Barrel break in, does it matter?

[HighUintas]

Easy killer he can answer for himself or not he doesn’t need a guard dog.

That’s a high round count, I’m interested in how he shoots that much (50k+ rounds a year), he also is staunchly against the opinions and one might even venture to say positions of a member that literally makes test barrels and data logs them for the firearms industry. So yeah, I’d like to know what he does. I don’t know many just a hunters that can put down that round count yearly.

Don’t be the knight in the bar that stops a fight that never existed

I am very interested in this member that makes test barrels.

I don't know much of anything about the ballistics testing world, but it interests me a lot. Can you provide any more info?

 

[DangerRanger]

I am very interested in this member that makes test barrels.

I don't know much of anything about the ballistics testing world, but it interests me a lot. Can you provide any more info?

I linked Frank earlier to ask his opinion before the thread went fully sideways, he made a profile to discuss this exact thing already a month or two though. Spends most of his online time on snipershide or accurateshooter though so I don’t expect him to come in, not sure why he would at this point.

 

[HighUintas]

The base position is this-

There is a ton of beliefs that the shooting community have that are nearly universal “truths”, that are so blatantly proven false with a modicum of experimentation- that ALL “settled knowledge” should be questioned.

Any one that can afford to shoot enough to wear out a barrel, can easily afford a barrel replacement to find out of if what he’s being fed is true or not.

I agree. I don't believe anything anyone tells me anymore, except for my wife and she would probably say I don't believe her half the time.

Not cleaning a bore is also "settled knowledge", albeit less popular than cleaning it. And no one here has actually put forth the evidence that proves cleaning/not cleaning matters.

Of course BR shooting has no utility relevance to backcountry hunting, except for the maintenance of a rifle for top accuracy. I don't personally know any bench rest of F class shooters, especially not professional ones. But many of them have content out on the internet and none have mentioned not cleaning their bore. I would expect a professional accuracy shooter to be proficient enough to determine if cleaning their bore helps or hurts their accuracy. Many of those guys don't rely on legacy information, but test and test and does what works for them.

Maybe this is a fallacious analogy, but a 1/4 moa gun may be similar to some other high performance machine... f1 race car, space shuttle. It does it's job extremely well when everything is tuned perfectly but fails when something is slightly out of balance like too much fouling in the bore for the load that was developed to shoot 1/4 moa before that critical fouling level was hit.

I'm only questioning if this idea of not cleaning applies to all rifles or just ones that we are only concerned with shooting 1-1.5moa out to 600.

 

[ETtikka]

I like most have had some rifles shoot well during and after a proper break in
some shoot not great with a proper break in,
some shoot well that started out getting abused and continued to perform despite more abuse.
I believe once excessive build up occurs, it will affect performance (POR/FPS) even if group size is somewhat consistent.

I think some manufactures also have superior designs, metallurgy, QA/QC, etc but keep in mind that high quality metals are getting harder and harder to source.

Some of us can't afford to shoot 5000000 rds a year, so we dont worry too much about barrel life.

 

[ETtikka]

I will also say that some people gripe about sako/tikka barrels being slow, which many are, but sako obviously knows what they are doing and why, plenty of other good manufactures out there, I just thought I would mention Tikka since the speed issue indicates its a "tighter" barrel , make you wonder why

 

[Reburn]

Easy killer he can answer for himself or not he doesn’t need a guard dog.

That’s a high round count, I’m interested in how he shoots that much (50k+ rounds a year), he also is staunchly against the opinions and one might even venture to say positions of a member that literally makes test barrels and data logs them for the firearms industry. So yeah, I’d like to know what he does. I don’t know many just a hunters that can put down that round count yearly.

Don’t be the knight in the bar that stops a fight that never existed

Guard dog hell. I'll be the first one to say if I don't agree with form or ryan avery or robby or anybody. Now your just talking out of the side of your mouth.

