irish,

I think alot of this boils down to personnal preference. Many old time 'Loaders (pre-in line days) I've talked to, swear by the natural products like the Bore Butter & round ball break-in. Probably partly because that is all they had to work with early on and paerly because it worked!

I started off, going with everything the Knight video said to use & do. And it is not like doing so was a bad thing. I just wasn't happy with what I saw out of the 1st 30 or so rounds I fired. Part of that was due to a mismatched set of scope rings, which I finally worked out with some homemade shims. But even then, 3 - 4" groups did not meet my expected standard.

I didn't know if it was me or the gun, so I hit up some of these forums for info as well as a lot of Internet surfing. I tried the natural way on some things and the groups stared getting smaller. That may have just been a coincidence as the gun was probably getting "broke in" in that same time frame.

I can't "prove" that my precedure is best or even necessary - all I know is that it worked wonders for my gun and corresponded with similar results from a lot of other people - though obviously not all.

These guns, even the modern type, tend to develop their own personalities and we just have to keep our eyes & ears open to what THEY want out of us.