Barrel break in revisited!

[19dsniper]

Before i get to my question im sure someone is going to tell me to use the search function. Let me just say that i have used the search function, and the snipers hide "google" search function (by far the best so far), and i have done plenty of reading on the topic.

So here it is, Now that i have my Rem 700 5r .300wm, Do i break in the barrel or just start shooting it?

I have read tons of write ups on how the traditional break in procedure only reduces the barrel life, and how you should just shoot it and forget it, until you notice a drop in accuracy, then and only then, should you clean.

The reason im asking on here, and i honestly hate to limit opinions to just specific people as i feel its not always fair, but im wondering how many people who shoot 1000m and farther, actually break in their barrels. Im sure we have a lot of F class shooters on here and true Long Range shooters with tons of experience. This is who the question is specifically for. Again, all opinions are welcome, but the guys who shoot long range and especially competitors, what is your opinion on this matter with the 5r? or any barrel for that matter?

last quick one: Tubb Final Finish, do you recomend it in a 5r? I havent shot it yet as im waiting on opinions from the first question, so i have no idea how bad it will foul.

Thanks everyone for bearing with me on this.

 

[deadly0311]

Re: Barrel break in revisited!

Here is a sticky that was discussed at length. Will it help answer your question, i dont know. But me personally with a custom barrel i just shoot it, with a factory barrel if i had some Tubbs FFS id shoot a few through it to smooth out the throat and knock down any tool marks that are in the bore. But im a huge supporter of just shooting it and not doing anything other than a inspection and clean patch down the bore before the first round goes down range to make sure the bore is clear of obstructions.

http://www.snipershide.com/forum/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=1562996#Post1562996

<span style="font-weight: bold">This has the makings of getting people heated and i hope that it doesnt, as this could be a great topic with something good coming out of it.I would love to ask that if you are going to get pissed because someones ideas are different to yours and are only going to add emotional responses to please keep your post to yourself. Not saying anyone in particular, but this topic has a way of getting train wrecked easy.</span> I personally have never broken any of the barrels i have in, and all have shot under 3/4 MOA with me behind them.

 

[Lowlight]

Re: Barrel break in revisited!

Here is the beginning of an answer...

1st remember this, a Remington 5r is just a factory barrel, granted a better factory barrel than their others, but still a factory barrel.

Next, part of breaking in any barrel lies with the owner. What will make you, the owner of a new rifle feel the best about yourself and your rifle. Will "not" breaking it in always leave a question in your mind ? Once you start to use your rifle, if you find you are blowing a shot or two are you gonna blame you or the rifle, as in, "i knew I should have broken it in". Because if this is what kind of person you are, I would suggest you break it in. Spend the day, shooting once scrubbing twice if that is what you heart is telling you.

For me personally, i have no emotional investment in my rifles, or their barrels, I am gonna shoot it in excess of 10k rounds and then I am gonna rebarrel it. I have not broken in a barrel in some time and continue to see excellent results. I don't clean them until accuracy falls off and I don't sweat copper in the bore. I shoot often and I shoot accurately and I see no evidence that breaking in my barrels changes anything. I have yet to say to myself, "gee I really should have taken the time to break that in"... it never happens.

lastly as to your final finish question... I wouldn't use it ? Why would you, is there is something wrong that you feels requires you to wear your barrel down in places ? If you don't have an issue and you haven't shot it, why on earth would you consider putting an abrasive compound in your barrel at 2600fps ? It makes no sense to me... shoot it and move on. If at 6000 rounds you want to try it, then by all means try it, but at 0 -- not me.

Follow your heart it won't let you down, because where the heart goes the mind follows and if you inject doubt into your system it will never be right.

Me, I shoot on down the road without a care in the world.

 

[Lowlight]

Re: Barrel break in revisited!

Oh, with a 300WM you'll definitely have to clean it more often, I missed that part.

And I wouldn't final finish it, tons of powder going down that tube, no reason to remove a layer or two of metal before hand as the barrel life will be gone before you know anyway.

 

[treebasher]

Re: Barrel break in revisited!

http://www.6mmbr.com/GailMcMbreakin.html

How to Break-in a Barrel
-- A Dissenting Point of View

Gale McMillan, of McMillan Stocks fame, was one of the finest barrel-makers and benchrest shooters of all time. Here he argues that elaborate barrel break-in procedures do more harm than good.

Comments collected from Gale's Gun Forum postings.

As a barrel maker I have looked in thousands of new and used barrels with a bore scope and I will tell you that if every one followed the prescribed [one shot, one clean] break-in method, a very large number would do more harm than good. The reason you hear of the gain in accuracy is because if you chamber a barrel with a reamer that has a dull throater instead of cutting clean sharp rifling it smears a burr up on the down wind side of the rifling. It takes from one to two hundred rounds to burn this burr out and the rifle to settle down and shoot its best. Any one who chambers rifle barrels has tolerances on how dull to let the reamer get and factories let them go longer than any competent smith would.

