I've heard some vastly differing opinions on barrel break-in and just wanted to know what the folks here thought.

From memory, there was a thread (not sure if it was here) a while back where a guy posted a challenge to anyone who believes in breaking in a barrel to explain exactly what the process accomplishes, and no one was able to answer him. Thoughts? Experiences?

Thanks
Jason

The best comment I've ever heard about breaking in a barrel is that it can't hurt!

I've taken the time to do the whole 9 yards and can't really say I gained a thing from it.

If I was a 1/4" and less benchrest shooter I might have some data to confirm the break in theory.....I'm convinced a hunter will never see a difference if one truly does exist.

I'm not sure if it matters either way, but most of the bbl. manuf. suggest some type of break in. I fire 3 shots & clean completely. After 20 I clean after 6 shots. After another 20, just clean after every 20+/- shots. I'm not sure it increases accuracy as much as makes it easier to clean a fouled bbl.

As mentioned in a previous post ALWAYS throughly clean a new barrel be it a factory barrel of a match grade custom barrel before firing the first round through it!I ALWAYS break in a barrel. If Krieger, Lilja, Douglas and most other custom barrel makers recommend it, then that is good enough for me. I shot one shot and clean till the copper fouling is either non existent or greatly reduced, typicaly after 5 to 8 shots. Then shoot four 3 shot strings cleaning after each string. Then I shoot two 5 shot strings cleaning after each one then I start load developement.

I don't care how slick a match grade barrel is fire the first shot open the bolt and look down the barrel you will see copper. There is noway a barrel can break in properly if more copper is layed down by repeated shots with out cleaning. There will also be copper in the throat area from rough, sharp edges left by the chambering reamer. It takes a little patients to get it slicked up. If you want a barrel to be all it can be. Break it in properly.

Barrel wear caused by break in is VERY minimal, typicaly 20 to 40 rounds depending on the barrel. And from what I have seen with my match barrels, they don't reach full accuracy potential till they have between 100 and 200 rounds on them. Another thing I have noticed is that barrels that have been cryo treated tend to break in very quick. JMHO

Shoot Safe, Shoot Straight......RiverRat

[ 09-03-2003, 23:53: Message edited by: RiverRat ]

As previously posted the benefits of break in are it is supposed to make your rifle easier to clean.

Never seen any reliable evidence that it will make your rifle any more accurate.

If it sounds like fun to you go for it. Sounds like a pain in the ___ to me and I don't bother with it.

I polished the bore of my Marlin .45-70 as soon as I got it. I simply took some liquid polishing compound and put it on a tight-fitting bore mop and ran it through perhaps a hunderd times, cleaning the mop every 10 or so strokes.

The bore is very bright and shiny. It doesn't lead at all with any of my standard cast bullet loads but velocity is below 2000fps. Did it help? I don't know but it sure gives a good feeling knowing it's as smooth as a baby's butt!!!

I've tried it both ways and the best statement I can make is: I don't know if it helps or not. I kinda subscribe to the "it doesn't matter" school of thought. It is going to take a certain number of shots to slick the barrel up and rub all those rough edges off. I don't think the barrel knows if you're shooting in groups of 1 or 5 or 25. As long as you're not trying to melt the barrel with your rate of fire, and you clean it well after each range session, once you get that number of shots down the barrel, it will start to hum...........

I have to sight in a new rifle. That means I have to shoot. I have to develope a load. That means I have to shoot. That also means I have to clean. So I do the breakin routine. Does it help? I'm inclined to think so, but wouldn't fight over the point. One thing that NEVER come up in the to break in or not to break in is didtance to the range. I walk out my back door, sit down and shoot. I can reload a round, fire it then reload another in about a minute. That makes breakin easy for me as I have my reloader and cleaning station set up ready to go. If I had to load all of this up and drive to a range, I wouldn't do it. Because of this I belong to the "can't hurt" school, but also believe that there are benefits. Kind of like being married.

Yes I do a breakin on my barrels -I shoot the firearm and then shoot some more! Best way I know in how to break one in!

River Rat said it very well.

I few things need clarification though.

rukidnme:

While the hunter will most not likely see a huge accuracy improvement, he will see that his rifle will shoot better longer just because it will build up fouling more slowly after it has been broken it properly. For a larger rifle that doesn't matter, for a varmint rifle it absolutely does.

