Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunting Rifles Barrel Break - In Question?

Yesterday I did the barrel break-in on my new x bolt 7mag. I was using montana xtreme bore cleaner. my question is since i was using bore cleaner and NOT copper solvent, did i really even break in my barrel. do you have to break in your bore with copper solvent.

What should I do now, is it to late to start all over. I do have hoppes no.9 but i used montana xtreme. I'm new to this, so any help is greatly appreciated.

BTW my best group was .68 ctc 3 shot group with 150 gr winchester super x.

There are many methods but if your centre to centre is.68 actual, I would suggest cleaning as appropriate from the chamber end, only as necessary.(i.e. when accuracy falls off) There is no need to lap the rifling unless there is a lot of fouling. I followed a regimine when brking in my shilen match barrel, and improved absolutely nothing by doing so. It shot .1" to .15" bench rested with all the front and rear paraphanalia deepending on the load. After a 50 shot break in there was no significant difference in fouling, and none in group size.

My post is sure to engender spirited discussion as there is much disagreement with my opinion.

Randy

At what extent do I have to worry about the bore rusting from not cleaning. It is a stainless steal barrel would that help at all.

Thanks

It is never too late to remove cooper fouling. With unbroken barrel, you probably have lots of it. I use Sweet's 7.62, but any ammonia based solvent will work.. Keep in mind that the solvent does not physically "clean" the fouling, but ammonium hydroxide chemically reacts with metallic cooper. The resulting product is water soluble cooper hydroxide, the blue colored stuff that comes out of the bore. Because it is chemical reaction, you need to give the solvent enough time to convert all metallic cooper into the salt. Usually, 10 - 15 min at a room temperature is sufficient time. On a heavily fouled barrel, I warm up the barrel with hot air gun and also increase exposure time. The cooper fouling wont rust the barrel, (but the cooper itself will rust). Once you are done with de-fouling, you want to get rid of the the traces of ammonia out of the bore. I use Ed's Red (equal volumetric parts of acetone, mineral spirit, kerosene and automotive transmission fluid). This stuff is also great for general cleaning of a bore between cooper defoulings.

I broke in a new Gaillard bbl in 270Win yesterday. It was a very scientific procedure. Shot 8 "sighter" loads, cleaned with Hopps and then shot it's first group as seen here.

Break-in was successful, I'd say.

Damn!!! who cares, Your rifle shoots great!..Congrats..............Hillbilly.

Just don't overheat the thing and you're fine. Also, please note that stainless steel used in barrels does rust.

Another term for "breaking in a barrel" is "shooting" - the key, as mentioned above, is not overheating the steel during break in or when already broken in. What you are doing is fire-lapping, smoothing out the steel on the surface of the rifling. I break a barrel in by zeroing my scope, working up my loads, and then shooting them some more. By 80-100 rounds a hunting rifle should be at its peak accuracy.

Here's how I break-in a barrel:

Clean real well before first firing & then shoot till accuracy drops off, then clean, & shoot till accuracy drops off again, then clean etc etc ...............................

That works for me. Barrels can't count. They don't know if you've shot them once or a dozen times as long as you watch your heat build up. Never let the rifle get so hot that you can't pick it up by the barrel.

You are doing fine. The accuracy is good, and I don't have the time for a typical barrel break in. I just polish them with either JB, Flitz or firelap them with my Wheeler firelapping kit. Quick and easy and effective. David Tubbs final finish kit would also work as well I presume.

Can there be permanent damage to the barrel if you let it over heat to much? Or is it just the accuracy Isnt as good as it was with a cold bore.

Shooting hot allows for undue wear on lands, and grooves to a lesser extent. It also allows for quicker throat erosion, all of which will contribute to faster deterioration of accuracy. It is one of the reasons varmint hunters need to change barrels more frequently. They do lots of shooting and often with quite warm barrels.

Having said that I got a third degree burn from an FN FAL that had only shot 60 rounds. That was in probably less than a minute. I picked it up by the barrel, and learned the purposs of the carry handle. It was during a three gun match. I changed out that barrel about every 5k rounds because it was shot hot often.

My target 308 has its original barrel still going strong at 6k or 7k rounds.

Some wags say that shooting a new barrel too hot will introduce new heat stresses into the steel, especially for button rifled and hammer forged barrels. This is also said not to effect cut rifled barrels as much, if at all. If your group walks as the barrel heats - this is a contributing factor.

Main wear and fouling area is the throat, where circumferential tool marks scrape copper off the jacket and high gas temperature, velocity and pressure turns it into a plasma and deposits it along the bore. Keeping the throat clean and cool allows the steel to polish out without fouling things up layers of copper and carbon. The best quality barrels properly chambered will be less prone to all this and break in quickly. When a barrel cleans up with a few solvent soaked patches and groups shrink suddenly, you have arrived.

It's all alchemy - but keeping things cool and clean for the first 50 or so shots isn't going to hurt, it's just boring and time consuming.

I break a new one in exactly like I break in an old one.

Clean it spotless, JB it, then UBC it....done.

Hasn't failed me yet.......