Another tidbit to consider--take a 300 Win Mag that has a life expectancy of 1000 rounds. Use 10% of it up with your break-in procedure. For every 10 barrels the barrel-maker makes he has to make one more just to take care of the break-in. No wonder barrel-makers like to see this. Now when you flame me on this please [explain] what you think is happening to the inside of your barrel during the break in that is helping you.

Consider this: every round shot in breaking-in a barrel is one round off the life of said rifle barrel. No one has ever told me the physical reason of what happens during break-in firing. In other words what, to the number of pounds of powder shot at any given pressure, is the life of the barrel. No one has ever explained what is being accomplished by shooting and cleaning in any prescribed method. Start your barrel off with 5 rounds and clean it thoroughly and do it again. Nev Maden, a friend down under that my brother taught to make barrels was the one who came up with the [one shot one clean] break-in method. He may think he has come upon something, or he has come up with another way to sell barrels. I feel that the first shot out of a barrel is its best and every one after that deteriorates [the bore] until the barrel is gone. If some one can explain what physically takes place during break-in to modify the barrel then I may change my mind. As the physical properties of a barrel don't change because of the break-in procedures it means it's all hog wash. I am open to any suggestions that can be documented otherwise if it is just someone's opinion--forget it.

It all got started when a barrel maker that I know started putting break-in instructions in the box with each barrel he shipped a few years ago. I asked him how he figured it would help and his reply was if they shoot 100 rounds breaking in this barrel that's total life is 3000 rounds and I make 1000 barrels a year just figure how many more barrels I will get to make. He had a point; it definately will shorten the barrel life. I have been a barrel maker a fair amount of time and my barrels have set and reset benchrest world records so many times I quit keeping track (at one time they held 7 at one time) along with High Power, Silhouette, Smallbore national and world records and my instructions were to clean as often as possible preferably every 10 rounds. I inspect every barrel taken off and every new barrel before it is shipped with a bore scope and I will tell you all that I see far more barrels ruined by cleaning rods than I see worn out from normal wear and tear. I am even reading about people recommending breaking-in pistols. As if it will help their shooting ability or the guns'.

More from Gale McMillan: http://www.snipercountry.com/Articles/Barrel_BreakIn.asp

 

[19dsniper]

Re: Barrel break in revisited!

well... im convinced... no barrel break in for me! thanks guys

 

[Sapper524]

Re: Barrel break in revisited!

stay away from those "cow" barrels ...

 

[alf]

Re: Barrel break in revisited!

I shoot 1K BR competition, and I quit breaking in barrels quite a while ago.
Just a thought....but you're breaking in a barrel by the one shot and clean method to make cleaning easier in the future, while you're busy cleaning your ass off now? Kinda counter productive to me.

 

[john_1182]

Re: Barrel break in revisited!

i yoused to scrub and scrub and scrub, and never could keep a decent group, and always blamed the break in.. then i come on SH opend my eyes and my mind a bit and relised why do it if i dont have to. with the brake in i now just pull through a bore snake afer each shot for the first 10> 15 rounds and be done with. (ive only ever had factory barrels)

 

[Greg Langelius *]

Re: Barrel break in revisited!

I've seen Gale McMillan quoted time and time again. While I think he makes sense, I think he also takes a rather narrow viewpoint on the issue.

Without coming across as sycophantic, I think LowLight's statement(s) above are the most clear and balanced essay on the subject that I have seen to date. As he suggests, maybe it's more about your own comfort level than it is about anything that's going on inside the bore.

I would be rather more in favor of firepolishing a factory bore, and almost never inclined to try it with a premium barrel. The first may benefit, and the latter may suffer.

Greg

 

[Topstrap]

Re: Barrel break in revisited!

This quote from Lowlight says it all in my opinion. My exact feelings also.

"" For me personally, i have no emotional investment in my rifles, or their barrels, I am gonna shoot it in excess of 10k rounds and then I am gonna rebarrel it. I have not broken in a barrel in some time and continue to see excellent results. I don't clean them until accuracy falls off and I don't sweat copper in the bore. I shoot often and I shoot accurately and I see no evidence that breaking in my barrels changes anything. I have yet to say to myself, "gee I really should have taken the time to break that in"... it never happens. ""

The one thing I do wonder about though is some barrels might be "rougher" than others. Some might take a bit longer to get smoothed out till they can go longer inbetween when it tells you it needs a cleaning. I have a Lilja 3 groove on my long range rig and it just don't seem to ever need a cleaning. Looking down the bore it still looks smooth and shiny after untold hundreds of rounds and yes it still does shoot very well even in my shaky hands.

