I purchased new a CZ 550 in 22-250 cal. I need help with barrel break-in.
THANKS
Jerry

quote:

I need help with barrel break-in.

No you don't!!!!! Take it out and shoot it....break-in is for someone else....it's hooey!

Do a search on the topic, you'll find everything you'll want or not want to know on the subject. You'll be reading for a while, have fun.

I must agree with Vapodog...Blast away...the whole break in theory is just that a theory.
Let us know how it shoots.I Predict you'll be pleased . a relative of mine has a 550 in.308win and its was nail driver right out of the box.Enjoy.


"Revenge is a dish best served cold." Klingon proverb

With all due respect to the individuals posting above I disagree completely, if break-in were a waste of time then every top barrel maker out there wouldn't tell you how they recommend it be done on their web sites. Some folks will tell you cleaning your rifle is a waste of time as well so ya do what ya think is best.
It's a bit of work at first but well worth it in ease of cleaning and barrel life etc down the road.
The principle is to shoot and clean after each shot till the rough spots are smoothed out and don't collect fouling as much. Might I recommend going to Dan Lilgas site and see what he says even on his ultra smooth custom barrels, think how much more help it'll be on a factory rough barrel.
Ya just bought a real fine rifle, it deserves proper care and if it gets it it'll last longer and provide better accuracy. I take care of my stuff.
Everyone has an opinion and that's mine.

Totally agree with montdoug!

The potentially boring task of break-in is well worth the effort in the long run IMO. Cleaning becomes much less cumbersome after a proper break-in. And unlike some stuff I've read, you don't HAVE to do it for 150 shots or anything ridiculous like that. Only until the patches stop coming out blue from the CR-10, Sweet's, or what have you.

I would never ignore break-in of a new barrel. It's not that much work.

I break in barrels because it seems like the logical thing to do but I'm not positive that it helps. There are a couple of barrels I have that are EXTREMELY easy to clean after this procedure. Maybe they would have been easy to clean anyway. There is another barrel, a CZ 550 in 458 Lott that still seems to foul easily even after 150 to 200 rounds down the tube.

I break in new barrels by shooting the same as I always do. Two or Three shoots let the barrel cool to the touch and continue that until I'm done shooting. Then take it home and clean it and take almost all the copper out. I always leave a little for that first shoot

jy, for your CZ550, do not bother with a break in procedure. It will be a waste of time and effort. The reason I say this is the gun does not have a high quality SS barrel on it and it not designed to shoot competitively.

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if break-in were a waste of time then every top barrel maker out there wouldn't tell you how they recommend it be done on their web sites.

Yes most all barrel manufacturers recommend a break in procedure, but they do so because their barrels are of a higher quality than factory barrels. The tolerances are held to a closer runout etc. Their barrels are hand lapped. With a factory barrel it is near impossible to get all the imperfections flattened out with a breakin procedure. They will typically copper foul all the time.

So go out and shoot the factory barrel until you need to rebarrel the rifle. Get a custom barrel and then you can have fun breaking it in.

Mike

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Yes most all barrel manufacturers recommend a break in procedure, but they do so because their barrels are of a higher quality than factory barrels. The tolerances are held to a closer runout etc. Their barrels are hand lapped. With a factory barrel it is near impossible to get all the imperfections flattened out with a break-in procedure. They will typically copper foul all the time.

So go out and shoot the factory barrel until you need to rebarrel the rifle. Get a custom barrel and then you can have fun breaking it in.

