Barrel Break In...?

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Are you serious...? In a black rifle...?

Boys I don't know everything. Fact is, I'm pretty damn ignorant at the best of times but this 'barrel break in' stuff strikes me as the most hokey voodoo and turd polishing yet. Apparently firing a shot, waiting five minutes and scrubbing the pooh out of the bore 'burnishes' the bore and 'seasons' it. I woulda thunk the boys at the factory could burnish the bore with the proper machines that are meant to do that. If you are telling me that you want $2000.00 for a gun, and expect me to flush ammo down it to finish the job for ya...maybe I need a new gun! And - if the machining process is that bad...20 rounds of scrubbing and shooting ain't gonna cut it! And what is this crap about 'seasoning'? Seasoning with what? Lard?

See this, boys? This is what happens when ya read the owner's manual before using something! Oh sure...I will take my new stubby AR apart and clean and inspect prior to shooting for the first time...but no way am I gonna flush 20 rounds down the pipe and then scrub it between shots (only with the manufacturer's own brand of lubes and solvents, of course...). Can I ask the industry wanks: stop doing that? The barrel should be the least of your worries, mate! What would be REALLY nice is if one - just ONE - of the manufacturers shipped their guns with respectable triggers.

Also...is it my imagination, or are there fewer chrome lined barrels around these days...?
 
Well I suppose it depends on what kind of barrel you have.

Chrome lined? No point. Nitrided? No point. Hammer forged anything? no point (generally these have a mirror finish when done anyways)


On a nice precision rifle with a cut rifled stainless steel barrel? That I would spend the time on, although in the end it may not actually help, but it can't hurt it. But on a black rifle where you're getting 1-2moa out of it? No friggin point! :D

As for Chrome lined not being as common, lots of the FN AR15 barrels are chromed, but for the most part chrome was a poor solution for a problem due to ammo. A lot of barrels these days have a controlled-gas or salt-bath nitride finish which is more durable than chrome (won't flake or chip) and is applied a few atoms thick, so you don't need to oversize cut the bore like you would to apply chrome. You get much more accuracy potential out of these kinds of barrels than you would with chrome!
 
Noveske doesn't recommend any break in procedure for their barrels, they just say "don't shoot it so hot you can cook bacon on it", that's a quote from the sheet that came with my Noveske barrel.
 
On the topic of chrome lining, many manufacturers are switching to ferritic nitrocarburization treatment of barrels due to equivalent or superior wear characteristics compared to chrome lining, as well as increased accuracy over a chrome lined barrel.
 
Voodoo

I looked into it a couple years ago, and every barrel manufacturer out there is pretty unanimous about it - they all consider it BS and a fundamental misunderstanding of materials engineering.
 
F22_RaptoR said:
Well I suppose it depends on what kind of barrel you have.

Chrome lined? No point. Nitrided? No point. Hammer forged anything? no point (generally these have a mirror finish when done anyways)


On a nice precision rifle with a cut rifled stainless steel barrel? That I would spend the time on, although in the end it may not actually help, but it can't hurt it. But on a black rifle where you're getting 1-2moa out of it? No friggin point! :D

As for Chrome lined not being as common, lots of the FN AR15 barrels are chromed, but for the most part chrome was a poor solution for a problem due to ammo. A lot of barrels these days have a controlled-gas or salt-bath nitride finish which is more durable than chrome (won't flake or chip) and is applied a few atoms thick, so you don't need to oversize cut the bore like you would to apply chrome. You get much more accuracy potential out of these kinds of barrels than you would with chrome!
Click to expand...

^^^ This

My PWS is nitrided and they say no break in required, just shoot it and to expect consistent accuracy until around 20000 rounds.

My personal treatment for most of my rifles is to simply shoot and repeat. I don't let my barrels get too hot to touch and I don't really worry about them. My DTA SRS is about the only rifle I did any type of break in on and it just got a quick clean at 5 rounds and again at 10 then just at the end of each day of shooting since then.
 
noveske stainless steel barrel instruction sheet says, no benefit what so ever in any breaking in period protocol. none. its magic and fairy tales.
barrel must be cleaned before use, that is all
stop the myth

i own two ss spr 18 inch noveske barrels, mount it, clean it, keep it relatively clean, dont shoot crap ammo, you are fine for 20000 rounds.
 
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Remington recommends it on there barrels. I have a heavy barrel sps varmint in .223, they want me to shoot one, clean then shoot for ten rounds, then 2 for 20 etc.

Is this really necessary sounds like a pain in the ass, but in the end will it really improve accuracy?
 
MRCLARK said:
Remington recommends it on there barrels. I have a heavy barrel sps varmint in .223, they want me to shoot one, clean then shoot for ten rounds, then 2 for 20 etc.

Is this really necessary sounds like a pain in the ass, but in the end will it really improve accuracy?
Click to expand...
They do it because they want to blame the user not following "proper break-in procedure" for the poor accuracy of their low-quality barrel. When you make barrels like this, no amount of "break-in" will help:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hf9zZqn00CA
 
MRCLARK said:
Remington recommends it on there barrels. I have a heavy barrel sps varmint in .223, they want me to shoot one, clean then shoot for ten rounds, then 2 for 20 etc.

Is this really necessary sounds like a pain in the ass, but in the end will it really improve accuracy?
Click to expand...

Yes, but only on a 3/4 moon with your head tilted 8 degrees to the right ;) voodoo
 
capp325 said:
They do it because they want to blame the user not following "proper break-in procedure" for the poor accuracy of their low-quality barrel. When you make barrels like this, no amount of "break-in" will help:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hf9zZqn00CA
Click to expand...

Holy cow haha, looks like someone ran steel jacketed ammo through a machine gun with the rem. barrel, hard to believe that's right from factory... although with some other issues i've seen with the 700's, I guess I shouldn't be surprised?
 
The only thing I have heard that makes sense to me is a break-in procedure will reduce copper fouling for the first few hundred rounds...that's what I have CR-10 for.
 
At the range on my left side a member was breaking in a DD... One shot, one patch... It was hard not to smile. JP.
 
When the bullet is forced into the throat, copper dust is removed from the jacket material and released into the gas which at this temperature and pressure is actually a plasma. The copper dust is vaporized in this plasma and is carried down the barrel. As the gas expands and cools, the copper comes out of suspension and is deposited in the bore. This makes it appear as if the source of the fouling is the bore when it is actually for the most part the new throat.

If this copper is allowed to stay in the bore, and subsequent bullets and deposits are fired over it, copper which adheres well to itself, will build up quickly and may be difficult to remove later. So when we break in a barrel, our goal is to get the throat “polished without allowing copper to build up in the bore. This is the reasoning for the fire-one-shot-and-clean procedure.
 
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