Ok, I personally dont like muzzle brakes as I think there loud and obnoxious AND I dont shoot anything big enough to really require a brake as I found out awhile back that the 445 SM is the limit for enjoyable shooting (paper puncher)

Do you think the various brake systems actually cut down on recoil, felt or percieved? I had a 12" hunter in 730 watrs with the brake and it was a pleasure to shoot as there was no muzzle flip but recoil was sharp back into the palm of the hand, And that noise! well it had to go.
I dont know where this is going but maybe we can get back into our Forums Subject here and get some gun talk going on again.
SOO..
Your thoughts and opinions on the diffrent brakes out there? Best? Worst? (Without Flaming Please)

Do you think they actually cut recoil?
Felt or percieved?

Wes

All (unsurpressed) firearms are loud and obnoxious.

I have a TC custom shop 45acp with a muzzle brake and it isn't too bad. I got the barrel with the brake installed so don't know how much it cut the recoil down but the 45acp barrel hardly moves when shooting it and noise isn't bad. (with ear muff on)

I have the muzzle tammer on my 308Bellm barrel. It barely moves on the bags, a couple of people at the range watching me fire it has told me so. I find it to be pleasant to shoot. As for the noise issue I pay it no mind. I always wear hearing protection when I'm shooting. So to me the noise is a non issue.
Rich Jake

I prefer Mike Bellm's machined in brake.

For years I hated shooting my 10" 44mag barrel because of the recoil with stiff loads. This 8" Bellm barrel with brake has about the felt recoil of a +P 38spl IN A CONTENDER: basically very little recoil.

It is a good 25% or more effective than the T/C muzzle brake, in my opinion.

Here's another picture of one of Mike's breaks:

http://www.1cox.com/tc/dumais.htm

KTS1,

We had an extended discussion about brakes over on the Pond before things went south. I'd like to throw something in about them here because it is a subject of interest to quite a number of shooters.

First of all I have had more than one bad experience with muzzle brakes. The first was when I first started working with Mike Bellm. I was evaluating a 300 Bellm/Stewart Contender barrel. It had a brake consisting of two rows of holes in the top of the muzzle. It affected the accuracy by kicking the muzzle before the bullet got free. Mike cut it off and made an asymmetrical slot with only about 0.050" clearance for the bullet. Because of it asymmetry, it kicked the bullet into a yaw and made the groups 6+" at 100 yds. Mike then milled it to be symmetrical and things worked OK. I later decided that with that particular barrel with a 14" twist, the bullets were just barely stable as it was and to have an asymmetrical force as the bullet was exiting the barrel just plain destroyed it performance.

I later tested a 309 (Unnamed) carbine barrel with an asymmetrical screw-on brake. With the brake on, the best it would do was 3" groups. But with the brake removed it shot a little under 2". I never did ferret out what was the problem with that barrel, but it was not a shooter and the asymmetrical brake made it worse. And ask Mike - - If a barrel will shoot, I can make it shoot.

So the moral of this long story is - My opinion is that if you can handle a handgun without a brake - do it. If you really need to have the recoil reduced, select a brake that if fully symmetrical.

Like I said, my opinion.

Don Shearer

Don -
Good to see you online, sir. Always like to read "your opinions."

steve

Don
My barrel was a 30-30 hunter by T/C before it was rechambered. While tha Muzzle tammer isn't the best break around It does a good job. I found that The largest group that I have shot with this barrel at 100 Yards was under an inch & a half. The best was just smaller than a half an inch. It doesn't seem to affect the accuracy of my barrel adversely. Maybe it was the two barrels working with & not the break?
Rich Jake

Sorry fellas I kinda always thought brakes belonged on cars. But I can see in Sean's case with the .44 mag and heavy loads.

Rich Jake, I suppose we could call yours a
"JAKE BRAKE" ??
I just had to throw that in ther bud.
Jeff

"JAKE BRAKE"
I LIKE IT!
Rich Jake

Wes:

Boy you know how to pick them don't you!? "Muzzle Breaks", a good question.

Well here goes, IMHO:

With a few months left till my 50th birthday, and having broken my right wrist twice as a active young boy, and now with more joint problems than I can spell, Mike Bellm's muzzle break is a gift from God.

