3D Tuna's.... the next Big Thing

A

alinwa

oft dis'd member
Well, I'm excited..... I really think I may have developed a tuner that works ...... FOR ME!!




Again, for alla' you'se haters that find my backyard tinkering boring..... MOVE ON!!! Go root about in another trough somewhere's el'tse

This is gonna' do nothing but BORE YOU TO DEATH, confuse you, make thee wattles of your heart hurt, wilt your snowflakey egos and then you're still going to waste planetary resources grunting about it, please refrain....Save your breath, this WILL BE another one.... long and dry and full of alinwa's completely unsupported opinion(s).

To those who want to argue TUNERS and TUNING, to point out the fallacies in my thinking..... The ones who care about the substance, not that fact that I'm boring you, Bring The Fire And Welcome! :)




There, take the kids out of the room


turn down the volume



ready?




OK,

First of all, I HATE TUNERS!!! I've shared my frustrations with them to all and sundry for almost 30yrs

But I also love them when they work. Love-Love-Love them, and believe in them, believe in them so much that I don't even think a guy can really be competitive in today's Long Range shooting environment without one. Setups MUST be tuned and be capable of adapting to changes......Short range BR guys have known this for years, it's why you load at the range if you're ever going to win.

But they can also (FOR ME) cause complete chaos. I've lost matches with 3 different name-brand tuners on and with many of my own tunable gadgets.

In simple fact, I've only really consistently won when I shoot naked, when I give up the tuning, tune up at my home-range and happen to hit the Match Range while the load is still working. In other words, BARE barrel, get 'er tuned tight and hit the match whils't she's still good....I can hang with anyone @ 600yds when my rifle's in tune...

And Hummers..... I believe in Hummers, I BELIEVE in setups that will allow an utter Monkey-Boy to run with the Big Dawgs....... for a bit.

I got my first Hummer, one barrel out of 7 done by Art Cocchia on a Time Precision back around '93....... and another, A Borden, around 1999 and have been working towards making setups "hum" for a long time. I still have 'em, they still hum. I don't hardly dare shoot 'em :)

But I have lots of guns with lots of barrels....

I have guns (barrels) that are "EASY"..... and guns (barrels) that are "HARD"......

And my goal for 30yrs has been to figger out WHY.

And I'm getting there.

I've taken 2 gigantic leaps toward that goal in the last few years, first was/is "timing" or indexing barrels and second is (perhaps) making a tuner that works the same on different setups instead of just hit-or-miss trial and error.

The indexing thing I'm completely sold on, but it has some problems, two of which are that barrels are more helixed than bent so there's still some tinkering to do... AND.... this is the big one.....they CHANGE INDEX when you take them on and off. They wear in and seat differently over time which buggers the index. To combat this problem I've spent the last couple years dinking about with nutting systems, with some success. And I've ordered a lot of 1.350 shanks, which helps but doesn't eliminate the problem.

To bring this all into alinwa perspective I was told a long time ago that the secret was, "get 'er to shoot clean vertical........then tune out the vertical"

And this works for me. Some days it works well, and with some guns it's easy.

I believe the easy guns are biased to vertical from the git-go

I believe the guns that are picky, the guns that tune fuzzy, the ones that build vertical with a slant, the ones with small picky windows ..... are those that don't have a strong over-riding vertical component built in. So I've been playing with setups that offer 2 completely separate tuning effects. One to "make vertical" and one to "tune the sine wave"

I've got several prototypes, here's today's version. This is the first one I've done on threads. I used existing tuner threads. And it's on a non-indexed barrel, a barrel that's been hard to keep in tune.

20191102_172809.jpg

The idea is to first spin the whole apparatus which does affect vertical but mainly it TURNS the group.... it rotates the group, rotates the string, My HOPE is that it does the same thing as indexing the curvature of the barrel. Cuz as I said, indexing is fraught with peril.

