How important is it to break in a new barrel it seems time consuming to me. what is the best way you guys can reccomend.             Thanks

I have high dollar barrels and have done the 1 shot and clean type of break in and can say that it does not help a lot over just shooting and then normal cleaning. A lot of people scrub their bores to clean, and it takes a lot of rounds to get it shooting up to its potential again.

1. Clean and lubricate as per manufacturer's direction
2. Shoot gun
3. Repeat step #2 as needed
4. Go to step #1.


Break-in = hooey

Barrel break-in refers to a non-chrome lined barrel where you would shoot as round and run patch, shoot 2-rounds and patch, etc. or per manual...yes I've seen it spelled out in a manual before. In either event, your basic chromed lined military barrel, clean the manufacturing oils out of it and go to town.WAHAHAHA!!!

Maybe a little off topic, but what about break in on SS barrels?

Reading your posts make me feel better  I just put a new upper on and am going to the the range on saturday, I just didnt want to be the only one not being able to have as much fun as I could because I was breaking in a barrel.

I prefer to Turtle wax the barrel between rounds it makes the bullets faster :) the gentlemen be correct I would maybe just as a ritual do it on a very expensive match rifle. Probably not though I tend to get too excited.

Clean any new gun, no matter what, just as if you had spent a day at the range.  Lubricate it properly.  At the very least, run an oily patch, then a few dry patches.

Go to the range.  Shoot at least one full South American Battle Pack (300 rnds).  Two would be better.

Go home, clean like normal.  

There, it's broke in.

Hmmm...I've shot varmint and target barrels for years.  In my experience, barrels that I have properly broken in rarely if ever develop any problems with copper fouling while those that I did not, often did.

What you are doing when you break in the barrel is essentially lapping it.  The cleaning after each round/3 rounds/5 rounds/10 rounds, etc in the specified process ensures that copper does not build up on any imperfections in the bore before they are lapped/ironed out.

So while cleaning between the first 10 rounds, then every three rounds for the next 30 rounds, every 5 rounds for the next 50 rounds, then every 10 rounds for the next 100 (or something similar) is time consuming, slightly expensive and in general a royal PITA, it does, IMHO, pay off in the long run with a more accurate barrel that will not develop copper fouling issues.