The closest I have had the chance to shoot to my .308 Bellm w/ MB break was a 15" Encore in 7mm-08. After 10 shots out of the Encore, my right palm and wrist burned and acked. It took nearly 45 minuets to calm down. with my Bellm barrel, I can shoot 50 rounds over 3 hours with minor stiffness.

The next best break that I have used is on my 7-30 Waters TC factory barrle. Using 130 GR Serria MK bullets and a health charge of IMR 4895, the recoil is very mild, but I can tell it's not Mikes break.

Noise; Yes both breaks are loud, but I shoot target only. Most of the time from a covered firing line, with rifles with breaks on them. I wear plugs and muff's anyhow, so noise to me is not an issue.

Do I think the two breaks that I have cut felt recoil? Diffenetly yes! Precived recoil, well I'm not sure, if you mean muzzle jump, yes, if you are going into the gray matter between most of our ears, I can't answer that one.

Great thread!

[ 09-01-2002, 14:52: Message edited by: LRHA-Shooter ]

Wes,
I agree with Don...that if you can do without the brake it's best...BUT I also think that if your like me, and don't get to shoot as much as you like....witch means when I get the chance I sometimes shoot over 500 rounds in a days time.
At that time, it's nice to have a brake on anything over 30 caliber. BTW, I don't shoot many reduced loads in any caliber.
Now i'm only talking about barrels in handgun form. I don't feel you really need the brake on the longuns[Contender not Encore]. The Encore in the belted mags is another ballgame.
I have the brakes offered by TC, Bellm, VVCG and Weigand Combat and they all work great. and none of them seem to affect accuracy at all. BTW Weigand's brake is on my Ruger SRH, they don't do TCs.
As far as noise goes, "and I hope your not shooting without muffs". It's no biggie.
Muzzle flash would be more of a factor, but only if you do your shooting in the evenings. But most of us don't. So no biggie there.
If your not sure about the brake, get a brake that can be turned off or on, or removed if need be. They cost a little more though, but you get the best of both worlds.
All the brakes I have, cut down bigtime on muzzle flip, and that's what I want them to do. I don't really know about cutting down on the backward thrust but without the muzzle flip it does seem so. With my TC 14"s with the TC brake, muzzle rise is about an 1" to 1 1/2" with the 358JDJ and 444Marlin. About an 1" or less with the 309JDJ.
My 20" 308Bellm with his brake has 0 rise.
My VVCG 8" 44mag has about 2" and that's nothing compaired to a unbraked 10" barrel.
That's my .02 worth.

PS,
Do I really have to be this nice???? I didn't even say one bad word I feel like i'm in church

I will just throw this in here, as I would rather here you guys thought as to some guru.
Are any of you using the adjustable brakes? I think it would be OK to include rifles in here also as a lot of us are using these calibers in a hand gun.
Do you see any benefit accuracy wise as to the adjustable brakes? Is it worth the extra coin $$??

I remember when Browning came out with these adjustable brakes a friend bought two one was a 22-250 and the other was either a 7 mag or a 300 mag. The 22-250 just would not group worth a darn but the bigger bore worked excellent, turn it one way the groups would spread, turn it the other way and they would shrink. About like an adjustable beam flash light . Of course if Browning would have given me one of these to test at the time I would have told you how good they are and that if you didn't have one you were just waisting your time.
Jeff

Don, one further comment in regard to:
"If you really need to have the recoil reduced, select a brake that if fully symmetrical."

The machined in brakes I am doing now are not fully symmetrical in their venting, but do not appear to be causing a problem at all.

I am more suspicious of the concentricity of the exit pupil to the bore, but I am still learning.

Mike

Excellant, it's quite refreshing to hear you guys talking about guns again, see we even pulled Don S. outta the wood work and got Jules to make a cival post.

I use good hearing protection, I have a set of Pro-ears Dim. 1 Pro-Mags. But, even with these on when someone is shooting a braked gun at our range it is annoying. I'll agree tho, with good protection noise should be a non-issue. When the brakes come out I'll stick in a pair of foam plugs too.