And here's the final series of targets where I "tune out the vertical" from right to left finishing with a 5-shot group.

20191102_173143.jpg

It's complicated, there are 20-some shots ABOVE that line where I'm shooting the poi change and making the groups print VERTICAL from left-to-right, then I dropped down and took out the vert from right-to-left. The top stuff is all clustered and knotted because I first clock the tuner 90 degrees through 12:00/3:00/6:00/9:00 shooting 3-shot groups USING THE SAME AIM POINT, then I wander about playing with settings to confirm I've found vertical....

THEN I tune out the vertical.



Hokayyy..... so I'm gonna' post this mess before I lose it all

I've got lotsa' more pixtures and notes, most of them still in the raw...

And please be aware, this is still very much a work-in-progress! I've been struggling to find time and hope others will try this concept. It may just all fall apart on me but right now



I'm excited :)
 
Not sure I understand

So, although it looks like "the whole apparatus" is hanging, more or less, straight down, it could be sideways or at some other angle when the group is appropriately rotated to vertical? Then you tune the vertical out with the auxiliary shaft in the tuner? It's a fascinating concept, if it works consistently across barrels.

GsT
 
Dwight Scott built something very similar to that about 10 years ago or so for Dick Wright.
Joe Hynes
 
So in use the tuner is typically canted off vertical. That one is hanging straight because it's just been installed. I'll try send a pic of a tuned one.

In my pea brain I picture using the swing offset to find the recoil centerline of the system. To get 'er to recoil "straight up" in the case of a hunting rifle or straight down for a bag setup.... either of which translates to straight back, something which I, in my wee albubble think is important.


Far as weight, not to be facetious, it's whatever you believe works.

and YES I saw the basic concept in several others' work. IIRC Dwight's had a micrometer body instead of the 1/2" bolt I used.

Goal has always been to adjust from the shooting position which, now that I've proof of concept is my next step. I just bought the parts this morning for a setup which will be remote-adjust, completely unobtrusive to the girl next door.
 
IF I've come up with anything new..... it's the swing concept. THIS I'll take some credit for if it proves out
 
alinwa said:
So in use the tuner is typically canted off vertical. That one is hanging straight because it's just been installed. I'll try send a pic of a tuned one.

In my pea brain I picture using the swing offset to find the recoil centerline of the system. To get 'er to recoil "straight up" in the case of a hunting rifle or straight down for a bag setup.... either of which translates to straight back, something which I, in my wee albubble think is important.


Far as weight, not to be facetious, it's whatever you believe works.

and YES I saw the basic concept in several others' work. IIRC Dwight's had a micrometer body instead of the 1/2" bolt I used.

Goal has always been to adjust from the shooting position which, now that I've proof of concept is my next step. I just bought the parts this morning for a setup which will be remote-adjust, completely unobtrusive to the girl next door.
Click to expand...

What did you NOT like about the micrometer adjustment - maybe want(ed) a better lock?:pRG
 
R.G. Robinett said:
What did you NOT like about the micrometer adjustment - maybe want(ed) a better lock?:pRG
Click to expand...

I did 2 of them.... and 2 things were missing

#1 YES the lock is insufficient even with the swing replaced by a screw and

#2, I've always been deadly serious that IMO a tuner MUST be adjustable from the seated position at the bench so as not to give the fellow shooter(s) reason to unload their personal affronts on you for disturbing the neighborhood.
 
jackie schmidt said:
Al, is that set screw the only thing keeping the rod from moving?
Click to expand...

Well, the rod is tightly threaded along with the set screws.

In that one there are two screws set 90* apart, both of them have delrin discs.

I've used delrin and lead shot with equally satisfactory results. I'm too lazy to make brass-tipped screws.

Here I must interject another of my rants.... IMO the shake/rattle&roll that a tuner, a muzzle brake or suppressor is subjected to is VIOLENT!! Like hundreds of pounds of battering force, like belaboring the muzzle repeatedly with a baseball bat. Whatever is used must be TIGHT and well affixed with long enough bearing surfaces and rigid enough material that it feeds back instead of just waving about like Bull Kelp in the tide.