Beemanbeme, Roger K, and Gunnut:

Shooting doesn't really do much for breaking in barrels. The fouling tends to cover the bore in most of the rough places and after that takes place, how can prolonged shooting help? It doesn't, it just builds more fouling. On the flip side, if the barrel isn't fouling, it doesn't need anymore break in.

In my experience, breaking in helps prolong accuracy. That makes it worth it to me. And yes, I hate it as much as anyone.

Gabe

Papa, if shooting doesn't smooth it, what does?? I hope you're not going to say running a bore brush up and down the barrel is what does it.

I never even heard of breaking in a new barrel until I bought an A Bolt 300 WSM. I was on their web site one day long after 100 rounds were through it and saw that Browning recommends ( I'm winging it here) like clean after every shot for the first 10 and then after every 3 for a while. I was quite upset that they had nothing in their manual about that so I called. Talked to one of their gunsmiths and he thought barrel break in was BS. Talk about 2 faces!!! Any way I agree it can't hurt!!

I clean it before shooting it...There is always alot of copper fouling in it.

I also do the shoot one shot, swab out the barrel etc thing.

I have no idea if it works, but I doubt it hurts.

I wouldn't be surprised if it has just been made up to sell more ammo to factory ammo buyers.

One could probably find the thread over in the bench rest room but every time this topic comes up a fellow post a response to the effect that it was started by a custom barrel making in order to get more business by having the shooters wear their barrels out faster. He post names and dates and all.

Retailers will always push their products. Barnes barrel break-in is a daunting procedure, It is to the point I avoid Barnes bullets. If I have to make more than 2 trips to the garage on the way to the range, something isn't going to make the trip. I have a hard enough time remembering targets and a bottle of water.
Shooting is a simple pleasure & I want to keep it that way, as far as hunting rifles go anyway.

If the gun is custom, it depends on who put it together. Some 'smiths keep the blue out of the barrel, some don't. If your doesn't, you'll need to shoot it enough to blow the blue out.

papaschmud
I didn't say I never cleaned the barrel- I just don't go to the extent of these other folks that get rapped up in "I have to clean after every shot". If you go shoot and then clean it afterward you'll break the barrel in as you go along- you don't need all that extra crap to do it. I've had my '06 for 7 years now and I've noticed that the groups getting a little smaller every year-more practice -better loads and I'm sure the barrel is getting smother with use. Ialso see this with my other guns as well and I didn't do anything special with them either.

My experience so far suggests that barrel "break-in" ranks right up there with Bigfoot and UFOs. That is, of course, unless the aliens are already among us. Do you think.....

Beemanbeme:

Shooting does do the job. But shooting in a clean barrel does the most good, and arrives at the intended result quicker. You can shooting 'till you need shoulder surgery and it won't help the portion of the barrel that is covered in copper fouling. That is probably why Gunnut is getting slightly better accuracy year after year. He is just doing his break-in over a period of years. My point is that you can get that accuracy enhancement and quicker clean up much sooner if you bother to take the time to do break-in.

I hate it to the point that most of my hunting barrels are recycled match barrels with the chambers and muzzels cut off. That way, they don't need break-in.

Gabe

If you've ever looked inside a factory barrel with a Hawkeye borescope, you'll see why people make an effort to improve the interior surface finish of their bores.

Factory barrels are usually made out if house by large barrel manufacturers like Lothar-Walther. These manufacturers will tell you, they are making RemChesteretc. barrels, and not L-W, etc. barrels, because the manufacturer's specs are quite far from match grade. They wholesale to the gunmaker for between $10-30. Savage makes the grand majority of their own barrels, with some R/F barrels coming from out of house.

All of the factory barrels differ from custom match grade barrels in precisely the same way. They are bored and rifled, and then they're shipped. There is no lapping or polishing performed, and I can tell you from experience looking down the bore of my own factory barrels, they look like a long, bad road. Tool marks from the boring and rifling operations are there, and the grooves look like marks made by dragging a scrap anvil through a bed of mud.

The primary feature is rough and jagged edges, and these edges rip the copper from the passing jacket, creating reefs of copper that accumulate in the pockets and indentations in the bore's surface. Target shooters can tell you how copper affects accuracy, and I'm a 1000yd target shooter; where the copper fouling really degrades the accuracy.

