To use a muzzle brake or not

pete4d · Posted: Wed Feb 15, 2012 8:07 am Post subject: To use a muzzle brake or not

opinions at link;

www.weatherby.dk/showt...Accubrakes

I normally hunt without a brake , the noise of the brake hurt's my ears,

Did my own test on this yesterday with the brake on , The elevation (range) was dead on , but the wind-age had me one and a half (1 1/2") to the right.at 100 yards.
Now I know about some of the miss placed shots,hunting, Embarassed

pete4d · Posted: Wed Feb 15, 2012 8:33 am Post subject: Re: To use a muzzle brake or not

BTW / I tried this w/3 different bullets
Barnes 150-gr tsx
nosler 165-gr partions
woodleigh 240-gr
all grouped to the right, so it wasn't just a wild flier

Vince · Posted: Wed Feb 15, 2012 8:34 am Post subject: Re: To use a muzzle brake or not

Well, I suppose the brake would have some sort of an effect on the harmonics of the barrel.

Cheers, Vince

fnuser · Posted: Wed Feb 15, 2012 11:45 am Post subject: Re: To use a muzzle brake or not

I used a brake on a lightweight 375 H&H browning a-bolt when on the bench and took it off when hunting didn't notice much difference.

Fireman_DJ · Posted: Wed Feb 15, 2012 12:56 pm Post subject: Re: To use a muzzle brake or not

The extra weight on the end of the barrel changes the harmonics of the barrel, so instead of the bullet exiting the barrel when it's pointing to the left (in it's circular pattern of movement) it's now pointing more towards the middle where it normally sits.

The trick is, it should be very predictable.
So zero the rifle without the brake, shoot again with the brake to determine the difference and then record that value. It won't change unless you change the muzzle velocity (ie, different ammo).

What you could also do, is take the brake in to an engineering company and ask for a hunk of metal, drilled and tapped just like the brake to screw onto the barrel. Tell them it needs to have the exact same overall weight and it needs to have the same center of gravity and same overall length.

They can then just work it's outer diameter down to meet these requirements. Then you can just swap the two. One will have the working brake holes, the other won't. But it'll be the same weight in the same location with the same point of impact.

Grumulkin · Posted: Wed Feb 15, 2012 1:07 pm Post subject: Re: To use a muzzle brake or not

Fireman_DJ wrote:

What you could also do, is take the brake in to an engineering company and ask for a hunk of metal, drilled and tapped just like the brake to screw onto the barrel. Tell them it needs to have the exact same overall weight and it needs to have the same center of gravity and same overall length.

They can then just work it's outer diameter down to meet these requirements. Then you can just swap the two. One will have the working brake holes, the other won't. But it'll be the same weight in the same location with the same point of impact.

Have you done this or heard of anyone else who has done this or is this just theorizing?

Fireman_DJ · Posted: Wed Feb 15, 2012 1:18 pm Post subject: Re: To use a muzzle brake or not

In theory.

It's really no different to a barrel tuner. That's just a lump of weight that attaches to the end of the barrel and moves forwards and backwards. Many barrel tuners reach out past the end of the barrel.

For them, it's all about trying to tune the harmonics to keep the end of the barrel ALWAYS pointing dead straight. Which can be archived.

Here, he's just trying to maintain the same point of impact with and without a big hunk of metal on the end of his barrel.
As long as the weight is the same and it's in the same place, the bullet will still exit at the same velocity and the barrel should be in the same position.

Some people have expressed concerns about how the muzzle brake diverts gas flow etc affecting the harmonics differently then a metal weight, but that mostly occurs AFTER the bullet has left the barrel.

pete4d · Posted: Wed Feb 15, 2012 1:24 pm Post subject: Re: To use a muzzle brake or not

fnuser wrote:

I used a brake on a lightweight 375 H&H browning a-bolt when on the bench and took it off when hunting didn't notice much difference.

The amount of difference is what got me . never thought it to be that much.

Fireman_DJ · Posted: Wed Feb 15, 2012 1:35 pm Post subject: Re: To use a muzzle brake or not

That's only 1.5 MOA, that's a small change!!!

inthedark · Posted: Wed Feb 15, 2012 7:30 pm Post subject: Re: To use a muzzle brake or not

Browning's BOSS (ballistic optimizing shooting system) system is a tuner/brake that also comes with a blank tuner with no holes to create the same condition in the barrel just like DJ says.

