Muzzle Brakes and accuracy.

[Bear44]

Just had an interesting experience. I have a 300 RUM that I've been trying to get good accuracy out of and I've had some serious work done to it to achieve that goal. Before the work it was a 3 to 4 minute rifle. After the work it was a 2.5 minute rifle. Obviously not what I was looking for.

Fortunately my gunsmith is a genius and figured it out as soon as I gave him the results of test firing after the work was done. It had the wrong muzzle brake on it.

I had gotten the brake before I had ever test rifled the rifle right after I originally got it. My primary concern was that it was as close to the same diameter as the barrel as possible and it had no ports on the bottom, so I could shoot prone. It does that just fine and it's a quality brake, but it's actually designed for an AR10 type rifle. It never even occurred to me it could cause accuracy problems.

I switched to a brake recommended by the Smith and the rifle immediately became a 1 minute or slightly less rifle. It's also doing this with three different loads and three completely different bullet weights and designs. The rifle is now inherently accurate and, with just one more small step in accurization and doing some load development, I'm confident it will be a rifle that shoots close to or better than half minute.

REDX / Shadow Hunter Concepts comes through again. It's good to work with people that really know what they are doing.

 

[cmshoot]

Outstanding!

 

[3rd Rail]

Curious which brakes you tested.

 

[Bear44]

Curious which brakes you tested.

Smith Enterprise is the one that didn't shoot accurately. Kahntrol is the one that shoots well. This is also the brand he put on the 6.5 Creedmoor he built for me and that rifle consistently shoots in the low 0.3s MOA.

This is the Kahntrol.

 

[Allsmiles]

I had a LR308 with a Scar17 brake on it, is was minute of trash can at 40 yards. Take brake off and put a can on and it shoot like it should. I haven't tried the brake on any other guns to see if the results are the same.

 

[Shadow Hunter Concepts]

the Kahntrol Brakes are one of the best Brakes on the market. My second favorite next to a little Bastard but they come in at a better price point and the recoil reduction to me really are the same.

 

[Hayata]

What are the thoughts on what brake variables affect accuracy?

I would think the weight of the brake hanging off the end of the barrel would affect harmonics. Couple of factory guns had tuneable weights on the muzzles. Ruger had one on their mini-14 target rifle. Was the BOSS system also one of 'em?

Not sure about the venting of gases because the projectile has already left the barrel. But what do I know?

<----- Not a long distance shooter

 

[REDX]

As far as accuracy goes with the kahntrol Brake:
I was thinking about getting back into 2 gun to sharpen my combat skills and picked up a pretty good rifle in a trade last week, I hated the brake and reached out to Jeremy Kahn from Kahntrol Solutions. He sent me a 3 Gun Brake to test out and to me to try out the new CWES brake on my PRS rifle. Installed the Brake with no issues in about 3 minutes and took it to the range last night to try out. in the below picture the bottom right was a cold bore shot then I made a verticle adjustment, next I made my windage and fired 3 shots like I would in a match so that I could see how good I could stay on target under recoil. Needless to say Im hooked. It's nice to be the boss and say what products we will use!!!

 

[Bear44]

the Kahntrol Brakes are one of the best Brakes on the market. My second favorite next to a little Bastard but they come in at a better price point and the recoil reduction to me really are the same.

The recoil on the 300 RUM is ridiculously light. Feels like a 243, maybe less and that's with a 210 grain bullet.

 

[Bear44]

What are the thoughts on what brake variables affect accuracy?

I would think the weight of the brake hanging off the end of the barrel would affect harmonics. Couple of factory guns had tuneable weights on the muzzles. Ruger had one on their mini-14 target rifle. Was the BOSS system also one of 'em?

Not sure about the venting of gases because the projectile has already left the barrel. But what do I know?

<----- Not a long distance shooter

Yes, the BOSS was the original adjustable system on a factory rifle and it worked. It didn't gain more popularity because it is ugly and Browning made a big marketing mistake with it.

They were very smart when they designed the system by also creating a conventional recoil device that had the same weight characteristics as the brake. This way a person could use the brake at the range to find the best harmonic setting, zero the rifle and practice, then replace the brake with the CR unit for hunting so you weren't dealing with the extra muzzle blast without hearing protection. Then, in a stroke of marketing genius, they never told anyone about it.

I got a first year run rifle with the BOSS and had it for three years before I ever heard about the CR unit. This was very stupid of Browning, because there are a lot of people that simply will not hunt with a brake. Years later they figured it out and started including the CR unit with new rifles, but it was too late.