Old topic - new day - barrel break in

pdhunter

pdhunter

New member
Ok I'm ready for a storm of answers but hoping for one for my specific rifle which is a new Remington 700 vsf 220 swift .I have broke in a few new barrels in my life I know the method I have used in the past but never on stainless .
on to the question.
Do you break in a stainless barrel or no ? If so what method do you use ?
 
I don't do barrel break-in's on any of my rifles. I believe its a waste of barrel life and time. Never seen any reliable proof that a broke in barrel shoots any better then one that is not.
 
Last edited:
Originally Posted By: wklmanI don't do barrel break-in's on any of my rifles. I believe its a waste of barrel life and time. Never seen any reliable proof that a broke in barrel shoots any better then one that is not.

Right there with you. We even have barrel makers such as Krieger that say that it is not necessary.

I personally feel that the very best way to break in a new barrel on a gun is by shooting at small rodents with it.
 
Anymore, I think its doer's choice. I don't but others do. What ever trips your trigger. No pun intended. I'd just shoot it and not over heat the barrel, clean it really good when you get home.
 
I think with factory barrels it can, depending on the barrel, be of some benefit but with quality custom barrels, I don't think there is much to be gained.
 
I tried it once on a new Howa. On the next one I didn't just sighted it in and shot it. I haven't noticed any difference. I don't shoot bench rest etc. I just hunt and shoot. Rudy
 
I have "took the plastic off the seat" of more Remingtons than I care to admit. Same goes for custom barrels. For many years I did the whole shoot 1, clean, 2 and clean, 3 and clean, and so on.....until 50rds were shot and cleaned between. Those guns shot very well with few exceptions.

Many years ago, I bought a Hawkeye bore scope, and with some convincing, I changed up my process. Now I wet patch with solvent about twice, dry patch then bore scope then wet scrub with a stiff brush about 10 times up and back keeping the brush wet. Then several dry patches. I scope it again just to make a mental note of the barrel condition. Then shoot as normal and enjoy.
 
Originally Posted By: B23I think with factory barrels it can, depending on the barrel, be of some benefit but with quality custom barrels, I don't think there is much to be gained.

I agree totally. A new hand lapped custom barrel is at its best right before you fire the first round down it. After than its all down hill for custom barrels.

For some factory barrels bigger than .224" bore diameter, sometimes they get better with some "seasoning". But there are no guarantees. With .224" or smaller factory barrels, you get what you have NIB and very little will improve it to any significant extent in most instances.
 
First off, the quality of a custom hand lapped barrel is on a completely different level than a mass produced factory barrel like a Savage or Ruger etc. There's nothing you can do at home to improve a custom hand lapped barrel.

Riddle me this: If it's common for new barrels to "speed up" or increase velocity after the initial 50-100 rounds, what exactly causes that to happen? Changes are happening to the barrel, yes?

And if each of those initial rounds fired changes the barrel somehow, until it "settles in", is it better to have that barrel relatively clean as that process happens instead of carbon/copper fowled?
 
Originally Posted By: RustydustOriginally Posted By: wklmanI don't do barrel break-in's on any of my rifles. I believe its a waste of barrel life and time. Never seen any reliable proof that a broke in barrel shoots any better then one that is not.

Right there with you. We even have barrel makers such as Krieger that say that it is not necessary.

Please show me on Krieger's site where it says this.

I recently had a new Krieger barrel put on my 300 RUM. Since I have a Lyman Borescope I decided to put together a little "photo diary" of the process. When I get a chance I'll try to post some pictures.

I used the break in method as described below, which I copied from Krieger's site.

The following is a guide to break-in based on our experience. This is not a hard and fast rule, only a guide. Some barrel, chamber, bullet, primer, powder, pressure, velocity etc. combinations may require more cycles some less. It is a good idea to just observe what the barrel is telling you with its fouling pattern and the patches. But once it is broken in, there is no need to continue breaking it in.


