Thread: Breaking in a barrel

Put a carbon wrapped barrel on my rifle a while back and broke it in as per manufacturers recommendation's. Not a big deal ammo wise but don't really know if it made any appreciable difference to just "zero it and go for a hunt".
Interesting thing was that the groups improved markedly once there'd been 3 or 4 hundred rounds down the tube.

I think It's not really a thing anymore. Sight in that rifle, then give the barrel a good huck out, job done & carry on your normal cleaning routine.

Originally Posted by Waipuna

Hi everyone, looking for some advice for breaking in a barrel, a Google search gets all kinds of responses so seems very personal choice

When I got my 7mm08, I cleaned the barrel every round for the first 5, then every 5th round after that probably for my first 20 rounds through it, accuracy is decent and now been 80 plus rounds through it

I picked up a Bergara BA13 yesterday in .308 so thinking about breaking that in soon

Just after opinions on what you all think as there will probably be many preferences

Thank you in advance

If something needs break-in, it wasn't finished correctly.

Be it boots, barrels or...

There are limitations to what you can know by “evidence”, as hinted above with suggestion of using a control barel of the same batch a
And then you have the difficulty of evidencing whether one barrel is more a
Accurate or better in some way than another and whether break in had anything to do with it. So you and I recreational shooters will not be able to get to the bottom of this.

Yet there is a truth but we mortals cant ascertain it. It could be a big truth too, like 0.2 moa better grouping or 500 rounds longer accuracy, just we cant generate our own “evidence” for it.

Then we have “first principles” ie logic and agreed starting points ( premiss ). These go along the lines of “New barrels have burrs and shot-clean-shot deals to these and minimises fouling AND that improves barrel quality.”

Then we have “opinions of experts” or advice of manufacturers and finally anecdote …

Definitely clean new barrel thoroughly before firing, Hoppes or degreaser to remove any grease or residual oil. I tend to follow the rifle manufacturers or gunsmiths recommendations for “breaking in” but no way of knowing if it’s necessary or not. If rifle or barrel turns out to be “inaccurate” you then should have better grounds for the argument with gunshop or smith than if you ignored their advice.

Bear in mind that even the very best barrels only have a barrel life of mere seconds; roughly 1,000 rounds equates to 1 second of barrel life, so 6-7 seconds is about the average accurate life of a barrel with proper care. Barrels don't 'wear in', they wear out with every shot.

So if we're going to for example apply the 1 shot and clean for the first five rounds how do we rationalise the fact that the rifle manufacturer has fired a test group with that rifle, I assume without cleaning between rounds. Every Tikka I have purchased new has come to me with a dirty barrel, I am thinking they don't even clean it before dispatch.

Originally Posted by zeropak

So if we're going to for example apply the 1 shot and clean for the first five rounds how do we rationalise the fact that the rifle manufacturer has fired a test group with that rifle, I assume without cleaning between rounds. Every Tikka I have purchased new has come to me with a dirty barrel, I am thinking they don't even clean it before dispatch.

One more reason I will never buy one LoL

I was just going to say the same thing, the first 3 or 5 rounds get slapped down it without any special care in the factory. I've even seen brand new ones come out of the box with a complementary light red fluff! A quick wap with a bronze brush soon sorts that out though.

About the only thing that I feel comes as a benefit from doing a clean one shoot one on a barrel is it seems to make it easier to clean later on. If it's easier to clean, thats gotta be a good thing in my book but as noted by a few up above it's not going to magically turn an unremarkable rifle into a miracle one-hole wonder.

Originally Posted by gundoc

Bear in mind that even the very best barrels only have a barrel life of mere seconds; roughly 1,000 rounds equates to 1 second of barrel life, so 6-7 seconds is about the average accurate life of a barrel with proper care. Barrels don't 'wear in', they wear out with every shot.

That's depressing, a $1000 barrel gets rendered down to basically $150 a second of usable life...

That is probably cheaper than a trophy wife!

You buy thousand dollar barrels?

When i received my BA13 16.5 inch with a 1-8 twist. I sent a bunch of light ammo i had down range and had mixed results. Shrugged it off and went hunting and bagged a deer that following weekend. However, I put a heaver shot through it and it behaved like a laser. Breaking in? meh...

Apparently Eric Cortina used to break in barrels and after talking with barrel makers no longer does so, possibly one of the best shooters around.

I just go out and shoot it. Never broken one in yet and they shoot better than I can