Don't be that guy that asks questions that have no relevence to the content. You dont have to agree or disagree with him. Hell you dont even have to try it out. But until you have first hand knowledge then saying he is wrong is shooting in the dark.

Explain to me in small words since I'm simple how what he does to make a living dictates his worthyness to weigh in on a specific topic. Does being a janitor that competition shoots make him less worthy?

And I clean my guns. Semi infrequently, some less then others. So I dont agree with Form 100% on not cleaning ever but some guns its working on at over 1000 of rounds. particullary my 270 win with a BARTLIEN barrel. I also have a barret fieldcraft 6.5 manbun that needs cleaned every 150ish rounds or it goes from 1.1 moa to 2 moa.

 

[DangerRanger]

Guard dog hell. I'll be the first one to say if I don't agree with form or ryan avery or robby or anybody. Now your just talking out of the side of your mouth.

Don't be that guy that asks questions that have no relevence to the content. You dont have to agree or disagree with him. Hell you dont even have to try it out. But until you have first hand knowledge then saying he is wrong is shooting in the dark.

Explain to me in small words since I'm simple how what he does to make a living dictates his worthyness to weigh in on a specific topic. Does being a janitor that competition shoots make him less worthy?

And I clean my guns. Semi infrequently, some less then others. So I dont agree with Form 100% on not cleaning ever but some guns its working on at over 1000 of rounds. particullary my 270 win with a BARTLIEN barrel. I also have a barret fieldcraft 6.5 manbun that needs cleaned every 150ish rounds or it goes from 1.1 moa to 2 moa.

I don’t care whether you agree disagree or do or don’t like coke over sprite. I wanted to know what I asked and could give **** all your opinion on literally anything. You’re making a lot to do over nothing and you need to let it be.

 

[Reburn]

I don’t care whether you agree disagree or do or don’t like coke over sprite. I wanted to know what I asked and could give **** all your opinion on literally anything.

Thanks man. You having a bad day? Does cussing at stangers on the internet make you feel better? Hope life gets better for you.

 

[MallardSX2]

My process in a nutshell:

Inspect bore/chamber and bore sight.

5 minutes between shots from here on out.....and I get the gun 0'ed on paper while doing the following.

Clean, shoot, clean.

Shot, shoot, shoot, clean.

Shoot, shoot, shoot, shoot, shoot, clean.

By now any residual metal "burs" are long since gone....

Enjoy your gun.....

That has pretty much always been my process. But I'm no target shooter with a lifetime of knowledge and $10,000 in ammo to burn randomly to come up with different results..

All of my guns shoot ~ 1" groups or less at 100 yards which is good enough for me.

If they dont shoot good groups then they go down the road.

 

[Formidilosus]

Of course BR shooting has no utility relevance to backcountry hunting, except for the maintenance of a rifle for top accuracy. I don't personally know any bench rest of F class shooters, especially not professional ones. But many of them have content out on the internet and none have mentioned not cleaning their bore. I would expect a professional accuracy shooter to be proficient enough to determine if cleaning their bore helps or hurts their accuracy. Many of those guys don't rely on legacy information, but test and test and does what works for them.

The only thing I would say to the above, is that BR and maybe to a lessor extent- F class shooters actually don’t generally experiment all that much. They tend to stay in what everyone else is doing. From what I have seen they are the most superstitious group of shooters that exist, and each one of them have their own magic sauce that is GUARANTEED to be the difference between them and everyone else.

Maybe this is a fallacious analogy, but a 1/4 moa gun may be similar to some other high performance machine... f1 race car, space shuttle. It does it's job extremely well when everything is tuned perfectly but fails when something is slightly out of balance like too much fouling in the bore for the load that was developed to shoot 1/4 moa before that critical fouling level was hit.

Maybe, however BR has as much to do with practical shooting as the F1 car does to a hunter driving a forest service road in snow. The difference is by what you said was a 1/4 to 1/2 moa rifle- there are no practical rifles that will meet that.