The difference with the match grade barrel is that it is progressively lapped and polished to improve the interior surface finish. The bore finish on a BR match grade barrel is so much smoother that the roghest object that remains in the bore may be some leftover abrasive grit particles.

Such barrels either copper foul only slightly or not at all. There are no jagged projections to rip out passing copper, and no indentations for that fouling to accumulate inside of. Whetver does transfer to the bore surface come out quickly becaue it has no depth and no texture to which it can adhere.

Such barrels shoot more consistently and shoot accurately for longer strings of fire. The copper that eventually accumulates is copper that's sticking to copper, not bore irregularities. It takes longer to get a foothold, and it cleans out quicker because there is no real foothold to retain it once the solvent penetrates to the bore metal.

An additional factor in accuracy is the pressure wave that reciprocates between the camber and muzzle end of the bore. As the pressure vave passes the bullet 3 or more times during the bullet's transit, the bore is momentarily constricted, increasing bore friction at that point. If there is a bore irregularity coincident with that intersection point, it plays hob with the accuracy, altering the transit time and throwing the bullet out of sync with the muzzle's harmonic swing. This is why factory barrels which are produced in sequence will exhibit such diverse accuracy characteristics; they all have the same degree of irregularities in their bore surfaces, but they occur at different points along the bore. Some coincide with bullet/pressure wave intersections, and some don't. That's also why such barrels are so sensitive to load variations, because the different loads produce different transit times, and alter the points along the bore where the bullet intersects with the pressure wave.

Barrels which have no irregularities are not vulnerable to these quirks, and bores that are smooth enough to resist abrading copper from jackets will preserve their accuracy becasue the copper isn't there to 'put on the brakes' and slow the bullet down until it's out of sync with the harmonic muzzle swing.

So, how do we make the factory 'bad road' bore more like the custom finished match bore?

We complete the barrelmaking job by lapping/honing down the interior bore finish.

How best to accomplish this task? Well; unless we have the huge reciprocating bore lapping mills that the custom barrelmakers us to machine lap the bores, we are stuck with what we can do at home, or in our small shop.

Handlapping of bores is a tedious and somewhat critical task. Use the wrong grit size, and about the only thing you accomplish is to wear out the bore prematurely, especially in the critical muzzle and throat zones. Handlapping is best left to professional gunsmiths who have perfected they skills.

That leaves firelapping. Braking in a barrel by shooting and sleaning between rounds is a form of firelapping, but recognize clearly, the only abrasive agent you're employing is copper, and that's not going t make huge inroads into the jagged bore irregularities. Mostly, it just builds up more copper, which sheilds the low spots from abrasion, and really doesn't do much to the high points.

The Tubb Final Finish system of firelapping is a very well researched, developed, and produced system that employs proper grits in an effective manner to acually alter the interior bore finish in a significant manner. When used precisely according to instructions, it does an excellent job of approximating the interior bore of a match barrel. Close, not exactly, but definitely a major improvement.

The downside is that as polishing is taking place, so is accelerated wear, particularly in the throat area. That cannot be eliminated, but it is even present, to as small a degree as possible, in the match spec barrel as well. It is an unavoidable byproduct of bore lapping.

I use a method that is far less aggressive, and equally less effective. I coat the bullets of a box of 20 factory rounds with a light, even coat of JB abrasive bore cleaning compound or Remclean abrasive bore cleaner. I clean after firing each round for the first ten rounds, then after each of two groups of five rounds.

When viewed with the borescope afterward, it is very difficult, if not impossible, to see any actual bore surface alteration. But the really sharp jegged edges are smoothed somewhat, and this procedure does reduce fouling, and extend the length of the string of fire whch may be performed before accuracy degrades due to copper fouling.

Two basic cautions here.

A match grade barrel is already lapped/honed, and attempting to lap such a barrel in any manner is unlikely to imrpove the bore surface, and could easily harm it.

Firelapping a barrel is not a process which is devoid of risk. Follow commercial product instructions precisely, and monitor accuracy by firing the rounds into groups.

Finally, the results of firelapping are not going to alter the harmonic frequency of your barel, so al inaccuracte load will be inaccurate afterwards, as well as before. The true benefit may not become apparent until you start shootinmg a load which is tuned to the particular barrel's harmonics.

Greg Langelius