Has any one here chrony'ied loads thru braked/unbraked to see how much diffrence there is? I would think there would be a velocity/energy loss thru a brake.


Reading Dons post I think back to my 7-30 waters.
It was one of the most accurate bbls I had with the factory T/C brake, I wonder now if accuraccy would of been even better without it
Hmmm, another reason to regret getting rid of that bbl.

Wes

Jeff,
I don't know how to answer that. I know the brakes work on the big boomers. I don't think I would get one on anything less then a 300 mag and that would be in question. I don't know about you or anyone else but i'm not gonna spend a day at the range with only a 375 H&H to shoot,
Know what I mean? But I guess some folks do. IMHO,
A North American hunter need nothing more then a good old 270 or 06 to do the job, But that's just me.
I would never get a brake on a 22-250, but again that's me. Win. also offers the BOSS on there rifles. I only know of one person that has a Browning Bar in 270win. with the Boss, and he likes it.
I wouldn't know, I'm a Rem. fan

I remember when Browning came out with these adjustable brakes a friend bought two one was a 22-250 and the other was either a 7 mag or a 300 mag.

KTS1
A friend of mine has one of these adjustable breaks(boss) on his 7mm Rem Mag rifle. It works very well. His rifle routinely shoots less than an inch groups at 100 yards.

I have fired it & is not at bad at all as far as recoil is concerned. It felt to me to be less than my 308 Rifle.

Here is the bad part of it. It is one of the noisiest gun I have ever been near, if you are out to either side of it. You have to have ear plugs & ear muffs to stop it. I did also notice that you don't get hit with that when you are behind it durring firing.

I was out shooting with this guy the other day & sat half the range away with ear plugs & muffs. I had the guy laughing at me.

Rich Jake

When I first got my .30-06 barrel for my Encore I proceeded to the range for my usual 40 round per gun regimen. Man, I pounded the heck out of my hand! It still hurt after a few weeks. That's when I decided to send it to Mike for a muzzle brake. I havn't got it back yet, but I get pretty excited about it when I read some of Mike's results. I can't get too worried about how it bothers others at the range, since they have a .50 cal rifle there for rent, and I don't think mine will be worse than that!

Hey Guys,

Holy cats what a response to have about a REAL issue. But the reason for this post is that I'd like to add just a bit more about muzzle brakes.

As noted, some brakes - even asymmetrical one do work OK without degrading accuracy. And I fully accept what you have experienced with those brakes. Others that are asymmetrical in some way are accuracy destroyers.

And so I feel you have to do some more close investigation about what is happening with the brake and the conditions with the barrel itself. And no, the problems with those bad brakes I mentioned was not some other fault of the barrel. It was the brake.

To get at the root of this issue you have to be a hard-nosed diagnostician and look at ALL the indicators. That is, don't just look at your target to see where the holes are. Look at your target to see where the holes are and what the holes LOOK LIKE. In the case of the 300 Bellm/Stewart (and I should clarrify that brake was an early prototype) the holes in the target were a small bit eliptical-shaped with a definite nose print outside the diameter of the bullet indicating that the bullet hit the target at an angle - - the same with the 309. This says the bullet was in a bad yaw when it got to the target. OK, how could it have gotten into a yaw? The conclusion I reached was that the bullet was either not fully stabilized or was barely stabilized by the slow twist. Then with a sideways kick from an asymmetrical brake it all went bad. Then, how did it get that sideways kick from the brake? Again, being asymmetrical and venting unevenly, it experienced uneven internal pressures while the bullet was still in the area between the muzzle and the exit hole of the brake. Could it possibly get a sideways kick that quick while the bullet was still not past the exit hole of the brake? You bet it can. Just look at the pressures involved and imagine the accelerations the venting gases experience when that bullet gets out of the way.

So why do some brakes work and some don't? I think it comes to an issue of the bullet stability and how close it is to the borderline between stable and unstable. If it is unstable or close, it can be kicked into a yaw. If it is well overstabilized it can take a pretty good sideways kick and still stay on course.

Perhaps that would say if you have an asymmetrical brake, lean to using smaller bullets so as to have an overstabilized situation and overwhelm any problem that may be lurking there.

More on my opinion

Don Shearer