Topstrap

 

[sandwarrior]

Re: Barrel break in revisited!

I know you will all maybe disagree with me. I think barrel break in is important when looking to super tight accuracy. It's not going to make a .5 MOA rifle become a .2 MOA rifle. Where it's going to help is in benchrest shooting where a .15 MOA gun is going to be a .1 or lower gun. Basically, it's just adding a little polish to the barrel. If the barrel wasn't really smooth to start with breaking it in isn't going to help.

In the world of long range shooting you want as much accuracy as you can get. But, put in perspective, if you had a .3 MOA gun that you broke in right and it gives you .2 MOA now, you've only really mathematically deducted 1.5" @ 1000 yds. Nobody can really shoot that good consistently. What that means is that last little tiny bit of accuracy is nothing compared to your wind calling skills and sticking with fundamentals when pulling the trigger. It's really more about knowing whats going on outside your barrel than inside. That should already be tight enough if you did your part and had it built right.

Edit:

FWIW, I broke in my newest barrel, a 7mm-08. The way I always break in barrels is shoot once and clean once for five. Then shoot 3 or five shot groups and clean. When after a group is fired and it comes out clean then it's as broke in as your going to get. I fired 25 total shots (1 ea./ 4-5's) and it came out clean on the fourth group. That was a Shilen 1-8" twist 26" 7mm-08 barrel. I honestly could not see a difference in accuracy. But, I know it picked up a smidge more fouling at first than after break in.

 

[yavapai kid]

Re: Barrel break in revisited!

Best advise I've ever seen.


I've spent the last few months trying to get a better understanding of what a barrel break-in process is and how to properly clean a rifle. What to do and what not to do.

I've spent a lot of time on this board, the BR board and other shooting boards listening to members and what works for them. Conclusion, what works for some, doesn't work for others. Being an engineer in the telecommunications field, when it's broke or you don't understand something you go back to manufactures specs and schematics. So that's kinda what I did on this subject.

I've talked with 4 metallurgist and 3 barrel manufactures (Rock Creek, Hart and Shilen), on the subject. From a scientific point of view, they all said and agreed to pretty much the same thing.

First, barrel break-in processes keep them in business. This shoot and clean, shoot and clean every round or few rounds break-in process only damages your brand new match barrel. Think of a car engine for a moment. Why do we use oil in the engine? To prevent metal-to-metal contact and reduce friction between two metal surfaces. Your barrel is no different from the engine. Mike Rock at Rock Creek barrels gave me the most detailed explanations on barrels and ballistics. Mike has his degree in metallurgy; he was also the chief ballistics engineer for the Army for many years at the Aberdeen Proving grounds. Stan Rivenbark was one of the top ballistic engineers for Raytheon before he retired in the 70's and also has a degree in metallurgy. I also talked with two local metallurgists here in North TX. I confirmed my findings with each person to see if they agreed or disagreed. Conclusion, they all agreed with each other's assessments.

When Mike worked at Aberdeen proving grounds, the Army used high speed bore videos with mirrors, thermal imaging and computers to analyze any and everything that happens when the firing pin hits the primer and the round goes off. When the primer ignites there is enough pressure to move the bullet forward into the lands. The bullet then stops. As the primer ignites the powder, more pressure builds moving the bullet forward where it can stop again. Once there is enough pressure from the round going off, the bullet is moved down out the barrel. All of this happens in nanoseconds (billionths of a second). Your bullet starts and stops at least twice and sometimes three times before it leaves the barrel. This is fact.

If you clean every round or every few rounds during your barrel break-in process or clean your rifle so well after shooting that you take it down to the bare metal, you've created a metal-to-metal contact surface for the next time you shoot the gun. So what's the problem with this you ask? Just like your car engine, metal-to-metal contact will sheer away layers of metal from each surface. So if your bullet is starting and stopping two or three times as it leaves the barrel, that's two or three places for metal-to-metal contact to happen as well as the rest of your bore. The use of JB's and Flitz can and will take you down to metal-to-metal contact. For all intents and purposes, JB's and Flitz are not the most ideal products for cleaning your rifle.