Actually Mike if a guy wants to just shoot a barrel till he ruins it so he can get a new one you've got the right idea, your point has merit, custom barrels are nice.
But Consider this. Custom barrels are hand lapped and are indeed much smoother so if any thing they would need break-in less to keep from fouling. Factory barrels typically are way rougher and end up with machining chatter marks etc left behind. By breaking in which entails cleaning to bare metal first thing to get the factory test round fouling out then leaving a minute coat of a chemical such as colloidal graphite or even Shooters Choice in the barrel and firing one shot, then cleaning again to bare metal and repeat. Usually somewhere around the 7th to 9th shot you've smoothed the imperfections out enough so they "don't" copper foul all the time. Then fire a few groups of 3 cleaning after each group, after that your done. You basically do the same thing as the custom barrel guys do hand lapping by smoothing the barrel only you do it with bullets, one at a time.
If you just go out and start blazing away all those little rough marks get filled with copper and carbon fouling and your right, they will then copper foul forever and it's near impossible to get out.
As an aside, I shoot a lot of small caliber wildcats. Because CZ's make a great platform to build on I use them a lot, currently I believe I have 7 or 8 of em. CZ also makes their own steel as well as barrels and they make very decent barrels for a factory rifle, some of em are exceptionally good. CZ makes great steel, very hard.
I have a 527 Varmint Kevlar in .204 that I took a slice off the barrel on then re-reamed with a minimum spec zero freebore reamer. Basically a custom chamber on a factory barrel. After some careful break-in I can run strings of 50 or 60 rounds down the barrel with it's favorite load using a 39 grain Sierra BlitzKing at 3,900fps and then clean it completely with 8 or 10 patches and some brushing and there will be no copper fouling. If that barrel hadn't been broken in right it would foul like a booger at that velocity with that many rounds fired, it doesn't. Fouling effects accuracy in a negative way.
CZ's are a bit more of a pain that some others on the initial cleaning due to the blueing or cosmoline or whatever that gets in the barrel before the factory test firing, that first cleaning before you shoot it will keep getting brown crud on the patch for a long time before it all comes out, but it will eventually.
Break-in like cleaning is a topic that creates a lot of heated discussion. Some guys are lazy and just don't want to bother with break-in or cleaning. Some guys honestly don't believe it matters. Some guys like myself will take it to the bank.
Go to a magazine like "Precision Shooting" and see what the benchrest boys do, everything there is all based on extreme accuracy. They all break em in!
It's worth the effort. Good luck with that CZ, they are indeed shooters.

Everytime you shoot it up to about 80 or 100 rounds you are breaking it in. Cleaning often in between those shots is great. How often is up to you. Of course you have to clean properly. If there was an actual break-in procedure, all of the manufacturers would agree on it. Ask a dozen and you will get a dozen answers.

moundoug

Hey I totally agree with you that break in can benefit some factory barrel, but it comes down to are the efforts worth the gains. In a 22-250, when shooting small critters they are not going to notice the difference. On the other hand if you are wanting to see on paper what the gains are, then rightly go after it. I shoot competitive Benchrest and break in all my custom barrels. However, in doing the break in I'm trying to minimize copper fouling and maintain a rifle barrel so it is competitive. Shooting sub .25 groups is differnet from Critter MOA.

Bottomline is to do what ever one really wants. If a person wants to spend the time more power to them. I guess once you own a true benchrest rifle the bar is risen so high, that for me the time trying to squeek out a little more potiental accuracy is not worth it when dealing with factory rifles. A factory rifle wil never shoot like a BR or sniper rifle.

Good Shooting Mike

One thing about barrel break-in is that if you clean after each shot for several shots then you should know where that first shot will hit!

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I guess once you own a true benchrest rifle the bar is risen so high, that for me the time trying to squeek out a little more potiental accuracy is not worth it when dealing with factory rifles. A factory rifle wil never shoot like a BR or sniper rifle.

I agree with you Mike I have several of em. I also have a number of well built varmint guns as well as several awful nice shooting factory guns (if they aren't shooters from the factory they get reborn into something else real quick). To me the time spent initially is more than returned in time saved cleaning later. I believe in keeping em clean and anything that makes that easier is worth the effort to me, break-in does.
I also agree your sure as heck not gonna take an inch and a quarter factory shooter and make it shoot half inch by extensive break-in but it'll sure be a lot easier to clean .
Actually though I have 3 CZ's that with factory barrels will agg sub half inch, they are a .221, a .223 and the re-chambered .204 I mentioned. Sure not bench guns but real impressive when ya look back at the time when inch groups were the holy grail for shooters even with varmint rifles. Agg'ing sub half inch equates to never being able to blame your rifle for a missed shot on a p-dog, rock chuck or coyote.
Your absolutely right though we all get to chose how we want to do er and we aren't all interested in bench guns, some guys just want to make the most out of their factory rifle. More power to em !

