Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Ask The Gunwriters Barrel Break-in

Back in the '70's I was a serious BR competitor. Most people used barrels from Hart or Shilen with the occasional barrel from MacMillan. These brands were button rifled and hand lapped and were, consequently, very smooth. It was rare when one of these barrels had any real fouling problems and nobody broke in anything.
The first time I heard of anyone breaking in barrels was from a Portland, Oregon shooter who was using Bob Sherer barrels. Sherer barrels were a very well made cut rifled barrel which did not appear to have been lapped. This shooter (I think his name was Bill Simpson)told of shooting and cleaning for ten shots then shooting two etc. etc. Soom users of Atkinson barrels (also cut)adopted similar break-in procedures and soon, everyone was breaking in everything.
Just as superstitious as any other competitive shooter, I started using a modified break-in procedure as well. I simply wiped the bore after the first shot and, if metal fouling was present, scrubbed it out and fired again. If no metal showed I jst kept shooting and inspecting until it did or until my normal number of shots was fired (usually seven or eight). The I just went ahead as usual.
Now, if barrels are not lapped, I lap them. I still inspect for the first few shots but that is the extent of my break-in procedure. Since I can no longer see anything closer than about five feet, it's questionable whether or not my inspection is of any value!
I think it is of as much value to just shoot and clean when groups start to open up.
On moly,
I recently set back and rechambered a barrel which had been shot quite a bit with moly coated bullets. I used uncoated bullets and the barrel shot very well for about 50 shots (about 1/4 moa) then suddenly went sour and started shooting 1/2 minute or worse. This situation persisted for about another forty rounds during which I cleaned often and it is now shooting well again. I assume this was the time during which the moly was half there with patches of moly and not-moly throughout the bore. Nothing to do with breaking in but I found it interesting (and frusterating since the bad shooting phase started about two thirds of the way through a match). GD

The guy who does the test shooting for one of the major bullet companies (and a company that is reknowned for their accurate bullets) ran a 15,000 round test on moly a few years ago. He said that he would start seeing pressures spikes after about 50 rounds of molyed bullet went down the bore--and accuracy went south too. He said this was due to build-up in the throat that he could see with a bore-scope. A few more shots would knock the excess moly out, but until then accuracy was not so good.

I have run into some other thoughts on barrel break-in since this thread started:

Dan Lilja thinks a good layer of powder fouling HELPS REDUCE copper-fouling--and that's why we should clean the copper fouling out between the first shots, to allow the powder fouling to fill the little marks that even occur in lapped barrels.

Then other people will tell you that ALL fouling is bad, especially powder fouling.

At the risk of being stringhaulter and gilflurted I suggest that you just shoot them until they are broke in, you can clean them from time to time if you like or if the groups open up...

I tried all the secret methods of barrel break-in and finally came to the conclusion that a good barrel shoots and a bad barrel does not and all else is hooey!!

I clean my rifles after each shoot with about half a doze passes with a bore snake and am done with it, then once a year, after hunting seasons is over, I clean them with Wipe Out and grease the bores.

I ALWAYS clean the bore on a new rifle very throughly before I ever shoot it to get the remaining metal parts out of it from chambering or whatever, just in case the smith didn't...After that the bore is pretty much on its own...:) If it does not shoot to my satisfaction it comes off and a new one goes on, but that has not happened since I went to Lothar Walthar barrels, they ALL shoot tiny groups...

BTW, I have notice no difference since I quit breaking them in...

I better add that I am not a benchrest shooter these days, but I do want a rifle to shoot an inch for 3 shots at 100 yards at least, and am really a happy camper if it will shoot a 5 shot one inch group but most will not do that, they tend to open up on 4 and 5 it seems, but fortunatly not much.

Wow- this is from 2002! Whose idea was it to resurrect this sucker?


Break-in, we will never agree on it and it means different things to different folks!

I do find it hard to believe that if we are using 10-15 shots to break in a barrel that there are barrel makers dumb enough to think this makes a difference in the number of barrels they sell!

Hanco,

Here's a thread that started in 2002, then was briefly restarted in 2009. Since you apparently like to revive old threads, even if they've already pounded the subject well into the dirt, thought you might like a crack at this one--along with members who might not have been around in 2002 or 2009.

"My standard break-in for factory barrels these days is to shoot the thing, then see if it's fouling bad. If it is, then I "clean" the bore using 220-grit lapping paste on a patch wrapped around a bore brush. Unless the barrel's hopeless, this really smooths them up, without eroding the throat like fire-lapping. Most factory barrels respond well to being cleaned with JB the first few times. Custom barrels can just be shot, then cleaned every 10-30 rounds as fouling indicates. Doesn't hurt them a bit."

^^^^That's the answer!! ^^^^

I have not seen two manufacturers agree on break in procedure. Makes me think that their barrels are made from totally different metals.

