Barrel Break in (is it worth it?)

To break a barrel in or not to? That is the question.

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crowsnest2002

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So I sat pondering one day is barrel breakin really worth it, does it really work, well I'm just curious... Who out there thinks that it really tightens up those groups, or who out there thinks its just a bunch of hog wash to make consumers buy barrels more frequently because of barrel wear... Tell me your story or opinions... And if you want even give a vote to see where the people on this site are sitting.
 
If it is a production rifle...maybe.

If it is semi-custom or custom rifle with a hand lapped barrel...probably not.

I own several semi-custom Coopers....do I do it? Yes......but I have never seen any copper stick to the bore of one of my Cooper's barrel.

I think we have all seen the Gale McMillan thread and what he says.

It you use the right products (bore guide, correct brush, good rod, etc) you really won't do any harm.
 
I don't go out to the range and shoot 100 rounds from my hunting rifles, so I just do my 20 or so and take it home to clean it. My high round guns are .22s and a Hi-Point carbine, which will indeed see 100-500 rounds per session, and I do the same with them. All my rifles are still accurate. Take from that what you will, but the 'clean it every ___ rounds' break in seems overly anal and wholly unnecessary to me. I take it out. I shoot it. I bring it home. I clean it. Haven't noticed any decline in accuracy yet.
 
I have never "broke in" a barrel. In all my experiences, either a rifle will shoot or it wont. I think the "barrel break in" is somewhat a myth. Maybe on some rifle, somewhere it helped, but I have never seen definitive proof that "break in" improves accuracy. Someone needs to run a test. Take two identical rifles, say Savage 10FV .308's and fire one out of the box, while the other gets the break in treatment. Test to see which is the better shooter after about 200 rds. It is my guess that there wont be much, if any difference between the two. In the end, it all depends on the person and thier personal methods. My Ruger M77 tang safety bull barrel .243 never had a break in period. I just floated the barrel and out of the box it has always shot into the .5MOA range when I am not shaking. Thats my opinion and I'm sticking to it.:)
 
I think we have all seen the Gale McMillan thread and what he says.
Click to expand...

The late Mr. McMillan's opinion of barrel break in works well for me, but I am not a shooter that will ever achieve the level of expertise he did.
 
I break all my barrels in. I have a 50 year old Winchester 3030 bought new and I am still breakin it in. When I am finished, I'm gonna let my youngest son break it in.
I clean my barrels when I notice accuracy starting to fade a little. In other words, not very often.
Unless your shootin matches, I think its' a waste of ammo. JMHO:evil:
 
I don't know if it helps or not, but what do you have to lose? It's not like you really need to dump 100 rounds through the rifle the first day you have it. Guns aren't cheap, might as well take care of them as best as you can figure out how.
 
Fella's

The single most important difference between proper break-in & who cares that I've found is ease of cleaning. A properly broken-in barrel will most likely be more accurate, but it will certainly clean up much easier in my experience.

900F
 
BrainOnSigs has it right.


The whole issue behind barrel break in is because production barrels are rougher cut. Aftermarket match-grade barrels that are lapped are already smooth as can be and require none of this break-in stuff.
 
+1 for CB900F

Less fouling; easier cleaning. Less fouling leads to enhhanced accuracy. So I have been told.

Doc2005
 
+1 for CB900F also.

And really why not break it in?
So you have to shoot slowly and clean alot at first, but I can't recall anyone ever having a new rifle and just blasting away for the sake of - nothing.

It may not do much but it may help also.
Don't rush it.

RTFM
 
Kinda, sorta, maybe, I don't know.
I own and shoot five AR15 rifles.
Two of the rifles I took the the extensive and laborious task of "Breaking in the barrel", one shot, clean, two shots, clean, three shots, clean on and on.

The rifles do shoot better than my other three rifles but then again they have better barrels installed to begin with.
Would they still shoot better than the other three if I hadn't of gone through the break in period?
Maybe, I just don't know.
What I can tell you that barrel break seems to do is make the barrel much easier to clean.
Both these rifles require fewer patches and less time soaking in solvent to come out mirror bright in the bore than the other three rifles when all are exposed to the same number of rounds fired.

So I guess all I can add here is that "barrel break in" certainly does not seem to harm anything.
 
I guess my problem is that I shot rifles for some fifty years before I ever heard of barrel break-in. I never had problems with group size; I never had any problems with cleaning.

But, folks gotta do what they think's right...