I'm only questioning if this idea of not cleaning applies to all rifles or just ones that we are only concerned with shooting 1-1.5moa out to 600.

No clue on bench rest, we are well past the point where BR has any value whatsoever to any field shooting at all.

My statements are for practical shooting, whether that be hunting out to medium-long range, most PRS/sniper matches, etc. keep in mind that the rifles and groups I show are a minimum of ten rounds repeated, and more often are 20-30 rounds- we’re not talking the 3-5 round random groups that the vast majority of competitors and hunters reference. Those guns I showed targets of average way below 1 moa for 3- 5 rounds groups. But, let’s say a person does have a rifle that when cleaned will shoot 20-30 rounds into .5 moa, but only 1 moa when not cleaned. Outside of a bench rest, that makes almost no difference in hit rates, and zero detectable difference in most conditions.

 

[Formidilosus]

In the interest of The Science ™, I shot some
more today…. Another 40 rounds and no cleaning….

The same Tikka that has 8k’ish rounds on it, with the ten round groups in this thread. I thought I’d try 3 round groups as apparently “1 moa ten round groups” doesn’t sound impressive. So I did a 5x3 round grouping.

The setup and after effects of the first 15 rounds-



Through the scope, notice the 1” boxes relative to the reticle- it was at 100 +/- 1 yard-



The results, shot top left and then clockwise, center group last-




And the average size for the five groups of three is .53”, or .50 moa



So is this a half moa gun? I mean I shot five groups of three, did not discount a single round fired, and got .5 moa. Or, is it a .75 moa gun (it’s worse group, and much closer to it 10 round average)? Or do you discount any group you don’t like, and it becomes a sub moa gun? If I cleaned it and it became a .4 moa gun, would that help me hit more animals on hunts?

 

[Formidilosus]

Then, I switched ammo to some quite different weight and design projectiles, and repeated it-






The first the groups are far left dot, then right top, right bottom, then clockwise. The center 5 clusters are from the first groups-


For a five, three round group average of .94”, or .90 moa.



So is this ammo sub moa? I mean 5x3 round groups, counting every single shot averaged .9 moa. I’ve shot this ammo enough to know that it will not on demand hit a 1 moa target though. So I shot ten round group on the bottom left- it was 2.13”, or 2.03 moa. There were no “fliers”, every shot was within a sub .25” wobble zone (the black diamond). So is it a sub moa gun or a 2 moa gun with this ammo?

 

[TxxAgg]

I, for one, love these debates.

Saves me money messing around with cleaning.

 

[ETtikka]

Then, I switched ammo to some quite different weight and design projectiles, and repeated it-


View attachment 333235



The first the groups are far left dot, then right top, right bottom, then clockwise. The center 5 clusters are from the first groups-
View attachment 333237

For a five, three round group average of .94”, or .90 moa.
View attachment 333238


So is this ammo sub moa? I mean 5x3 round groups, counting every single shot averaged .9 moa. I’ve shot this ammo enough to know that it will not on demand hit a 1 moa target though. So I shot ten round group on the bottom left- it was 2.13”, or 2.03 moa. There were no “fliers”, every shot was within a sub .25” wobble zone (the black diamond). So is it a sub moa gun or a 2 moa gun with this ammo?

I think that gun is what ever you want to call it, MOA is a math term, not a statistical term.
I would just say you are very fortunate to be able to shoot for a living and enjoy that range time and all the ammo, thanks for the research, did you shoot any after cleaning?

 

[Reburn]

So serious question though. Let's take my field craft. It shoots 143 eld-x 6.5 manbun to 1.1 moa at 100 repeatedly. At 130-150 rounds it will open up to 2 moa. I didnt take it past that as I clean it and it returned to 1.1 - 1.2 moa.

Do you clean it or what do you do with a gun like that. I understand best answer is plug the barrel and start looking for the problem but outside of down the rabbit hole what is the best practical solution.

