Breaking in a new Barrel

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Sky

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Did a search but did not up with what is thought to be the correct way to break in a new barrel.

A weapon is a highly machined system and a little care should be given when newly purchased. I was told way back in the beginning of firearm care that always break down and do a complete cleaning and inspection of any new firearm. To include running a brush down the bore with oil to try and remove any residual matter from burrs and clogged pores of the metal residing from the manufacturing process; then run a patch. This is more critical these days if you want your weapon to meet up with the ?1? MOA guarantee of a barrel.

There is a process that many refer to as burnishing during break-in. Use FMJ good quality ammo to help polish the inside of your barrel. Not something that does not have the sheen of newly made ammo or something cheap of unknown quality and metallurgy (harder casting the better).

Take one round and fire. Take cleaning rod and use a good copper solvent and clean the bore. Do this every time for the first 10 rounds and you will see the copper fouling is disappearing somewhere around the 8th to 10th round. After the first 10 then every 2 or 3 rounds repeat cleaning until a minimum of 30 rounds are fired (50) being optimum. Rifled shotgun barrels, pistols, all benefit from this break in procedure even black power firearms providing the hardest ball ammo is used.

Things might have changed over the years and I do not shoot competition or try to make 1000 yard shots with my collection. But it is amazing how the barrel will clean up from copper fouling after the first few rounds are fired so there must be something to this procedure.

Is all this necessary....depends... probably not for your everyday plinking kinda folk...for those who want to get the most out of your barrel try it on your next purchase and see what you think. This was told to me by an old WWll and Korean vet who passed away many years ago from Jacksboro, Tx
 
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the thing with barrel break in procedure is......no one has ever proven it does anything.

people who do it swear by it.....but....what are they comparing it to?

whos to say their barrel wouldnt have shot any differently if they didnt do anything to it?


until someone takes 2 identical barrels.......does a break-in on one...and leaves the other one alone.......and proves break-in procedures do ANYTHING......im going to remain skeptical.
 
hahahaha yes but for those who like to baby and admire their weapon it gives them the warm fuzzies.
I agree somethings we are told make sense but have no appreciable increase in form or function. Some rifles I have done the whole nine yards with and some I just blast 20 or thirty rounds through and then do the copper remove thingy. Either way after a few times with a copper solvent you can tell when the barrel is burnished, polished, broken in, whatever.

Maybe another way of checking to see is lock the firearm down and fire 2 shots at same POA. Then do the cleaning and fire two more and see how much if any the POI has changed. Problem with this method is when firing at a short range just a tad bit off makes for a lot off at range.

This has always made sense to me but alas "sometimes in all honesty" as I have aged a new rifle gets the copper solvent after a range trip during the seasoning of the barrel; just depends on the weapon.
 
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We had a disscussion here a month or so ago about barrel break in and what various barrel manufacturers recommend. The general consensious was some think it does wonders, others claim is just wears the barrel for the number of shots one uses to break it in.

If you're in the first camp, go for it and be happy with your results.

If however you're in the second camp, start using your barrel and be happy with the accuracy you're getting.

Google up 5 or 6 barrel makers and see the differing opinions.
 
As far as I know, nobody has ever done a side-by-side comparison of various break-in, or non-break-in processes using identical barrels. That would be the only way to definitively prove one method was superior to another, or to just shooting and cleaning normally.
 
I break in my very good barrel-in by-way of Kreiger instrutions starting with a very good cleaning first. Any cheaper run of the mil barrel get a good cleaning first and then a lesser version of Kreigers instrutions for break-in. There is a major difference between a full tilt match quality barrel and something that gets botton or hammer rifled. They will never shoot as well regaurdless of break-in. And oil ain't part of the cleaning
 
Not buying it. Not buying car or motorcycle 'break in' theories either. Modern manufacturing tolerances totally obviate this line of reasoning. It's now relegated to old wives tale status.
 
