Thread: Thoughts on new barrel ' break-in '

@Ftx325 While I cannot answer whether you should or should not break a barrel in, I sort of do break my ones in.

Every rifle I get I take it to the range and sight it in. I want to sight it with a cold bore so that the first shot at an animal is where the round goes.

I start the sight in at 25m and I clean it after each shot. I am waiting for the barrel to cool and I find the time it takes to clean it is about the same for it to cool enough for the next round. After doing this three times, I check the group and adjust the scope accordingly. Then clean it again. I repeat this for the next three shots, by which time I should be close to centre at the start distance. I then move to 100 yards and do another three shot group as above. After about 10 or 12 rounds I start to fire the three shot groups as a slow string then clean and repeat until I am happy that it is sighted in. All the while making sure it gets time to cool between each group.

I do not know whether it makes a difference to barrel longevity as I have never fired enough rounds to wear one out, and if you can afford to fire the 3000-5000 rounds to wear out a rifle, at $1 per round you can afford a new one afterwards....

What I do notice is that I shoot better having taken the time to get used to the rifle (effectively practising) and I have noticed that while it may not need a clean before each shot, accumulatively it provides a more thorough clean and the rifles I have done tend to be easier to clean later on. I do this process on 2nd hand rifles and I think the cleaning process is what makes the difference as clearly there will be no run in effect here.

As mentioned I do not know if it makes any difference to the rifle, but it is a good way to get used to it yourself, and why not put a few packets down while sighting in, it certainly wont hurt the rifle to clean it and use it.

I usually take another rifle to shoot while I wait for it to cool too....no point in being bored...