Initially you should perform the shoot-one-shot-and-clean cycle for five shots. If fouling hasn't reduced, fire five more cycles and so on until fouling begins to drop off. At that point shoot three shots before cleaning and observe. If fouling is reduced, fire five shots before cleaning. Do not be alarmed if your seating depth gets longer during break in. This is typical of the “high spots in the throat being knocked down during this procedure. It is not uncommon for throat length to grow .005-.030 from a fresh unfired chamber during break in.

My first pictures of the brand new barrel and its chamber, showed a beautiful shiny bore and a very clean chamber job. I cleaned it with a little Hoppes #9 and patched it dry and then hit it with some CLP and patched it out again.

I then fired one round through it and put my borescope down it and my heart about stopped, copper everywhere. So I started cleaning it with Barnes CR10 using a nylon brush and soaking and scrubbing as described on the Barnes bottle. It took a number of soaking and scrubbing sessions to get it all cleaned up.

One thing that I found interesting was, I quit seeing blue on my patches, before my borescope showed all of the copper being gone, I'm still scratching my head on this.

After everything was cleaned up, I went out and popped off another round. Back at the borescope and still quite a bit of copper. But it cleaned up fairly quick, back out for round 3 and again some copper but maybe a little quicker on the clean up.

I am now up to my 10th round fired and I still get a little copper, but it comes out with very little work. I run a soaked patch through once and then a soaked brush about 12 strokes and then let it sit for 10 minutes and then patch it out. At that point the borescope shows no copper.

I'm ready to start shooting some groups at this point. In my mind, the 10 rounds of barrel life that I have supposedly taken off of my barrel, are well worth it. I have no doubt that If I would have went out and simply started dumping rounds down my new barrel, I would have pounded copper on top of copper and ended up with a barrel that never would have lived up to it's true potential.
 
Originally Posted By: biggen0_8Originally Posted By: RustydustOriginally Posted By: wklmanI don't do barrel break-in's on any of my rifles. I believe its a waste of barrel life and time. Never seen any reliable proof that a broke in barrel shoots any better then one that is not.

Right there with you. We even have barrel makers such as Krieger that say that it is not necessary.

Please show me on Krieger's site where it says this.



How about the Mr Krieger himself stating it?



He states at 1:10 that he personally does not feel it is necessary. Good enough for me.
 
Originally Posted By: RustydustOriginally Posted By: biggen0_8Originally Posted By: RustydustOriginally Posted By: wklmanI don't do barrel break-in's on any of my rifles. I believe its a waste of barrel life and time. Never seen any reliable proof that a broke in barrel shoots any better then one that is not.

Right there with you. We even have barrel makers such as Krieger that say that it is not necessary.

Please show me on Krieger's site where it says this.



How about the Mr Krieger himself stating it?



He states at 1:10 that he personally does not feel it is necessary. Good enough for me.

Thanks for posting that link, lot of good info in it.

Essentially He says exactly what is on the Krieger website. But when I listen to it I hear him basically saying, no I don't have a set break in process, but that he does fire a shot and then clean and fire a shot and clean, until the barrel tells him that it is (for lack of a better term) "broke in". So it leaves me a little confused, but that's nothing new.
 
Thats why I said it was the doer's choice. If it makes you feel good about it then you by all means should. I doubt it will hurt it. Doesn't matter what anyone else thinks.
 
I started shooting Registered Benchrest in the early 80's. We broke in all our barrels using the one shot clean method, three shot, then five shot clean method. I never felt that it did very much for me, having been a previous varmint hunter. Then I got a lathe and bore scope about the same time. Most of the lapping you are doing is where the leade angle has been cut.

Another issue is that cut rifle barrels take a tad more break in than button rifle barrels as a general rule of thumb.

If you would like to speed up your break in process, using an alternative method, then saturate 10 patches with JB, work them back and forth in your barrel, short stroking on a tight punch type of jag. This is a very, very mild process to the barrel concentrate your efforts on the throat. A more aggressive process would be to use ISSO or flitz on patches, and with old military barrels and some savage barrels, ISSO or Flitz on a new bronze bristle brush.

