glob3006

Just bought a Savage 16F stainless and i' m curious of your opinions on how to break in the barrel??? Haven' t broken one in for a while[:' (]
I have some articals around the house but want to know what you guy' s think.
Also....Is stainless different to break in than a regular barrel.

Thanks
Bill

mainehunt

This is very interesting. I have read many articles on this subject, and many of them make sense. www.varmintAl.com has a very good one.
However, I just read a good story in this month' s issue of, (it' s either in RIFLE SHOOTER, or PREDATOR magazine) Any way, the article is of an old guy who has made thousands of barrels, and he used his own barrels to win numerous competitions at places like Camp Perry. He had many interesting things to say about barrels. One of the most interesting things to me was that he said that " barrel break-in" was bull, that as soon as you shoot one bullet through the barrel, it was then " broken-in."

Just repeating what I read, NOT my opinion.

PS- When they asked this old guy which manufacturer made the best barrels, He said, Savage, without a doubt.

bigcountry

But what this guy doesn' t mention is his barrels are high quality with very nice reamer jobs with very little tooling marks. Not mass production barrels that are turned out by the hundreds.

I have broke in a bunch of guns. It doens' t hurt to do it contrary to what alot of people on here read in there magizines. Its an extra 4 or five cleanings than would regularly be. So the only life your killing off the barrel would be like 4 or 5 shooting sessions. Or for me a month or 2 worth of life.

If you do the procedure, you will notice less and less time to clean the copper out each step. Now sure you can do this by just shooting 4 or 5 sessions or hurry up the process a tad. What I have done lately is to shoot a gun and do the break in until I see copper not majorly building up . If after 20 to 40 rounds, the guns still copper fouls badly, I then break out the JB' s. I run this thru the bore about a hundred times, concentrating mainly on the place the the throat meets the rifling. Some factory rifles can never be smooth enough, some just need time like 100 rounds.

I have bought rifles off people who didn' t give them time for the barrel to smooth out. They said break in was bull and went to the range, shot 20 rounds, got 3" groups and said the gun was junk. I buy it for 30 to 40% discount and run some JB' s down as explained, and then 40 rounds later, this gun is a subMOA gun. Now I see my best buddy secretly going to the range, without telling me breaking in his new 270WSM. Wow, the same guy who told me barrel break in is bull and I got a nice Mod70 270Win off of.

mainehunt

bigcountry,
Like I said, that isn' t my opinion, just repeating what I read.

As for your break-in method, I like your results, in fact you just about have me convinced.


I know it may be a pain, but could you tell me haw you break-in a barrel. And, what exactly is this JB stuff? Cause I' m going to get some.

diyj98

glob3006, Do a search in this form and you' ll find a ton of info on barrel breakin.

I' ve tried various methods over the years, but I now generally believe you' re just causing wear in your barrel. Just as I believe improper use of a cleaning rod in general cleaning wears out a lot of barrels. Some folks feel a " broken-in" barrel will foul less quickly. If I saw any accuracy improvments it was microscopic. I' ve yet to see the 3" to sum moa examples. If the bore on a new rifle' s that rough, I' m sending it back to the factory.

glob3006

As I ask around....There seems to be as many different opinions on this subject as there is on which rifle to shoot.
One guy today said he cleans the barrel after every shot for 15 rounds and another told me to just go shoot 10 rounds and clean it then shoot 10 more .....go home and clean it.
I do think that some sort of " Break in " is needed.
Big Country.......I do have some JB paste and may give your suggestion a try.

Bill

Briman

Here' s a link to some of the wisdom of Gale Mcmilan that he posted on ' The Firing Line' board. He has strong opinions about JB bore paste and barrel break in.
http://thefiringline.com/forums/show...light=mcmillan

Stephen Grace

That firing line was a good link! I am going to remember that one .It' s nice to see what a top barrel maker thought about breakin.

bigcountry

Maine, I wasn' t flaming you. I hope you know that. Its just everyone wants to lump all barrels in the same basket with the same procedures. I have a Kreiger, that needed no brakein. You should see if it needs it or not after the first or second decoppering? But have Mod 70' s that are now very accurate but took 100 rounds to stabilize the barrel. You can also see it on a chrono. I have shot some guns thru the chrono and got 100fps spreads. Now this could be the loads or the barrel or both. But you will notice when barrel is broke in, the spreads drop significantly, like 25fps spreads. I am not saying you can chrono to breakin exactly but its another indication of whats going on in the barrel.

I bet ole Gale rarely had to mess with modern remington hammer forged barrels. Do you? Every barrel is different. I see the Dan Lilja barrels needing no breakin whatsoever if the reamer job is smooth. Your still going to have smooth out that throat.

Vapodog

Barrel breakin is more emotional than science. There' s no difinitive data to show the velue or lack thereof.....

The issue gets more heated with varmint rifles and target rifles than with big game rifles....in any case use of a good copper solvent is a very good idea for maintaining a long barrel life.