That gun also give me fits at 500+ but I'm not sure its not me and bad form magnifying at distance. Stability on the bullet is 1.52 so it's good but right what I would consider borderline. Heavier guns I don't have a problem shooting 500-1000 just that one.

 

[Formidilosus]

I think that gun is what ever you want to call it, MOA is a math term, not a statistical term.
I would just say you are very fortunate to be able to shoot for a living and enjoy that range time and all the ammo, thanks for the research, did you shoot any after cleaning?

True that. The “bad” ammo has about a 90% chance of hitting a 1.25 moa target at 100 yards historically.

There’s no cleaning. I’ve done both ways enough to not waste time with it.

 

[Formidilosus]

Reburn said:
So serious question though. Let's take my field craft. It shoots 145 eld-x to 1.1 moa at 100 repeatedly. At 130-150 rounds it will open up to 2 moa.

Do you clean it or what do you do with a gun like that. I understand best answer is plug the barrel and start looking for the problem but outside of down the rabbit hole what is the best practical solution.

What happens if you just keep shooting it past 150 rounds? Does it ever stabilize at like 200 or 300 rounds? Continue getting worse?

How May rounds for the 1.1 moa groups? And how many groups?

Reburn said:
That gun also give me fits at 500+ but I'm not sure its not me and bad form magnifying at distance

This is what would give me pause. There’s nothing magical about 500 yards. A bullet that lands .5moa from the center of the crosshair at 100, will land .5 moa from the center at 500. So if you are consistently, and on demand shooting 1.1moa at 100, then you should be shooting the same, or very close, at 500 in no wind conditions.

 

[Reburn]

What happens if you just keep shooting it past 150 rounds? Does it ever stabilize at like 200 or 300 rounds? Continue getting worse?

How May rounds for the 1.1 moa groups? And how many groups?

I'm not sure honestly. I cleaned it to restore where it was.

10 round group as fast as I can breathe and accurately fire. 5 to 8 - 10 round groups something like that. Different days. Enough I was damn sick of shooting groups.

 

[Formidilosus]

Uhhhh, so now we’re talking about group sizes and round counts per group…..again?

Sure. Or it could be scopes and zero retention, wind calling, positional field shooting, shooting while stressed, or barrel heat, or terminal ballistics, or any other thing that effects a successful outcome.

The issue is that all of those things matter holistically, yet are only discussed and argued in isolation. For the context of this site, what everyone that thinks a “normal rifle, with normal ammo, and normal scope” isn’t good enough is trying to do, is to increase their performance, I.E.- hit rates in some manner whether they realize it or not. So all of it matters. The whole point supposedly of breaking in a barrel is to increase “accuracy” and or longevity I guess? But if we aren’t being consistent with what determines “accuracy” then we’re just talking ost each other. You can’t compare “accuracy” when you are shooting 3 shot groups with your 6mm 20lb comp rifle and saying 1 moa isn’t good enough, and the other guy is shooting 5 shot groups with a 6lb Kimber Montana and can’t get under 1.5 moa. Then you have people online, in print, and in TV/YouTube saying that a rifle that won’t shoot sub half moa isn’t suitable for “long range” hunting…. Sub half moa to what standard? And whatever standard that is, does it actually require sub half moa, or that some more BS peddled as fact? When someone has a “sub half moa all day long rifle” misses just over the back or just in front of the chest- was it because he choked? Miss called the wind? His BC was incorrect? Zero was slightly off because he didn’t fire enough rounds? Etc etc etc.

It all matters, but not all has the same value in the equation. Incremental reductions in group size is generally a waste of time, and becomes ballistic masterbation pretty quick as it has almost no effect on hit rates while hunting once decent. But some other things have dramatic effect in hit rates.

 

[HighUintas]

Uhhhh, so now we’re talking about group sizes and round counts per group…..again?

Man I've only been able to hunt 3 days since middle of August. At this point I'm just looking for bears to poke to make it to this weekend haha