As Otto The Skipper showed us back in the day, even draping a wet noodle onto the barrel has SOME effect, but is it useful?

And repeatable?
 
So I'ma try post some pix of my 3rd gen and most proven tuner.

First of all, this one is set up to clamp onto a setup I consider unequivocally PROVEN. What I did is.... I got a tuner from Mike Ezell to use for my baseline.

IMO Mike's tuners set the standard of excellence on today's market.

So.... I've 6 or 8 barrels threaded for Ezell's setup and from now on I'll probably just wipe all my barrels off this way once they're chucked up. Dial it in, face and crown and thread for an Ezell from left-to-right... DONE :) With Mike's muzzle threads I can test the Ezell tuner (my baseline) against threaded discs, clamp-ons, thread-ons, home-aids.... purdy much anything and everything face-to-face, head-to-head, Apples for Apples, tit for tat, weevils for wo........ well you get the idea

Here's where this barrel tuned up, front view sticking out the winder

20191103_142423.jpg
 
OK, so maybe it ain't me.... I definitely took and stored and loaded that guy right side up!

Maybe the BRC program likes portrait style instead of vertical?

I'll try another format (experiment, NOT RELEVANT :) )

deepseat.jpg
 
Al,
About a decade ago, a friend made me a couple of copies of the Dwight Scott prototype tuners, and I have played with one of them on a PPC barrel. Recently I have gone over some of those notes. I had started out with the threaded rod at 6:00 O'clock and after fiddling with how far out the rod was , on a whim, I loosened the whole thing, rotated it so that the rod was at about 4:30 as viewed from the rear, and it started shooting better. Since the barrel had responded pretty well to conventional powder charge tuning, and the tuner seemed to be another variable, in the interest of simplicity, it, and the other one. live happily in a drawer...but I still have a barrel with the muzzle turned .900, so I can always dust it off and try it again.
 
Boyd Allen said:
Al,
About a decade ago, a friend made me a couple of copies of the Dwight Scott prototype tuners, and I have played with one of them on a PPC barrel. Recently I have gone over some of those notes. I had started out with the threaded rod at 6:00 O'clock and after fiddling with how far out the rod was , on a whim, I loosened the whole thing, rotated it so that the rod was at about 4:30 as viewed from the rear, and it started shooting better. Since the barrel had responded pretty well to conventional powder charge tuning, and the tuner seemed to be another variable, in the interest of simplicity, it, and the other one. live happily in a drawer...but I still have a barrel with the muzzle turned .900, so I can always dust it off and try it again.
Click to expand...


Boy-O-Boy are you talkin' my game there! Like you're reading my mail :) Adding more moving parts to make a thing simpler is just bassackwards!

I still am out on a limb with PPC stuff but with the long barrels of the 600 and 1000yd stuff and the simple fact that pre-loading is the only game in town I STILL keep going back to tuning as a way out when a barrel doesn't respond in a predictable way.

I recently built a 29" 6X47L on a Stolle L/R manual eject, my perfect 600yd racegun....I did EVERYTHING right, indexed to dead center, biased the bedding to compensate for torque, it simply had to shoot ......

and it didn't,

setting and shooting out the window it had me tearing my imaginary hairs out..... IT WANTED TO SHOOT! It danced around like a puppy stomping on my boots with a stick in it's mouth but just never settled on a direction. Juust as it would get down near tight it'd start leaking in another direction, round and round....So I took the barrel off, set the stock aside and stuck the action on my rail to play with.

Long/Short, I wasn't happy so a couple weeks ago I bolted it all back together but this time I clamped on a spinny tuner. 3 moves counter-clockwise had it printing dead vertical and 3 moves of the bolt inboard and it walked into dots.

Happy Happy Happy
 
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