Elvis · Posted: Wed Feb 15, 2012 11:02 pm Post subject: Re: To use a muzzle brake or not

thank you ITD you beat me to it again. they work well but the ported version is plain stupid noise level wise. we had a 30/06 on the range and made the guy shoot on his own it was painful. another fella took his 25/06 up wallaby shooting with us. it was dyabolicle, the dogs couldnt chase out any wallabies after the first shot as they couldnt walk with their front paws stuffed into their ears.

SingleShotLover · Posted: Thu Feb 16, 2012 7:48 am Post subject: Re: To use a muzzle brake or not

Elvis wrote:

they work well but the ported version is plain stupid noise level wise. we had a 30/06 on the range and made the guy shoot on his own it was painful.

Absolutely! On any big-boomer, a muzzle-brake is guaranteed to quickly make you the single most unpopular person on the firing range. The resulting muzzle-blast is horrendous at best. That's bad enough on a range with everyone wearing full hearing protection, but think what it will be like in the woods without that protection. Exhaustive hearing studies have shown that, depending on the size of the cartridge, a single blast from a ported handgun or rifle can cause permanent and irreversible hearing loss. This is one of the reasons that ported rifles and handguns are being banned on many public and private ranges today.

Consider that the average rifle can cause a muzzle-blast of between 110 and 160 decibels. With a muzzle-brake, that can easily increase by 5 to 10 decibels (or more), depending on the rifle/cartridge combination. Bearing in mind that human hearing starts being adversely affected by sounds over 85 db and even the best hearing protection seldom reduces noise by any more than 30 db, you can see that there is a very serious danger of near instant hearing loss.

Since the decibel scale is logarithmic (much like the Richter scale) rather than linear, every 10 dB increase in sound intensity is actually a ten-fold increase. Therefore, a sound intensity of 20 dB is not twice as loud as a sound intensity of 10 dB, but is 10 times as loud, and a sound intensity of 30 dB is 100 times as loud as a sound intensity of 10 dB. Similarly, a sound intensity of 50 dB would be 100,000 times as loud (10 x 10 x 10 x 10 x 10). Utilizing these rules, a rifle that generates a conservative 160 dB with a muzzle brake will be 10 times louder than the standard rifle’s 150 dB!

pete4d · Posted: Thu Feb 16, 2012 9:10 am Post subject: Re: To use a muzzle brake or not

Fireman_DJ wrote:

That's only 1.5 MOA, that's a small change!!!

1 1/2 inches at 100 yards ain''t much , but when you're making shots 500 to 800 yards it makes the difference in between a heart-lung shot and a gut shot

BTW ,,,, this is with a weatherby 30-378

inthedark · Posted: Thu Feb 16, 2012 10:51 am Post subject: Re: To use a muzzle brake or not

Elvis wrote:

thank you ITD you beat me to it again. they work well but the ported version is plain stupid noise level wise. we had a 30/06 on the range and made the guy shoot on his own it was painful. another fella took his 25/06 up wallaby shooting with us. it was dyabolicle, the dogs couldnt chase out any wallabies after the first shot as they couldnt walk with their front paws stuffed into their ears.

My claim to fame on knowing about the BOSS is my brother won a Browning 300WM at a Rocky Mountain ELk Foundation fund raiser in Regina a few years ago. He took that out on his deer hunt and the guys didn't like that muzzle brake at all and asked him not to bring that rifle and it was at that point that he only used the blank attachment on it. Like you said it is brutal! Embarassed

PS you have some very talented dogs by the sound of it. Pun intended. Very Happy

Ominivision1 · Posted: Thu Feb 16, 2012 12:20 pm Post subject: Re: To use a muzzle brake or not

The wife and I were at the shooting range 2 years ago when next to our lane a guy puts his stuff on the table and unzips his rifle and I immediately see the brake. I told the wife we are moving to the last open lane after talking to him as his rifle was a 378 wby mag.

There was also other shooters who apparently didn't know what the brake at the end of his rifle was and if I had a video camera it would have been hilarious to see them jump 2 feet in the air when he fired that rifle.