I do a break in procedure because I feel better about it. FWIW, a police officer friend of mine and his bud joined me at the range this past spring for some new rifle shooting.

It is only a coincidence I'm sure, but they bought identical Remington 30.06 rifles. My friend shot his for the first time at the range and we did the "break-in" procedure of shoot and clean between shots for almost 30 rounds...we took turns.

His friend had already put a couple of boxes through his rifle though....never heard of "break-in."

Needless to say, the rangemaster took out his bore scope and showed us all the build up of powder, copper, and primer fouling in this rifle, compared to the new shiny bore, cleaned after every shot of my friend's.

They brought out 7 boxes of ammo of different makes to see what would shoot. (I did all the shooting, as they would hand me a rifle and I didn't know whos was whos.

The rifle that was broken in properly outshot the other rifle with every box of ammo. This included a couple boxes of Hornady, 2 or 3 of Federal, 1 box Remmy, and 1 Winchester.

At the end of the day, and with over an hour on the bore, we still never did get the one rifle clean at the throat....just too much fouling, no matter how much brushing we did.

I think he soaked it over night with CR-10, and it didn't take care of the problem.

So, this is just FYI.

Barrels can't count. They don't know that you've shot once or twenty times. The thing to avoid is heat. Use some self discipline in your rate of fire and clean when the accuracy drops.
If you want to break in a factory barrel, give it about 500 strokes with JB paste. That'll slick it up and cut down on the copper fouling.

Barrels can't count but fouling builds up and the more rounds shot the more crud's left behind. Sorry but that doesn't compute if you've shot a lot. There's a heck of a difference in cleaning a rifle thats been shot 15 times compared to one that's been shot 50.
Doc that is an interesting comparison and good info. It would be interesting to have two identical rifles built and start that test from ground zero to track the results. I'm betting your findings would be repeated 10 for 10 times.

Doc interesting account, but there are too many variables to truely say that breaking in the barrel made the one rifle shoot better. I would suspect that it did make cleaning a little easier. However, issues such as bedding could have contributed to one rifle having better down range performance.

And just for fun I'll give you all a good barrel story. A fellow benchrest shooter in my area had a custom 6ppc barrel that had over 5000 rounds thru it. It was pretty beat up and had lost its edge. This shooter decided to clean the barrel with AJAX until all the carbon build up was removed. Needless to say that barrel started winning matches with authority.

Sometimes you just never know!

Well, I did write that it could have been a coincidence....but who knows. My friend, however, is sold on break in. And I believe HIS friend is too.

I look at it like this, anytime you have anything NEW and it's made of METAL, and it was recently manufactured, and you will be causing FRICTION, and HEAT, and leave behind PARTICLES of metal, etc., then there will ALWAYS be a "break-in" period.

I agree that a barrel with a few hundred rounds thru it will shoot better than a factory new one. I thought we were discussing how you arrived at those few hundred rounds.
Mountdoug, it is easier to clean a rifle that has been fired 15 times compared to cleaning one that has been fired 50 but if you look at the time expenditure, cleaning only when you have to is wasting less time. Time you can spend reloading and shooting. If you shoot a lot, that can factor in.

Hello JY,

Might want to check out the Krieger Barrel web site for thoughts on breaking in a barrel. They make a very fine barrel and highly respected in all shooting disciplines all over the world.

Actually I clean about every 30 to 40 tops in the rodent field depending on the round. The way my wife loves to clean house and as much as she likes p-dog, rock chuck, and gopher hunting I've been hoping these last 20 years to teach her to clean rifles. Yeah, right! Every time I mention it however she gets this blank vacant look and says HUH? Looks like I'm duty firearm cleaner.
Fortunately I take varmint rifles like a golf bag full of clubs. That way I don't overheat or over foul any one of em. Never Cleaned with Ajax though , gives me the willies just thinking about it but I'll bet it got the fouling out. Closest I get to that is JB's Bore Paste. I have carefully fire-lapped a few exceptionally rough factory barrels but that another argument all together.
Lotta different ways around the barn huh?

montdoug

I thought you would like that AJAX trick. I can see where it would give some the willies. However, when a competitive BR barrel goes south you have the option of trying something different (in this case AJAX) or turning it into a tomato stake.

Mike