I clean Savage barrels with good bronze bristle brushes and JB on a regular basis.

Now, I do not break in any barrels per the old method, but I will only shoot them around 25 or so rounds the first time out.

Factory barrels are a serious individuals, some are fantastic in terms of a lack of copper fouling, others are copper fouling pigs. The new Remington barrels are much better than the older hammer forged barrels. I have had one whale of a time with some savage barrels, with some needing cleaned every 7-9 shots before they foul out.

Good bronze bristle brushes are key to cleaning, throw away after 100 strokes. Copper fouling will destroy your groups, carbon fouling will destroy the barrel.

I wish that every serious rifle shooter could own a Lyman bore scope to verify their cleaning regiment. More than half of the companies on the market selling cleaning solvents need their azz sued off for making ridiculous claims about what their solvent are capable of doing.
 
Originally Posted By: ackleymanI started shooting Registered Benchrest in the early 80's. We broke in all our barrels using the one shot clean method, three shot, then five shot clean method. I never felt that it did very much for me, having been a previous varmint hunter. Then I got a lathe and bore scope about the same time. Most of the lapping you are doing is where the leade angle has been cut.

Another issue is that cut rifle barrels take a tad more break in than button rifle barrels as a general rule of thumb.

If you would like to speed up your break in process, using an alternative method, then saturate 10 patches with JB, work them back and forth in your barrel, short stroking on a tight punch type of jag. This is a very, very mild process to the barrel concentrate your efforts on the throat. A more aggressive process would be to use ISSO or flitz on patches, and with old military barrels and some savage barrels, ISSO or Flitz on a new bronze bristle brush.

I clean Savage barrels with good bronze bristle brushes and JB on a regular basis.

Now, I do not break in any barrels per the old method, but I will only shoot them around 25 or so rounds the first time out.

Factory barrels are a serious individuals, some are fantastic in terms of a lack of copper fouling, others are copper fouling pigs. The new Remington barrels are much better than the older hammer forged barrels. I have had one whale of a time with some savage barrels, with some needing cleaned every 7-9 shots before they foul out.

Good bronze bristle brushes are key to cleaning, throw away after 100 strokes. Copper fouling will destroy your groups, carbon fouling will destroy the barrel.

I wish that every serious rifle shooter could own a Lyman bore scope to verify their cleaning regiment. More than half of the companies on the market selling cleaning solvents need their azz sued off for making ridiculous claims about what their solvent are capable of doing.

+100

Keith knows his stuff. Listen to the man. Never bad advice from him.
 
Dag burn it. If I had a lawyer on retainer for everyone and everything that needs sued according to information obtained from surfing the web, I couldn't afford rifles.

Whatever happened to individual responsibility ensuring that you are doing things properly without the aid of a lawyer? Now barrel cleaning solvent companies need sued? What about the age old caveat emptor philosophy?
 
Originally Posted By: Winny Fan A new hand lapped custom barrel is at its best right before you fire the first round down it. After than its all down hill for custom barrels.

That one point is indisputable IMO....the rest of the tired old debate is speculation.

I do a little shoot-n-clean on factory barrels while I'm sighting em in. I can't prove whether it helps or not but the loss of barrel life from a couple of dozen rounds on a factory barrel isn't a concern to me so I do it "just in case".
 
Originally Posted By: RePeteOriginally Posted By: Winny Fan A new hand lapped custom barrel is at its best right before you fire the first round down it. After than its all down hill for custom barrels.

That one point is indisputable IMO....the rest of the tired old debate is speculation.

I do a little shoot-n-clean on factory barrels while I'm sighting em in. I can't prove whether it helps or not but the loss of barrel life from a couple of dozen rounds on a factory barrel isn't a concern to me so I do it "just in case".

In just about any hunting camp, the topic causes a few fingers of bourbon to get absorbed each time the topic comes up as part of the nightly conversation. So it can't be called a bad topic to speculate about.
grin.gif
 
Back
Top