I have to add however that I have had two barrels (one bought in Glasgow MT {300WM} and the other in Rapid City {280}, both cheap 700's made when Remington used molded rubber bands for stocks) that had tooling marks that looked like someone drug a heavy tool back out of the barrel. Fire lapping helped those a lot!. I've restocked those in wood and they are now two of my favorite rifles.

My break in procedure is this, clean the barrel thoroughly before shooting it the first time. Shoot it till it's hot 20-30 rounds and clean it again while still warm. Repeat 2 more times. I have some very accurate rifles that don't string when hot either. If the barrel is rough inside it will show quickly with this treatment and it will get the lapping paste treatment after removing the copper fouling. I was doing this long before anyone came out with the shoot one shot and clean it again method, saw no reason to change my ways.

Most people do not realize that the moon has as much effect on barrels as it does on tides. This is effect is at its height during break-in. To properly prepare a barrel to deal with this force it is imperative to perform the break-in process during one single phase of the moon. (Fortunately, which phase is chosen is not critical.) The process involves the firinng of 360 consecutive shots, one aimed at each degree of a circle around the bench.

5sdad,

That sounds like it would be at least as effective as any other break-in method.

I'm still using the method arrived at years ago, except for one addition: Clean the barrel in any rifle new to me, then shoot it until there's some indication it might need cleaning again.

The addition: If the barrel copper-fouls badly from the get-go, clean it throughly and install Dyna Bore-Coat.

I won't keep a barrel that copper fouls badly, if polishing it with bore paste doesn't fix it I get a new barrel.

John,

I just cut to the chase, and do that on all of them before they leave the house for the first time

Palidun,

Dyna Bore Coat cures a fouler far easier and quicker than any sort of polishing. It even works on rough factory barrels.

Dyna Bore coat, gonna look that up. I guess I have had awesome luck in the barrels I have owned. The worst barrel for fouling copper was a Holloway Arms blank I had turned down, fluted and chambered for 308, what a waste of money! This barrel spewed copper out onto the muzzle. Maybe Dyna Bore coat would have saved it but I put a Douglas 22-250 barrel on the old Mexican Mauser and all was good.

John,

I have a suspicion that DBC is nothing more than Hexagonal Boron Nitride suspended in some form of carrier. I had great luck with the first formula, but after it hardened up and Doug sent a replacement, it didn't offer anywhere near the benefits. I've been playing with HBN both as a bullet treatment and applied to the bore in a slurry with rubbing alcohol. I have a bunch and would be more than happy to send you some to mess with if you are interested.

Higgins

Higgins,

Thanks, but I have what's probably a lifetime supply of DBC.

According to the people at Dyna-Tek, it's a silica-based formula, and I've had good results from all the versions. The latest one, in fact, is what saved the barrel on my .338 Winchester Magnum.

The barrel always was something of a fouler, but shot so well I didn't mind cleaning it every 30-35 rounds. Tried various things to smooth it up, including mild abrasives, but eventually it started fouling so much accuracy disappeared after only 20 rounds,m when the bore appeared to be almost solid copper. JB Compound was the only way to get it out within a reasonable period of time. (By the way, through my Hawkeye bore-scope, the bore looked perfectly smooth, which gives credence to Dan Lilja's claim, based on his research, that repeated cleaning with JB can make a bore too smooth: There's more surface-contact with the bullet, so copper-fouling actually increases.)

It took two applications of DBC to cure the barrel. Now I only clean it every 80-100 rounds by pushing a few patches soaked in Montana Extreme down the bore. It's done in five minutes.

Soooo... DBC makes the barrel rougher??? (I couldn't resist)

Apparently!

Actually, I dunno how the stuff works. Doug Burche told me it filled in imperfections in the bore, but since it also apparently works on super-smooth bores.

Maybe it's like a Thermos bottle, which keeps cold stuff cold and hot stuff hot. :-)

How does it know?????

After days of cleaning with most methods ever published one of my rifles will still produce light blue patches when chemical bore cleaner is run through the barrel on a patch.

It's an accurate rifle, but... How clean does it have to be?

Believe me, I've tried chemicals, foam included, abrasives such as JB and Remington's. I've plugged the bore and had chemicals in 24 hours. Still light blue patches. I have not tried the electrical rod method, yet.

Another thing Dan Lilja (and some other barrel makers) suggest is not getting barrels too damn clean. Again through experimentation, Dan believes leaving a little something inside the bore helps accuracy, especially a slight amount of powder fouling.

I quit cleaning barrels as hard or as often years ago, because of my own experiments. A good barrel really doesn't need much cleaning to stay accurate--and if it does, I install DBC, which solves the problem. (Unlike Jordan, I don't automatically install it in every barrel that comes into the house--except for those on a particular brand of factory rifle. I've tested a bunch of them over the years, along with owning several, and it's far easier to install DBC right away than have to clean the bore frequently during testing.)

One thing I started doing decades ago was keep a log of the shots fired through my rifles, including when they were cleaned. I found almost all of them could go a LONG time between cleanings and still shoot fine, often several hundred rounds. And since most of them also shot larger groups for a while after cleaning, I quit cleaning 'em much. Life is good.