Breaking in a new rifle barrel

How is the best way to break in a new rifle barrel for accuracy?

Thank You, Mike Rappe

Break-in Procedure

For an effective break-in the barrel should be cleaned after every shot for the first 10-12 rounds or until copper fouling stops. Our procedure is to push a cotton patch that is wet with solvent through the barrel. This will remove much of the powder fouling and wet the inside of the barrel with solvent. Next, wet a bronze brush with solvent and stroke the barrel 5-10 times. Follow this by another wet patch and then one dry patch. Now soak the barrel with a strong copper removing solvent until all of the blue mess is removed from the barrel. The copper fouling will be heavy for a few rounds and then taper off quickly in just one or two shots. Once it has stopped or diminished significantly it is time to start shooting 5 shot groups, cleaning after each one. After 25-30 rounds clean at a normal interval of 10-25 rounds. Your barrel is now broken-in.

# How is the best way to break in a new rifle barrel for accuracy? # Mike, there are probably as many different opinions and recommendations on this subject as there are shooters, and all are good ones. Here is what I did with my new Remington 700 VLS in .22-250. First, I ran a patch with a small amount of JB Bore paste through the bore using a well worn bore brush. For the first 30 rounds I thoroughly cleaned the bore after each shot by rfirst unning a bronze bore brush down the barrel and then running patches wet with Shooter's Choice Bore Cleaner alternating with dry patches until there was no more blue on the patch. Then for the next 30 rounds I did the same procedure after every 3 rounds. The next step will be to thoroughly clean the bore after every 5 rounds for the next 30. After that, I will throroughly clean the barrel after everytime the rifle is shot for the next 120 rounds. This will be no problem as I do that anyway regardless.

The one tip that I strongly encourage is that you always clean from the breach to the muzzle and remove the patch, jag or bore brush from the rod before pulling the rad back through the bore. Do not drag anything back from the muzzle.

Hopefully, by that time the barrel will be broken in.

Hope this helps.

don't shoot rocks in it?????

seriously, there are probably 1000 methods for this. some folks have a lengthy multi-step process, some don't do anything. this is what i do, and all the bores on my firearms look perfect and they shoot very well. first, make sure the firearm is unloaded, then give it a good cleaning before you even fire it. then fire a handful of rounds out of it, but don't fire off 20 rounds in a couple minutes to heat the barrel up. give the bore a good cleaning. use as normal from then on, making sure not to overheat the barrel. if it's a semi-auto, i'd clean every 25-50 rounds for the first couple hundred, then have at it. although when it comes to 'assault rifles', i pretty much clean the rifle initially, then head to the range until i run out of ammo. unless it's a match AR-15 upper, i don't see how you would damage something that only shoots 2 moa (or worse) right from the box.

i tried that fire three-clean-fire three-clean-fire 10-clean- etc..... i did it once and it was a big pain in the rear, and i saw no real benefit. all breaking in does is smooth out the imperfections in the bore to some extent. just normally firing the rifle will do this, so why waste time and ammo doing something that occurs naturally. sure, the first 10 (or 20, or 50) times you clean it, it will take a few more patches, but if you clean it every 5 rounds it will still take a few more patches. just don't overheat it.

andy b.

On Tue, 12 Nov 2002 15:26:52 +0000 (UTC), 'Mike Rappe'

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# Mike, there are probably as many different opinions and recommendations on # this subject as there are shooters, and all are good ones. Here is what I # did with my new Remington 700 VLS in .22-250. Hey, I bought one of these woodchuck guns 18 months ago.

All I did for break in was take it home and cleaned the heck out of it. then started shooting it cleaning after every session. after several hundred rounds it still shoots very well. With my present load of 35 gr of 4895 behind a 55gr sierra blitzking I will shoot at most a .3 moa group and usually a .25 MOA group. my last try with varget was a single slighly elongated hole. but the weather of late has really not been good for load development ( cold windy and rainy) so I haven't been able to replicate the group to insure reliability. maybe in the spring.

# The one tip that I strongly encourage is that you always clean from the # breach to the muzzle and remove the patch, jag or bore brush from the rod # before pulling the rad back through the bore. Do not drag anything back from # the muzzle. # I totally agree with this and use a good bore guide I like those like midway sells that have the seal to leep the stuff out of the chamber and reciever. I use a wool .45 swab to clean the chamber. The method I use to clean is use a slot with a wet patch and push it thru. again and again until the patch looks clean. then dry patches. then I take a nylon brush with a patch wrapped around it and repeat the process. If I see signs of stuborn copper fouling i will use a good solvent and a scrubbing action ( back and forth) but only after the barrel otherwise clean. The patch around the brush will get down in the grooves. Why a nylon brush? cause copper solvent will eat the bronze brush up. Bronze is an aloy of copper and tin and sometimes zink. Brass is also. modern text tell me the difference between brass and bronze is dependant on who is calling it brass or bronze. there is no really well defined difference. generally if it have more copper than tin it's brass and vs. a vs. but there is not hard and fast rule. I also use a Dewey coated rod.

Here is what I # did with my new Remington 700 VLS in .22-250.

Bye the bye, how do you like your VLS?

Snip... # Bronze is an aloy of copper and tin and sometimes zink. Brass is # also. modern text tell me the difference between brass and bronze is # dependant on who is calling it brass or bronze. there is no really # well defined difference. generally if it have more copper than tin # it's brass and vs. a vs. but there is not hard and fast rule. I also # use a Dewey coated rod. #

I like it a lot. I've been wanting one for about a year... finally decided to go for it.

Larry

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# # How is the best way to break in a new rifle barrel for accuracy? #

If you are going to shoot Moly bullets through it, shoot 10 shots cleaning between every shot. Then shoot 90 more and clean it again.