Barrel Break In Time!

Status
Not open for further replies.
O

one-shot

Member
Joined
Mar 18, 2010
Messages
22
So it's starting to warm up down here in Utah. It's time to take my Savage Model 12 in 223 out and break the barrel in. I'm planning on using a box of 52Gr BTHPs(Black Hills) I have sitting around.

On my list to buy is a bore guide, some cleaning patches, a rod, and some oil. Does anyone have any recommendations on what brands to get? If anyone else lives around SLC, I am close to Impact Guns and will be driving by Cabelas in Lehi this weekend.

Oh, and a pic of my gun/scope.

http://www.dpreview.com/galleries/2391710214/photos/202793/rifle

http://www.dpreview.com/galleries/2391710214/photos/202794/scope
 
I wouldnt bother with break in. It is pretty much a myth, and will do about as much good as giving the rifle a bath. Probably less. IMHO
 
I totally agree. Just don't overheat it and control the copper fouling until the barrel gets burnished. My last one took about 150 rounds. I used KG-12 until it stopped fouling.
 
The best barrel manufacturers in the world recommend a break-in of some extent. Some of my barrels such as on my Remington M700 Police in .308 it has made little difference, because it was already so smooth. I still have gone through one box of ammo, shooting 1 round then cleaning.

The best way to see if you need a break-in is to fire a 3-shot group. Remove the bolt, and check the bore for copper. Allow it to cool. Fire a 2nd, 3-shot string. Remove the bolt and check the bore again. If no copper, no "foul". :D If your group size changes, or you have copper fouling, you need to break it in. Group sizes getting tighter usually means the throat is still rough.

If you can fire 5 to 10, 3-shot groups and have no copper fouling, and your groups size remains constant, your barrel is good to go.

Geno
 
Bbl break in 101

buy rifle

take to range

send multiple high speed pre sized copper & lead polishing bits through the bbl at high velocity. Perform this step to the owners satisfaction or untill your consumables run low.

Go home, clean rifle and repeat till satisfied
 
for barrel break in i will sometimes go so far as to even push a patch thru the barrel before it goes to the range.
 
for barrel break in i will sometimes go so far as to even push a patch thru the barrel before it goes to the range.
Click to expand...

I do this on every barrel. So many are shipped dirty.

Otherwise I do nothing special. In fact, on chrome-lined and nitride treated barrels, break in is essentially impossible. On standard metal barrels it is possible, but you can see the comments above.

I guess if I had a >$500 precision rifle I would probably spend the extra time doing shoot once, clean, etc. though not knowing if it made any difference. For anything not expected to be do better than 1.5 MOA, I wouldn't bother.
 
Infamous #36

----------------

Barrel break in.

36. “Breaking in” a rifle barrel is probably just a waste of time. Some barrel makers recommend it while others do not which demonstrates a lack of universal agreement on whether it’s really necessary so it probably is not. Every formula for break in involves some combination of firing and cleaning. The fact that there are numerous different formulas should be evidence that nobody really has the definitive answer on the best procedure meaning there likely isn’t one. Simply shooting the rifle as intended will likely be all the break in that is required.
 
A while back fire lapping was getting a lot of attention. Anyone have any thoughts on it? Does it increase accuracy or does it just result in the throat being worn?
 
Sometimes I break em in, sometimes not. I do run a patch with alcohol on it through to remove all trace oils and crud from the production though.
 
The idea of barrel break-in is that you are lapping the rifling, taking off microscopic burrs and flaws. There are formulas for the first hundred rounds, but the precision shooters who taught me showed me that the law of diminishing returns probably takes hold after about the first ten rounds. The good that is done by all the rest is probably imperceptible. Cleaning between shots has less to do with cleaning than giving enough time between shots to not let the barrel heat up to full temperature.

If you have the time, go ahead, shoot 10-20 rounds cleaning between each shot. It's a good time to get the optics zeroed too. I wouldn't bother with 'break-in' firing after that.
 
It's your barrel, you decide whether to break in or not.

For those who are interested in break in duration, this is cut-n-paste from Krieger Barrels:
Finally, the best way to break-in the barrel is to observe when the barrel is broken in; i.e. when the fouling is reduced. This is better than some set number of cycles of "shoot and clean" as many owners report practically no fouling after the first few shots, and more break-in would be pointless. Conversely, if more is required, a set number would not address that either.
Click to expand...

mljdeckard, this helps explain why everyone has a different idea of how many rounds it takes to break in. According to Krieger, there is no specific number. It depends upon the rifle. You have to inspect it yourself to determine on a case by case basis.

The whole article discusses break in very nicely. http://www.kriegerbarrels.com/Break_In__Cleaning-c1246-wp2558.htm
 
I have two Krieger barrels and followed their break-in procedure for both. I used Sweet's 7.62 after every shot for three shots with the .308 and by the fourth shot there wasn't any copper fouling at all ... ZERO. That barrel doesn't foul at all now and I've put about 1,100 rounds through it since the break-in and have only used Sweet's once during that time. At the 500 mark I thought I'd better check for copper so I cleaned the barrel with a patch soaked in Sweet's and there was ZERO copper fouling. I've put a lot fewer rounds through the .300 Win Mag barrel but it ceased to foul with copper after 5 rounds following Krieger's procedure. Krieger barrels are so well polished that it's the throat that needs to be polished rather than the bore/grooves of the barrel. There are tooling marks in the throat that run perpendicular to the bore.

As for the Savage 16 FCSS that I bought last year, I didn't bother with any break-in procedure but will clean the bore with Sweet's before this weekend's range trip. That thing doesn't shoot worth a damn yet .... hmmm ... maybe I should have followed a break-in procedure. :banghead:

:)
 
...it's the throat that needs to be polished rather than the bore/grooves of the barrel.
Click to expand...

Yep, the throat is the only part of a barrel, even a handlapped barrel, that is the concern of a barrel break-in routine. My Krieger also goes a long time without copper fouling, which is necessary for me when shooting long competition relays.

Don
 
Geno said:
The best barrel manufacturers in the world recommend a break-in of some extent. ...
Geno
Click to expand...


I am sorry but this is patently untrue. Krieger only recommends a barrel break in because their customers repeatedly asked for one, Wilson recommends no barrel breakin, McMillan recommends no barrel break in, and further the Mechanical Engineers employed by the Army at the Aberdeen proving grounds say that barrel break in just adds wear to the barrel.
 
WASTE OF TIME! Clean your barrel when it's dirty. Remove fouling when fouled. Otherwise leave it alone.

The whole break in retoric is this. The rifle bore has pores (it does) and tooling marks etc that when shot are then filled with gilding metal (bullet jacket) and that you then need to remove that stuff from the pores and fire again to smooth them out and the barrel will foul less and shoot more consistantly for longer periods of time.

If we all owed a nice bore scope you would see that unless you've purchase yourself a nice custom barrel from a decent source your mass produced barrel looks like a gravel road anyway and your wasting your time.
 
I'm in the camp that believes in a modicum of break in with budget rifles, or budget barrels such as A&B should be done. Usually you will get some extra copper fouling initially in these slightly rough bores, and IMO, it's better to remove it with a little judicious cleaning in the first 20 rounds or so.
Any barrel that has been factory lapped to smooth the bore, often have little or no fouling and a normal cleaning regimen is all that they require.
I could care less if you don't believe in barrel break in, as it's not a waste of ammo, because you can still check grouping and velocity numbers.



NCsmitty
 
Last edited:
At the very least, please run the brush and a few patches through before your first trip to the range. This will remove all the chips, filings, cigarette butts and miscellaneous flotsam and jetsam found in any industrial environment...
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top