Art
 
Topic seems to come up pretty often. For my money, break-in is a waste of time, and that's an opinion derived from a lot of experimentation. I've never noticed an accuracy difference between broken-in and non broken-in production guns. Benchrest shooters, with their hand-lapped barrels, are about evenly divided, and both groups win their fair share. The most accurate production rifle I ever owned was capable of consistent 5 shot groups of .25" at 100 yards. It did that from day one, and I never bothered with any sort of break-in. That's good enough for me.

As for cleaning? Yes, a broken-in barrel cleans more easily in my experience. The key bit, though, is that it doesn't matter how the barrel was broken in. It's the number of cleanings that end up smoothing the barrel; it doesn't matter of those cleanings all took place on the first day -- in between every shot -- or if they took place over the course of a decade, after each shooting session. And if you really want to hurry the process up, just fire lap, hand lap (it's not that difficult), or clean with JB or Flitz on a patch.

Break-in if you want. The ammo companies and barrel makers will appreciate the business, and some folks are so given to voodoo that there's no talking sense to them. :neener:
 
i believe so, with a bbl that is not lapped, breaking in a bbl, an doing it correctly, can only help. it is a way of getting out tool marks, inside the bbl, which, will trap all types of deposits. if you perform your breakin while zeroing a rifle/scope combo, you can kill two birds with one stone.
with a lapped bbl, this is uneccessary.
 
I break in the bbls on all of my new rifles, I even did it on my AK. My logic is hey, why not...maybe it won't help but it sure as heck won't hurt them. It only has to be done once, and I like shooting them anyway.
 
Here's what kinda cracks me up with this.

A guy pays big money for a well machined custom barrel that's hand lapped as a final process.

But I'm not supposed to hand lap (break in) a potentially rough common factory barrel?

:confused:
 
Many of my rifles are Mil suprus, so someone has done the breaking in for me.

All my new sporting rifles were never "broken" in and seem to shoot quite well.
I think new production rifles are not as crude or rough as some may think. Technology (CNC machining, etc.) has had a big effect on the industry. To keep competitive, machines have replaced a lot of the human element and the big manufacturers can produce good rifles. I haven't bought a new rifle in 20 years that couldn't shoot 1moa right out of the box with just a few passes of Hoppe#9, followed by a few dry patches. Accuracy improves with handloading experimentation.
 
Friend of mine has a bore scope. We were talking about Barrel break in. He also had a new old stock M1903 (A3?) military barrel. Told me he decided to do a barrel break in of shoot and clean the fouling out between shots. He did not use an abrasive (such as J.B). just used bore brush and a bore cleaner that dissolves copper.

Said on first shot the barrel was horribly copper fouled. (Horribly is an inexact technical term). Comment was like copper in every machine tool mark. Cleaned the barrel and bore scoped it. Fired another shot, bore scoped it. Less copper fouling. Cleaned it, repeated the cycle. I think around the seventh round there was no real change in copper fouling intensity. Does not mean no copper fouling, I think just no improvement in reduction.

What we do not know is if he could have gotten the same copper fouling reduction after cleaning the barrel after shooting 100 rounds. I don't know. But his technique was non destructive and could not hurt. I think using an abrasive does just what McMillian says it does, add barrel wear.

I also will say based on my experience with highpower rifles, that after 300 rounds of so of shooting, that I do use JB bore paste. The rifle will have been cleaned with bore brushes and copper solvent several times in those 300 rounds. When I use JB, I can feel resistance in the barrel just forward of the throat and the JB makes it go away. So maybe you do need to mechanically remove fouling at some point. But at the expense of added bore wear.
 
It's fun and it lets the wife know that you appreciate the money you spent on your rifle (or her rifle).

It's pretty analogous to changing the 'break in' oil on a new car. I'd change that new car/truck oil at the first 100 miles and then again at 500 miles. Does it matter anymore? Not like it probably did 50 years ago, but for the few $$$ it costs it's a bet I'll make for longevity. In both cases it's about removing particulate matter that will be expressed in early use owing to manufacturing processes.

When I rebarreled my older M-1 I took the time to feed it extra nice ammo and clean often it the first few times out. Now I'm satisfied. That SKS I bought for 150 bucks maybe didn't get as much attention, but I did clean it thouroughly before use.

How much do you believe in your heart that your Grandad is watching to see if you treat that weapon as he would have and as he taught you is the question. As good enough reason as any.
 
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