you want your bullet to "go to sleep" just as soon as possible after it leaves the barrel, and if possible, immediately upon its exit from the bore.

There's no sure cure for how much of which or what will be the ultimate answer to achieving your goal of precision accuracy. You will just have to shoot and shoot ...and practice, practice, practice to find out the answers. And when at practice, don't just pull up to the bench and blast away. Analyze everything; how the rest sits on the bench, how the target hangs on its backer, how your windflags are placed to give you the proper readings for the conditions, are you comfortable while sitting at the bench over long periods of time, how smoothly does your gun ride the bags, how much pressure, or lack there of, you are placing the butt pad ....shot after shot. Everything, because nothing is irrelevant when it comes to benchrest shooting! It is only after a perfect balance has been achieved that you will start to reap the rewards of seeing perfection on the target time after time after time.

And yes, this does have something to do with to how well a gun will shoot the wind!
 
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Starik
The best wind shooting barrels are the ones that are tuned the best. They will also shoot in the calm. Any rimfire barrel no matter how it shoots in the wind, It will shoot better tuned. The centerfire guys are finding this out also.
 
I agree with GordonE, assuming it's a quality barrel on a BR rifle shooting quality ammo, quality scope, great bedding, etc., tune is everything, but sometimes real hard to find.
 
Ben,
I'm replying to your post because I see it was your 696th post. That was a very interesting question. Thank for asking it. Happy New Year! Good luck to you.

On a serious note, it's like what Joe said, or at least I think so.

"The variable I think most important is the ability of the bullet to stabilize quickly after it leaves the barrel. The average bullet will scribe a corkscrew path for some distance after it leaves the muzzle. Then if the barrel has the right twist for the weight of the bullet, it will start to spin true and “go to sleep”. The longer the bullet “screws” around, the more the wind will affect it’s path.

Like a child’s top that “hums” when it is stable, the bullet is suppose to go to sleep and hum soon after it leaves the barrel. The sooner the better.

That hummer barrel we all dream of having, will put those little babies to sleep as soon as they leave the barrel.

What makes a barrel hum? My guess is, it’s a combination of things. With the right mix, and the right vibratons, ya got a hummer. They are rare, and if you get one, you are lucky."

Joe Haller :)
 
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starik said:
What makes a barrel shoot better in the wind than other barrels?
Is it the twist rate?, The number of grooves?, The length? the chamber? the muzzle?. Can a barrel which shoots great in perfect conditiones shoot bad in windy day? your opinions please.
Guy.
Click to expand...

Starik,

That may be that best question of '07. Joe's answer may be the best that you will get. Ben's question about tune may have been the second best question.

I am going to take a guess at your last question. Yes, a barrel that shoots great in perfect conditions can shoot bad on a windy day. But then, they all shoot better under perfect conditions.
 
The question is: If there is a better twist rate for a 0.22 or special muzzle form which will let the bullet go to sleep early, or is it only tuning?
I am a prone shooter dealing a lot with windy conditiones in internatinal competitiones, and I can't put a heavy weight at muzzle as a tuner.
Is there any thing I can do exept the heavy tuner?
Guy.
 
I keep hearing about getting a killer hummer in a barrel for only $300, but all I find is some greasy gunsmith with a piece of steel.

I ask you, "Where is the justice in that?"
 
When does the bullet stabilize?

Fred (BigMacky) asked a question about ". . . measurements taken as to how far the average bullet corkscrews before stabilizing (like how many feet?)

Fred: I don’t have that information, but my guess would be that it would be anywhere from a fraction of an inch to “never”.

My first information about the corkscrew bullet came from a smallbore friend in Wheaton Illinois back in 1959. I was a member of the Wheaton Rifle Club at the time. Wheaton is one of the Western Chicago Suburbs. There was a boat load of Master Smallbore Prone and 4 Position Shooters in that club. I learned a lot from them.

One nice summer evening I was practicing with one of these Masters. I watched through my spotting scope as he punched very small 10 shot groups into the X ring of a 100 yard target. When we were through, I noticed he had tossed some 50 yard A-23 targets in the trash. I looked at them, and the 5 shot groups were terrible! They would have measured more than an inch and a half across. I said: “Bob, what gun did you shoot these with". He said: “Same rifle: The bullets are not stabilizing until they get out beyond 50 yards”. He told me the rifle was a Winchester M-52B with a custom barrel put on by Mr. Womak down in Louisiana. I don’t recall his saying what the twist rate was.

