Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Ask The Gunwriters Barrel Break In Yes or No?

Here's my break-in procedure:

Load a cartridge, pull trigger, eject spent case, and then repeat several times.................

i was able to get a in stock Brux 6mm target barrel for my switch barrel Bat action rifle so Greg will do the machinist work next week and chamber barrel too a 6 BR . yes it will be DBC right away before this barrel is shot too .

Yea but you are going to sell the rifle next week.

Break in varies dramatically.

.223 Rem goes pretty fast and a 7MM Mag with long bullets is not quite as fast.

One shot between cleans to bare steel is the hard way but laying down 50 rounds of fouling on a brand new barrel is also a bit counter productive.

There really is no question a barrel will burnish as shot and keeping the fouling low speeds this process.

John,

I started experimenting with the one-shot-clean (or 3-shots-clean, or whatever) break-in method around 25 years ago, partly because Ross Seyfried reported on it favorably in Guns & Ammo, and I generally believed what Ross wrote. (Knew him pretty well before he mostly gave up gun writing.)

I eventually quit breaking-in barrels that way because it resulted in very different results in various barrels, both factory and various quality custom barrels--and I generally found the same thing happened when I just cleaned the barrel after the first few 10-15 shot range sessions.

Why wouldn't the bullets "burnish" the throat and barrel the same way if it's cleaned down to bare steel after each session? (Eventually I also wondered why so many advocates of that break-in technique always seemed to use the word "burnish," which is a synonym for "polish" in every every dictionary I've ever checked. Have mentioned this before in various places.)

Not long after starting my experiments, I also bought a Gradient Lens bore-scope, due to realizing I needed to see exactly what was going on inside the bore--including seeing if WAS perfectly clean between shots. Still didn't find any consistent magic in the technique--and then, not long afterward, Ross published a column in Guns & Ammo that he'd changed his mind--that he'd decided the technique was essentially BS.

A few years afterward, around 2006, Dyna Bore Coat came along, and after experimenting with it considerably, decided it was a far better solution for bores that tended to foul, particularly factory barrels, but even lapped custom barrels. In fact I installed it in the Lilja stainless barrel on my last custom rifle, a 6.5 PRC by Charlie Sisk. The Lilja didn't foul much, but more than I suspected it would after installing DBC--and I was right. It doesn't shoot any better than pre-DBC, but it shoots great--and needs cleaning FAR less often.

John

What Jordan said. Works great for me. My last two rifles were built by Gordy Gritters. Both rifles have Krieger barrels. Used the exact same break in Jordan used. Worked great.

John, the use of burnished instead of polished is just another example of a more pretentious word being thought to sound more intelligent than does a simpler word. See also: velocity for speed and ambient temperature instead of surrounding temperature or just plain temperature.

Have you ever tried just shooting a Krieger barrel, and cleaning it after every range session?

Another thing I might mention is that I know more than one custom rifle maker (and even a couple of barrel makers) who included a "break-in procedure" on their website, just because so many customers (and potential customers) phoned or e-mailed asking for one. None of those guys believes in it, but they put one on their website just so they wouldn't have to waste time answering those e-mails and phone calls about why they didn't find break-in necessary.

But whatever.

Velocity is often used incorrectly and in casual conversation I'm certainly guilty of the offense.

Same here. Other way seems a waste of time and ammo.

FWIW "burnish" and "polish" are not the same thing, just as "velocity" and "speed" are not the same thing.

Having said that, a clean lead or jacketed bullet is not capable of burnishing or polishing a steel bore. Impregnate the bullet surface with something harder than steel (like grit) and it can polish it (that is how lapping works), but otherwise no.

You can confirm that by looking at a well used factory bore via borescope, in the area away from the throat: even after thousands of rounds the machining marks from the initial drilling of the bore are apt still to be there.

What does for barrels eventually tends to be erosion, with every round playing a part. The hot powder gas, maybe with some entrained particulates, superheats the steel surface and gradually washes it away. IMHO all that you do with break-in rituals is use up some of the barrel life, based on no more than superstition. You might as well take it out under a full moon and sacrifice something with it.

For me, I give it a good clean, to remove any factory preservative, swarf or other foreign material, and then use it.

One thing I've been wondering about is what powders some of the people who believe in frequently scrubbing barrels to get rid of powder and copper ffouling are using.

One "experiment" I performed a couple of years ago involved trying new powders and bullets in the 7mm Remington Magnum. The "test platform" was my own Mauser M18, one of those new "affordable" rifles, with a hammer-forged barrel.

I already had some knowledge of various newer powders that include a decoppering agent. This isn't new, but most that originally did were early spherical powders that left a LOT of powder residue in the bore, which also resulted in more copper fouling. I alternated firing test loads using new decoppering powders with non-decoppering powders. (One of the minor myths I've heard about decoppering powders is they won't help with previous copper fouling--which may be true if the fouling's heavy, but I have not found that to be true if it's not allowed to build up.)

After every range session I "cleaned" the bore with rubbing alcohol on a couple cotton patches, which removed most of what little powder fouling occurred, so I could observe the amount of copper fouling in my bore-scope. Other than that I didn't use any sort of powder or copper solvent.

In total I fired around 150 rounds, and the rifle shot very well, despite not absolutely "tweaking" every powder change. All loads resulted in 3-shot groups that were at most a little over an inch at 100 yards, and several were well under that, some in the half-inch range. There was a little copper visible along the edges of the grooves at the end, but it never affected the overall accuracy. In fact the most accurate loads were fired toward the end, probably because many modern powders burn most consistently at "maximum" pressure of 60,000 PSI or a little more. I still haven't "scrubbed" the bore, and don't intend to.

A barrel maker works his magic cutting rifling in a barrel and hand-laps it. Guys who are good at it have skill.

It’s amazing that people think they can improve upon that with their cleaning rod. And yes, morons who love to fondle and look at their rifles who have nothing better to do than to constantly clean them can ruin a barrel with a cleaning rod.

Velocity/speed and ambient temp/temp have important technical distinctions and meanings. But in daily conversation, it doesn't make much difference.

Yes, I have. Back when pull-throughs were common in military service "cord wear" was a real thing. The pull though would pick up grit and when not pulled straight it would wear the muzzle. This is one of the reasons I won't use the modern equivalents. I've also seen rifles damaged by cleaning rods.

The "break in" procedure I described is essentially just applying DBC and then cleaning as necessary when groups open up.

He must have struck a nerve. 😂😂😂

Same here. I had to perform surgery on the muzzle end of a Columbian Mauser barrel due to wear from a pull through.

dan,

I would love to know the technical difference in meaning between burnish and polish.

A few years ago I looked up both words in the two most accepted English dictionaries, Webster's Unabridged (for "American" English), and the Oxford Dictionary (British English), and they both said the words meant basically the same thing.
(By the way, I also did the same thing not too long ago with "accuracy" and "precision," which some shooters claim have different meanings. Same deal. Both Webster and Oxford list accuracy and precision as synonyms.)

John

My guess is that words that have technical distinction and significance are likely synonyms in common usage. That's the case with accuracy and precision. They have very different meanings in the context of physics, engineering, and metrology, but are synonyms to most people.