Can the accuracy of a new barrel improve over time with more rounds fired? If so, why?
- Thread starter Arrow 4
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Not only can it, but it usually will. I have had a couple of Remington 700 go from 1.5MOA to under .75 MOA over the first 50 rounds. Anything is going to run better after it is broke in.
Shooting will "smooth" out a new barrel. Most all but the very best custom bbls. will have very small deviations and microscopic crevices that can be detected with a good bore scope. copper fouling will "fill" up those crevices to a smoother plane. that's why shooters today don't clean their bbls. as often as they once did. I never use a wire brush on mine, only wet patches. I don't want to "dig" that filler out of those cracks, etc.
Short answer is Yes. Reasons? Could be two-fold. One is that the bore becomes smoother thus fouling less and the other is that the shooter is becoming more in tune with the new barrel's behavior.
Rifles, when anything is changed, need to be 're-discovered'.
Rifles, when anything is changed, need to be 're-discovered'.
I've had some barrels that are good to go from round 1 and others wait until 200 to settle down.
I have a friend who, like me, is retired and does a lot of work on his firearms between shooting sessions. He is a record holding bench rest shooter and has dozens of barrels for his BR rifles. A couple of weeks ago he brought his 30BR to the range after having replaced the barrel. He used one that he'd "tried" before and wrote on the bottom in sharpie "This barrel sucks". Funny thing was, he was shooting "load workup" groups that all looked like single holes at 100 Y.
We all laughed and asked him how many of the other barrels he'd removed and stored under his bench were the same.
As for getting a "new barrel" to shoot, much of it is in the finish from the barrel maker. The guy that hand laps the barrel probably does more to create a good barrel than the rest of the process.
The easiest thing to do is figure out where the cleaning sweet spot is, our barrels, for example like to be cleaned every 200-300 round or when accuracy falls. Its easy to get into the clean every 20 rounds mindset but that will never let your barrel set or normalize with firing. Obviously every custom barrel out there is gonna be different and I can only speak for our barrels, but its something to try 
Chris
Benchmark Barrels
Chris
Benchmark Barrels
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