I had a weird experience shooting today.

I spun the 7 SAUM barrel on my TL3 to get ready for hunting season. I had deep cleaned it, stripped all the copper and carbon fowling (verified with a bore scope) after last season before spinning my 6.5 barrel on for the shooting season.

It took a looong time for the barrel to “settle.” Velocity slowly crept from 2880 to 2915 or so. Groups at the start were 1-1.5 MOA. Finally after about 25 rounds I got a nice group in the .3’s which is typical for the rifle. I expected it to take 3-5 rounds but not 25.

Velocity still isn’t quite what it was, usually 2930. That might be because of temps but I’m using H4350 so there should be that much velocity swing. (60 deg vs 80 deg.)

Anyone else experience this? Probably the last time I’m going to deep clean for a while. Barrel has about 250 rounds on it total and about 150 since load development. I wouldn’t think it would be time to redo my load yet.

Maybe the stock settling a bit too as it was just removed? Of course it was reinstalled carefully with a torque wrench. I was a bit perplexed and frustrated this morning.

Attached File

Final group.

Meh not super out of the ordinary out after putting it in a stock and your stripping of the bore.  25 is a little high to get good and fouled but not crazy. Between that and you getting good and reacquainted  with trigger/ just how well you were doing that day, I've had similar situations.

I've pretty much stopped deep cleaning barrels unless theres an issue presenting.

Cool that makes me feel better. Until I got a bore scope I really had never cleaned a rifle this well.

I used to clean until I got white patches and called it good. I had no idea there was still quite a bit of carbon left before getting the bore scope. With my old cleaning regimen 3-5 shots was all it took.

I was starting to freak out a bit when I was over 20 shots and things still weren’t settling down.

I normally clean after 100 rounds and then shoot like 5 rounds to dirty it up.