The second time I ran across the “cork screw” was in a book. Back in 1981 my dear wife Mavis got me a book for Christmas called, “The Bullets Flight”, by Dr. Franklin Mann. Dr. Mann had done a lot of research on external ballistics in the 1890s and early 1900s. After you read his book you KNOW that Dr. Mann was a genius with a special insight into physics. In 1907 he set up paper screens one foot apart out to 100 yards and plotted the path of the bullets he shot from his machine rest. Seems most of his tests were done with a Pope barreled 32-47 with 187 grain bullets. He was a friend of Harry Pope.

I have read a lot of articles in Precision Shooting since 1956. Don’t recall reading anything about this kind of a test being duplicated. But: When I was shooting High Power Metallic Silhouette back 30 years ago at Camp Grayling, I watched the corkscrewing vapor trails of 168 grain Sierras reaching out to 500 meters.

Joe Haller - Mr. Frosty
 
starik said:
The question is: If there is a better twist rate for a 0.22 or special muzzle form which will let the bullet go to sleep early, or is it only tuning?
I am a prone shooter dealing a lot with windy conditiones in internatinal competitiones, and I can't put a heavy weight at muzzle as a tuner.
Is there any thing I can do exept the heavy tuner?
Guy.
Click to expand...

I'm not an expert, but I've read that a barrel with a slight choke at the muzzle will do much better in the wind (and in calm too). It probably makes sense given that if the bullet is not yawing it should generate less induced drag, reducing drift.

Mark
 
To sleep, perchance to dream...

To tell the truth, I'm not even sure that speed of going to sleep isn't just a function of quality precision gunsmithing, particularly chambering tolerances & quality assembly of handloads.

I shoot mainly over 1000 to 1200 yards distance (Brit match rifle) & that's with a setup restricted to a standard .308 Winchester chambering (throat length whatever you like) & a barrel weighing no more than 2.5 kg. That means that the 32" tubes I shoot are Kreiger 1:10 twist light Palma profile running to 32 inches. When I was load testing 210 grain Berger VLDs with my last barrel but one (looking for spreads under 20 fps & SDs under 8), I found that the most promising loads were grouping an even MOA - what I'd been told to expect from the big pills that go to sleep slowly. However, when I dropped on my barrel tuner weighing around 2 ounces & tweaked it, I managed to pull those groups down to something a tad more than ¼ MOA, maybe .3+. That's 10 shot groups.

My gunsmith, John Giles, has reasonable qualifications & I've been loading since the late 60s & occasionally even listen to some young whippersnappers , so I reckon that I do have a good rig & can feed it pretty well. Maybe bullets go to sleep quicker if they start off down the bore square & concentric.

However, the barrel that I most recall as being great at bucking wind was back in the days I shot target rifle with iron sights. I could bench that rifle at 300 yards on the local SSAA range & get 2 inch groups at 300 yards & I was invulnerable with it on the open range, except when it came time to clean it. This factory barrel for an Omark target rifle was built & quality controlled by a pack of gorillas. The reamer had chattered down the bore & described a corkscrew that you could see with the naked eye. As a result, the rifling seemed to be deeper in places than it was in others, all of which made the coppering pattern novel to say the least & protracted use of Sweets a necessity.

Now, we were shooting on 2 MOA + bullseyes, so there wasn't all that much difficulty in holding elevation. ON the other hand, if I was shooting a rifle that for it's own perverse locic shot Aussie military 144 NATO ammunition consistently under 1 MOA when most rifles of the day were holding worse than twice that, of course I was liable to have a bit up my sleeve when the wind blew.

Maybe that's what the close shooters are - just tighter shooting barrels. Would it be all that easy to recognize a real hummer when we see one, when we're shooting such incredible groups with about any gun these days?
 
Tune
Yesterday we shot 4 different 10.5 guns and 3 sporters. It was 32deg. a lite rain. Which meant the wind flags froze and were usless. a slight switchy breeze. We shot several different lots of ammo. The guns that were tuned the best shot the best. The best ammo shot the best in all guns. This showed up the most when the wind speed changed. as the bullets in a couple guns would move twice as far. I still can't believe how well all the guns shot yesterday.

I made screw in weights out of aluminum and steel for a Harrels tuner to be able to add 1oz. at a time up to a pound. It works much better than adding weel weights. With weel weights on one side and you move it it dosen't seem to work with it out of balance. When you get the right amount of weight you have a lot bigger window of movement on the tuner.
 
Hey Guy

I have seen the rifle You are using and I could think of several ways to make room for the tuner on it. That we can discuss in person next month i Finland.

Øyvind :)
 
Hi Oyvind,
The problem is only with the weight of the tuner, I know it's no problem to fix it.Too heavy weight will distroy my hold for the long run.
I didn't get any answer to my question yet, regarding twist rate, muzzle form, number of grooves, etc.If a barrel shoots great indoors, it must be perfectly tuned before, so why two barrels which are tuned perfectly will shoot different in the wind?
Guy.
 
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