Listen BC, I have used Karo Syrup to season my barrel and
I have the Sweetest shooting barrel in town.
If these guys want to use spit on thier patches, so be it!

Guys , does it make a difference on what you use to clean the barrel between a s/s barrel compared to a blue barrel. Roskoe mentioned Shooter’s choice. How would that work for the s/s barrel. I guess using a bore guide is also very important !!

Well, during break in I am basically removing copper. I like sweets. Shooters choice removed it also but not near as aggresive.

he didn't sound like he was rushing or just trying to get the conversation over with. he told me how i am supposed to clean the barrel and when. he just said that a lot of people say a lot of things, and said it couldn't hurt, but he said he has never broken in a barrel, and all of his have shot just as advertised. he sounded very relaxed and not rushed. he actually went on on the subject for quite a while.

personally, he is the most qualified person ive talked to yet. and ive talked to more people outside of this forum about it because ive been so darn worried that i screwed up my gun that i saved up for for so long and have only shot 80 times.

do your manuals tell you to break in your barrels?

I couldn’t find anything to break in the barrel in my manual. I did find something from Savage on this subject. www.savagearms.com/cs_barrel.htm

BC - you shouldn't need anything more agressive than Shooter's Choice during break-in, after firing only one round through a premium barrel. Maybe a rough factory barrel - with a Barnes X bullet.

One nice thing about Shooter's Choice is that you can leave it in the barrel for awhile with no problems. More agressive cleaners like Sweet's (which I use a lot of) and Barnes CR-10 can ruin a barrel if you leave them in there overnight. So my advice is to use the least agressive cleaning solvent that will work - even if it slows down the process a little.

pdougherty i would not worry about it, i highly doubt your gun will be ruined. If it makes you feel any better none of my guns have had any formal break in's and a few of them will shoot an honest 5 shot sub MOA group. What i normally do is put about 3 boxes worth of ammo through a new gun before testing for accuracy. I clean after every 20 shots.

My understanding of the break in process is that you are "smoothing out" any rough edges in the rifling. I think the cleaning is used to prevent copper from building up in any unsmoothed areas of your barrel. It is my belief that guns will not start shooting their best until after some rounds have been put through them to smooth out the rifling in the barrel.

Well, bud, my way has worked for me. And it sounds like your way works for you.

Here is one set of patches from break in on my Sako 75. First one is initial copper from factory, the other ones are other cycles after three shot, cleans.


As you notice from the far ones on the left, there is almost no copper fouling after 20 shots.

So is the sequence of patches, from right to left, what you got after three shots or 20 shots?