Barrel breakin

[hrubison]

I am on the fence if it is really neccessary to break in a new rifle barrel. I have a new Savage 110 in 30-06 and can't decide wether or not to do it. I guess it couldn't hurt though. i have asked seeveral gunsmiths and half say I should, wjile the other half say it's a waste of effort I won't see a difference. Has anyone seen first hand that breaking in a new rifle barrel is benificial? Thanks

 

[DIM]

I have Savage 110 in 270 where I didn't do a break in, it has pencil thin barrel, it was great shooter out the box, now it hardly shoots 2 MOA, I only fired it 300 times at most. I also have Remington which I did break in and it shoots bug holes like 0.3", but it has bull barrel. Don't know with savage and thin barrel I would just leave it the way it is, it probably has its 300 - 400 shot in reserve why waste them on break in. But with the barrel nut it is always easy to replace it with new barrel like shilen or Krieger then you would need to break in...

 

[SaxonPig]

Haven't seen this question for a while. It is #36 on my list of 100 FAQs.

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.

 

[Art Eatman]

I've never done any sort of break-in on a NIB rifle; maybe a half-dozen or so. Sub-moa usually came from a bit of tweaking of the forearm bedding, if any tune-up was needed. Otherwise, I just clean after whatever shooting session I do.

Used rifles? I doubt any of them ever saw break-in. Most of them were easily made to shoot sub-MOA.

This whole break-in thing is a fairly recent idea. I'd never even heard about it until I got on TheFiringLine.com in late 1998. I'd gone almost fifty years of centerfire without knowing that all those sub-MOA groups were fig-newtons of my imagination.