General silencer discussion. If you want to talk about a specific silenced rifle or pistol, it is best to do that in the rifle or pistol section for that brand.
My 3rd Form 1 can was a 9mm (build thread here: https://www.silencertalk.com/forum/view ... 8#p1543918). I was really happy with how quiet it was and how well it functioned, but accuracy was TERRIBLE. Like 12" groups that were WAY off POA from unsuppressed. I tried everything - found no evidence of baffle strikes, and even tried swapping from having the ports in my K-baffles alternating (which should in theory be more accurate and cause less POI shift, but be slightly louder) to lining up all the K-baffle ports. It was slightly better, but still sucked royally.
So I put it on the shelf for 5 months while I ruminated on what an abject failure I was. But this week I read where you can "tune" a booster assembly to a pistol by rotating the can around the piston. The lugs on the piston fit into corresponding indentions in the booster housing, and there are 10 different positions (in this particular booster) you can rotate the assembly around into.
Last edited by Matt in TN on Sat Jan 13, 2024 3:59 pm, edited 1 time in total.
So I marked the piston and the can with witness marks at Top Dead Center (where I had painstakingly indexed the stamp on the can body to be perfectly where I wanted it to be while mounted on the gun), and shot 3 round groups at all ten positions.
Holy motherf%$king $hit - what a difference!!!!
And because I can't leave well enough alone, I reconfigured the baffles into their original alternating port configuration (which in theory is more accurate, but for some reason seemed less so during my previous testing before I understood booster tuning). And it got even better:
Note the two groups shot at position 8 - it's totally repeatable! So I put witness marks at position 8 and now have a pistol that shoots same sized groups within 1/2" of POA both unsuppressed and with a gigantic 9" suppressor hanging off the end of it (that is so dang quiet I still giggle when shooting it).
I can't believe this is not a more talked about and well known thing, considering what a big difference it makes - so I wanted to bring it up again for anyone else who missed this. If you have a pistol can that's not shooting well - this is an easy thing to try!
