Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunting Rifles Do muzzle breaks damage scopes?

I don't want to get too far into the physics on this, but some of it is necessary, so please bear with me.

First, no muzzle brake (brake, as in "slowing down", not break as in to break something) I know of is capable of changing the direction of the recoil. In fact, if you were able to completely reverse the momentum of all the powder gas, I don't believe the combination of mass and velocity of the gas would be great enough to counter the momentum of the bullet.

Now, for a short but necessary physics discussion.

The change in position of an object divided by the time it takes to move from one position to another is VELOCITY. Most everyone understands velocity, even if they have little background in science.

The change in velocity of an object divided by the time it takes to go from moving at one velocity to another is ACCELERATION. Many understand acceleration as well. You feel it when you are in a high performance car and the straight line acceleration pushes you back into the seat. It is the difference between a wide receiver who is very fast, but takes a few more yards to get moving compared to a running back who is not as fast, but can go from a standing start and hit the hole very quickly.

Now comes the part many are not familiar with. The change in acceleration of an object divided by the time it takes to go from experiencing one acceleration to another is JERK. (Yes, jerk is a scientific term.) To understand it, imagine a high performance boat. Imagine the driver gets on the throttle quickly, but smoothly, and you are quickly but smoothly pinned back into you seat as the boat accelerates. The jerk is relatively low. Now imagine tying the boat to the dock, then bringing it to full throttle. The boat is not moving, but straining like hell on the rope. Now cut the rope. You are slammed back into the seat. In this case, the jerk is high.

Many devices can handle relatively high acceleration, but they cannot handle high jerk all that well. In addition, velocity, acceleration, and jerk are all vector quantities, meaning they have a value and a direction. Muzzle brakes can rather rapidly change the value and direction of jerk. They are not able to change the direction of the recoil velocity. None I know of will try to take the rifle forward out of your grasp. Depending on the design, they may or may not be able to change the direction of the acceleration. But any effective brake can absolutely quickly change the acceleration from a high value toward your shoulder into a lesser value still toward your shoulder. This is a high value of jerk in a direction some devices are not well designed to withstand. Spring piston air rifles and even some semi-autos can do the same thing. It is counterintuitive that a light .22 rimfire semi-auto that recoils hardly at all can be hard or a scope, but many a cheap scope has succumbed. The constant, repetitive, peck, peck, peck of jerk finally gets to them.

So, yes, muzzle brakes can damage scopes.

You must be one of the ones that sent a purple scope back...

That term "Jerk" sounds a lot like the term force when I took physics.