I'm not sure where this belongs but most people here would have an opinion on the matter.

Some believe that breaking in a barrel is futile and was released like a virus by barrel makers in the hope that more barrels would be consumed.

Others believe it is useless.

Some say that a new barrel must be cleaned very vigorously in order to clear it of any burrs or machine marks.

Some swear that a barrel must be broken in carefully following a special ritual.

Well The cleaning thoughroughly Vs breaking in seems to me to be the same thing only carried out differently.

The principal would be to clear any marks and elininate ant spots where copper fouling could hide.

Well, if you take a barrel that has never been "broken in" and decide to one day "break it in" there should still be all the burrs and other imperfections under the copper waiting for you, no?

The most accurate rifle I have ever owned was not broken in, nor do I maintained it following any special cleaning procedure; Run a bore snake through it regularly at the range, and a good cleansing every now and then at home.

If there was anything to break in on the that barrel it should still be there and I should still be able to go back and clear it out, shouldn't I?

Just stirring the pot, and daydreaming about guns while I am supposed to be doing something important...

Since you stirred it, The burrs and other inperfections MAY still be there, or they may not be. Let's take a couple of examples. It will take 20 rounds to break in as an assumption. If you break in a rifle, you shoot, clean, shoot, clean...for 20 rounds, say. This will take care of the burrs and other imperfections.

If you shoot 20 rounds, clean, shoot 20 rounds, clean...it will take 20 SESSIONS of 20 rounds to clear out those same imperfections because the break-in crowd will say that the first shot through the clean bore is the one that counts.

I think this why a lot of the old timers that I talk to say it takes a gun 100 rounds to "settle in". They clean about every 5-10 rounds, as I have seen.

If a rifle is factory, or has a known un-lapped barrel, I break it in. I would never feel the need to break in a Lilja hand lapped barrel.

I don't have any special insights on cleaning, even after 30 years of it. I break in barrels because I'm comfortable doing it. If someone will kindly send me 2 brand new rifles, I will happily do side-by-side comparisons and report back the results.

Other than that, my rifles, with my loads, shoot best after they've had 5-10 rounds put through them but before they have 40-50 rounds. It's a pretty narrow window to get my best groups in before I have to clean again. -Rod-

Fact is there is no way to know the answer to this question. Because no two guns/barrels are alike, and every single bullet is different no matter how tight quality control is, there is no way to empirically prove the value of breaking in a barrel. How will you know if the accuracy of your gun is improved following break in? Were you able to determine the accuracy it would have had without break in?

If someone had 100 identical guns/barrels and used break in techniques on 50, and the end result was 50% tighter groups than the control group, I'd concede the break-in process is worthy of further study. However, due to manufacturing differences in guns and bullets, this test alone would still not prove the value of break in procedures.

Until I see such a detailed and documented study, I'll save my barrels for shooting.