Just shoot...

it. That has worked for me for over 50 years......................clean afterwards....chris3
 
I used to worry about things like this. But Gale McMillan of McMillan barrels had some insight into the subject.

http://www.snipercountry.com/Articles/Barrel_BreakIn.asp

Gale McMillan
Senior Member posted September 25, 1999 10:10 AM
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The break in fad was started by a fellow I helped get started in the barrel business . He started putting a set of break in instructions in ever barrel he shipped. One came into the shop to be installed and I read it and the next time I saw him I asked him What was with this break in crap?. His answer was Mac, My share of the market is about 700 barrels a year. I cater to the target crowd and they shoot a barrel about 3000 rounds before they change it. If each one uses up 100 rounds of each barrel breaking it in you can figure out how many more barrels I will get to make each year. If you will stop and think that the barrel doesn't know whether you are cleaning it every shot or every 5 shots and if you are removing all foreign material that has been deposited in it since the last time you cleaned it what more can you do? When I ship a barrel I send a recommendation with it that you clean it ever chance you get with a brass brush pushed through it at least 12 times with a good solvent and followed by two and only 2 soft patches. This means if you are a bench rest shooter you clean ever 7 or 8 rounds . If you are a high power shooter you clean it when you come off the line after 20 rounds. If you follow the fad of cleaning every shot for X amount and every 2 shots for X amount and so on the only thing you are accomplishing is shortening the life of the barrel by the amount of rounds you shot during this process. I always say Monkey see Monkey do, now I will wait on the flames but before you write them, Please include what you think is happening inside your barrel during break in that is worth the expense and time you are spending during break in
 
Hello all,
Well I bought a used Remington VLS 6mm a few years ago.
While cleaning it I noticed the cleaning rod was hitting a stickey spot just ahead of the breach.:scrutiny:

I decided to do a break-in procedure on it.
After the procedure no more stickey spot, it was just smooth al the way down the barrel.:D

I just thought I would atest that the break-in procedure worked on my rifle.
 
Never a flame from me. The whole point during break in and even before the first round is fired is to remove all and any loose particulate matter that is still in the barrel after the manufacturing/shipping/storage process. This procedure supposedly removes the possibility of scoring the barrel with a metal shaving that is still hanging on by a few base molecules.

Now that we have guys with borescopes which can look down a brand new never fired barrel and see all the left over trash if any. Some found is soft lent type and some is hard metal grains either in the rifling or barrel depending on the manufacturer. I have to agree the manufacturing processes we have today are light years ahead of what was available just 60 years ago. Dunno if it is my age or the times. I clean a new gun before I shoot. When I say clean I run an oiled brush down the barrel and then a patch. Depending on what comes out the other end I may repeat. Out of all the weapons I have these days (that were purchased new) I have done the above break in procedure on two long range guns. They are both long barreled great shooting ARs. Would they have still been if I had not done the break in period; maybe. Once a barrel or weapon is broken in I use a copper solvent maybe once a year. I hunt and occasionally put a couple of hundred rounds down a barrel a day but really not all that often. Seems like the pistols get more rounds down the tube than the rifles?

Do I believe in the above procedure and want to stand on a soap box pointing the finger of guilt at everyone who does not follow this procedure; NO! It is just something I was told a long time ago and was wondering if anyone else had heard the same thing or used this method or even thought it necessary.

I have a few new uppers I will be using in the next couple of weeks. I will brush and clean before they ever see their first round (soap box) and with one upper I will run a copper solvent down kinda as described above. Maybe it is the excitement or the trepidation of new uppers that the expectations are running high that motivated me to post this procedure. Could also be the dread of going through the whole time consuming process in the heat that brought this up with the off hand thought that someone with armorer experience or match barrel type experience might comment. If I were not so cheap I would buy a borescope and take before and after pictures on the new uppers; but then I would have to learn how to post pictures here at THR and no telling where I would end up then?
 
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The ever-popular #36 from the FAQs.

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Barrel break in.