According to Mike Rock, and the other barrel manufactures agreed, all you need to avoid this metal-to-metal contact is a good burnish in the barrel. Shilen, Hart and Rock Creek will all void your barrel warranty if you shoot moly bullets and for good reason. This is not to say that moly is necessarily bad for a barrel, but it is when applied to bullets. There is no way possible to coat a bore with moly bullets. The bullet contact surface in the barrel is only so big. But when your round goes off, moly comes off the contact surface of the bullet in the throat area of the rifle and is bonded to the barrel due to the excessive heat and pressure. We're not talking coated or adhered to, we're talking bonded, d**n near permanent. With this, some of the jacket coating comes off the bullet. Follow this up with another round and you've now embedded the copper jacket between layers of bonded moly. This is the beginning of the black moly ring, which ruins countless barrels and is so hard; it can hardly be scraped off with a screwdriver's corner edge. This is what happened to a new Shilen SS select match barrel I had to have replaced with less than 400 rounds through it. I can't talk for Fastex as I don't or none of the folks I talked to knew enough about the product to comment on it. When I talked to Mike about my new barrel and the barrel break-in process, this is what he had to say. He first hand laps each barrel with a lead lap. He then uses two products from Sentry Solutions, a product called Smooth Coat, which is an alcohol and moly based product. He applies wet patches of Smooth Coats until the bore is good and saturated and lets it sit until the alcohol evaporates. The barrel now has loose moly in it. Next he uses a product called BP-2000, which is a very fine moly powder. Applied to a patch wrapped around a bore brush, he makes a hundred passes or so through the barrel very rapidly before having to rest. He repeats this process with fresh patches containing the moly powder a few more times. What he is doing is burnishing the barrel surface with moly and filling in any fine micro lines left by the hand lapping. He then uses a couple of clean patches to knock out any remaining moly left in the bore.

With the barrel burnished with moly, this will prevent any metal-to-metal contact during the barrel break-in process. My instructions for barrel break-in were quite simple. Shoot 20 rounds (non-moly bullets) with no cleaning, as this will further burnish the barrel. Done! Now shoot and clean using your regular regimen of cleaning and if you have to use JB's or flitz type products, go very easy with them, or better yet avoid them. Never clean down to bare metal. He said most of the cleaning products do a great job, don't be afraid to use a brush and go easy on the ammonia-based products for removing copper fouling. Basically don't let the ammonia-based products remain in the barrel for long lengths of time.

Well that's the long and skinny from the scientific point of view on the subject. If you're ever in doubt about the real condition of your barrel, take it to someone who has a bore scope and even better if someone has a bore scope that can magnify the view. You may be surprised at what is really going on in your barrel.

I'm sure this will spark a debate here and there, but that's good thing. The more information we have, the better off we'll be.

 

[AK10mm]

Re: Barrel break in revisited!

Apache Kid,

Once the barrel has been burnished with moly and shoot 20 naked bullets,do you then go to moly bullets?Your post was unclear about that.

How would this apply if I was thinking about using HBN?

 

[sandwarrior]

Re: Barrel break in revisited!

<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Originally Posted By: SANDRAT</div><div class="ubbcode-body">Apache Kid,

Once the barrel has been burnished with moly and shoot 20 naked bullets,do you then go to moly bullets?Your post was unclear about that.

How would this apply if I was thinking about using HBN?</div></div>

I think what he was saying there, is the moly on the bullets is what is leaving the dark, hard crusty, hard to clean area in the throat. I never did get a good vibe with that stuff so I declined to ever start using it.

FWIW, I agree that the long elaborate break-ins are a waste. They should show less build-up in very short order. Note that mine only took 25 rounds. If you are still getting excess copper build-up, <span style="text-decoration: underline">and it affects accuracy</span>, I would send that barrel back and have it cleaned and lapped or replaced.

A guy I know on our range just had his Ruger 7x57 barrel replaced. When I got there he was still shooting one/cleaning one. He told me he spent four hours on the range the day before making sure he was doing it right. In this case, I have to completely agree with Lowlight. First, the rifle it's on it ain't gonna matter. Second, if it did matter, when you spend 8 hours breaking in a barrel then you have issues a breaking-in procedure isn't going to help. Still getting copper out of a barrel that has only had maybe thirty rounds through it, says it wasn't done right. (He told me who the gunsmith was that did it, I'm not surprised)



Apache kid,

In answer to the metalurgy part, I would say that just a little bit of metal on metal is good. In engines we break them in like that too. We use an oil that allows the abrasive carbon to help the rings fit to the cylinder. Both give a little wear to make a better fit. The rings tend to not turn and give a better seal that way. Once that happens we want all the lubrication properties we can in the oil. So we go with synthetic. In comparison the copper and steel fit of bullets vs. barrel isn't going to be a reproducable one. The bullet takes 99.99% of the "give". But that little .001 % of the barrel giving is hopefully in the right direction and future bullets go down the bore smoothly.

BTW, I never knew the bullet completely stopped in the bore. I could believe it though, as I think about how the primer goes then the powder burns. Interesting.