After receiving my .35 Impact MKII, I soon discovered that the stock liner in .35 does not shoot slugs well at all, regardless of the brand/size of slug. I could also flex the stock barrel/shroud very easily and suspected that it might be an issue also. So, I ordered 2 heavy liners for it, which eventually came in and I finally got back to working on It. The first heavy liner shot a lot better than the stock regular Superior liner, but it still wasn’t anywhere near what I expected at 50 and 100 yds. I swapped it out for the second one and it was close to the same as the first liner. This led me to the barrel flex issue. I ordered an FX barrel tensioner and installed it. This brought my groups from about 4-6” at 100 yds. to about 2-3” at 100 with Griffin slugs. Even with the tensioner installed, I noticed there was still some flex to the barrel and had a suspicion that it was still robbing some accuracy. I run my regulators high on all my guns (170 bar), so a 90 gr. slug and lots of air causes quite a racket when it fires. I was not interested in tuning it down and making this a 115 ft/lb gun since my .30 Impact was already that. I really wanted to make this a coyote gun that was very accurate and more powerful than the .30. So, the remaining barrel flex issue got me thinking about barrel bands. I was reluctant because most of them were big, bulky, and ugly and I wasn’t sure how well they would work. I was able to find a more slimline band from hotsnot3dprints on eBay for about $45. The upper hole in the band is for the stock FX barrel shroud and those who have tensioners know that the shroud is removed when you install a tensioner which means the barrel tensioner rod is much smaller diameter than the stock shroud so the hole would be too big in the barrel band. I knew when ordering it that I would have to make some kind of spacer for the band. So, I machined a tight slip-fit spacer and installed it on the band and tightened it down. It felt very snug, but I had some reservations that this would help, not knowing if it would mess up the harmonics of the barrel, etc., etc. The worst group in the pictures below was with just the barrel tensioner at 100 yds. with 90 gr. Griffins at 929 fps (172 ft/lbs). The other two groups were with the tensioner and barrel band. The five shot group is at 50 yds. The 4-shot group is at 100 yds. The orange sticky gizmo is one MOA. It now shoots as accurate as my other 3 Impacts. Now we know what barrel whip does. I ran out of Griffin slugs, so while I wait for more, my next step is to crank the power up a bit. I haven’t installed the dual transfer port and pin probe for it yet and the power wheel is only on 2, the needle valve is only on 2, and I have a little I can go on the regulator also. Wylie look out!