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.
 
A break in procedure won't hurt a thing. And, if you happen to have a burr left by a dull throater in a typical barrel that is not hand lapped it will help wear it off and get your barrel to shoot it's best faster.
 
Seems more like voodoo magic to me. I guess I can understand that some burrs might exist inside the barrel and be smoothed out during the initial shots but i never really got the purpose of running a cleaning rod down it every single shot (or 3 shots, 5 shots etc.) I know people will say that this prevents metal shavings from scoring the barrel during successive shots but if you subscribe to this theory isn't the barrel going to be scored anyway during the first shot? I would imagine that any rough metal particles are going to be pushed out the barrel with the bullet as they are worn down. Personally I think it all borders on OCD and I just shoot any brand new rifle as normal and give it a cleaning it after the range. My new Weatherby vanguard has no problem shooting 1/2 MOA despite ignoring any strict break-in rules.
 
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As other have stated... if it really made any difference wouldn't at least one "expert" take a dozen identical barrels from the same run and "break in" half of them to prove those six perform better than the other six that were not "properly broken in"? I see no scientific data to prove it does anything at all.
 
Taliv you are on the ball!! Thanks and sorry when I did a "barrel break in" I got nothing??
Great pictures in some of those post!! Guess the Old man from Jacksboro was right after all!
 
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simply because the "experts" know barrels aren't identical, even from the same run.

mike1234567 and m-cameron, read krieger's explanation of what is actually happening and how break in is supposed to fix it. then please propose a SCIENTIFIC test that would satisfy you.

http://www.kriegerbarrels.com/Break_In__Cleaning-c1246-wp2558.htm
Because the lay of the finish is in the direction of the bullet travel, very little is done to the bore during break-in, but the throat is another story. When your barrel is chambered, by necessity there are reamer marks left in the throat that are across the lands, i.e. across the direction of the bullet travel. In a new barrel they are very distinct; much like the teeth on a very fine file. When the bullet is forced into the throat, copper dust is removed from the jacket material and released into the gas which at this temperature and pressure is actually a plasma. The copper dust is vaporized in this plasma and is carried down the barrel. As the gas expands and cools, the copper comes out of suspension and is deposited in the bore. This makes it appear as if the source of the fouling is the bore when it is actually for the most part the new throat. If this copper is allowed to stay in the bore, and subsequent bullets and deposits are fired over it, copper which adheres well to itself, will build up quickly and may be difficult to remove later. So when we break in a barrel, our goal is to get the throat “polished” without allowing copper to build up in the bore. This is the reasoning for the "fire-one-shot-and-clean" procedure.

(the rest of the article is well worth reading too)
 
zerojunk, not sure if you were implying this or not, but i assume you know the "hand lapping" happens before the chambering. so hand lapping cannot possibly affect problems caused by a dull reamer

also, i don't really believe nylon/cotton/brushes and copper solvent will remove "burrs"

i don't believe break-in keeps "metal shavings" from doing anything. (though obviously it makes sense to clean a chamber and barrel before you shoot it in case the factory left anything in there, to include rust-inhibitors)
 
Some shooters and builders lap their barrels with with some type of compound on a new rifle. But, in general I was addressing McMillan's comments about break in on custom barrels which is a far cry from what you are going to get from a production rifle.

McMillan himself made the comments about how the process of chambering could leave a burr on the down wind side of the lands and why a rifle would sometimes settle down and shoot better after a few hundred rounds.

It was probably on TFL and I can't find it. Sort of contradicts the post against barrel break in that is reposted regularly.
 
np, just wasn't sure if i was reading what you wrote correctly.
 
BTW, here is a post I made on a July thread on this same subject.

The thing about it is, the custom barrel maker is not necessarily the one who cuts the chamber. Matter of fact he likely isn't. So, he has no control over the condition of the reamer and how the barrel is throated. You can have the most pristine barrel in the world and have a burr left by the rifle builder.
 
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