.22 Break In

Dakk

Dakk

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So I was checking out the recommended 'break in' procedure for new rifles on the Savage website. Once its all said and done, it involves firing the gun 50 times, and about 20 cleanings with approx 100 patches through the barrel, mixed in between the shots.

I'm just curious how many people actually follow a new rifle's break in procedure? Also, if its worth doing, how can you tell? Are there sometimes issues for people who don't do it for instance?
 
There really is no 'break in' for rim fires... after a few thousands rounds a .22 rim fire will be broken in and it will be worn out as far as top accuracy is concerned at about 140,000 rounds. The worn out area will be at 6 o'clock for about 6 inches in the bore... a darker shadow of wear caused by the powder residue from the previous shot laying there when the rifle is fired again.
 
I read that procedure too, about a month after I got my new Savage home and shot it a bunch.
It seems unreasonable to me unless you're an Olympic target shooter who has picked one barrel out of 1,000 for competition.

Here is the link to the procedure if anyone wants to look at it.
Note that Savage says the procedure is recommended by a magazine, not Savage.
 
If you have a target barrel and plan on doing competition type shooting, it may make a difference, for the rest of us, just clean up the packing grease and shoot it, clean every couple hundred to thousand rounds, whatever makes you happy and enjoy the gun
 
It may be useful for semi-auto actions to use hotter load for the first 100-500rds, but after that, you're good to go. With my bolt-action, I jut cleaned out the grease and shot her. I clean/oil after every shooting.
 
Interesting... I was just talking to a friend whose dad knows a bit about break ins. According to him, he's seen a new rifle's groupings tighten up signifcantly through the course of a break in session. I'm going to firing it anyways, I may as well follow (even if just loosely) the recommended break in procedure. See if there's anything to it.
 
I just started shooting my MkII, and kept shooting it. Tight groups out of the box, still tight after several mods. Still haven't cleaned it, so I guess I never broke it in. May have to do that one day, after several thousand more rounds down the pipe, but for now, it seems to be everything I could hope for.

Remember the saying "If it ain't broke, don't fix it"...and the corollary, "if you fiddle with something long enough, it will eventually break".
 
I follow the break in rules roughly when breaking in a centrefire, but when it come to rimfirei just clean the factory gunk out and let er fly. If it a bolt rimfire I clean after each shooting, if it's a semi roughly 1000-2000rds unless it starts misbehaving before that. I find if you keep up on your cleaning, it makes cleaning a lot easier.

ET
 
I follow a break-in procedure on every new rifle I buy for the simple reason I want every rifle I buy to be as accurate and produce the tightest groups it possibly can. The procedure I use is similar to what Savage recommends; clean after every shot for the first 5 shots, then after every 5 for the next 25, then every 10 for the next hundread, then before and after a trip to the range or start & end of the season for the rest of the rifles long life.
 
Maritime Storm said:
I follow a break-in procedure on every new rifle I buy for the simple reason I want every rifle I buy to be as accurate and produce the tightest groups it possibly can. ...
Click to expand...

This assumes that a particular break-in regimen is a contribution or at the least conducive to accuracy and consistency, and the debate continues.
Generally,I would always clean a new rimfire to remove any manufacturing residues and preservatives applied before shipping to the market. Then shoot it and clean as the gun indicates or as needed. No break-in. If the accuracy declines after 500 rounds then clean after 400 prior to the decline in consistency.
 
I asked the gunsmith when I bought my new CZ 455 if I needed to do all of that cleaning early on. Asked too if using a torque wrench would help accuracy. In both cases he said that it wouldn't make a difference on a rimfire. The pressures generated by center fire guns, on the other hand, are a different kettle of fish.
 
Generally breaking in a barrel is only needed on a barrel that is not quite finished to start with. A high end barrel has been lapped and needs to "fire lapping" to break it in, where as most factory trash needs to be used and cleaned properly to lap the barrel and get the most you can from its potential. This is in regards to high powered center fire rifles. As for rimfire, unless you are using plated rounds, a standard lead round nose will never lap a barrel anyway at the slow speeds and pressures a .22 makes. Even with plated bullets I highly doubt anyone would ever notice a difference outside of a science lab.

One thing that might be "broken in" could be the action, some semi-autos will gain accuracy once the bolt and receiver wear together well enough to make return to battery more consistent. Maybe this could be true of other action types, I am not sure on this as I have never had the need or desire to research and test it for myself on anything other than my semi-auto bench plinker.
 
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