05-04-2020, 02:37 AM
(This post was last modified: 05-04-2020, 06:01 AM by lazyengineer.)
Klem Wrote:Allen,
Breaking-in a barrel is another contentious topic. I used to religiously spend an afternoon breaking in new barrels with shooting and cleaning, shooting and cleaning - I don't anymore. If there was any benefit to it I never saw it.
Top tier barrels like Krieger and Lilja come ready to shoot. The first few rounds fill the micro pores with copper which I deliberately don't remove. It has been years since I used copper cleaners like Sweets and Bore Tek. I noticed when you strip the bore of everything the next time you shoot is spent fouling and settling the barrel back into where the MPI was before you cleaned it. Now, I often just put the gun straight back in the safe with a length of anti-corrosion cord down the bore, no cleaning the bore. I still clean the carbon out with Butch's every now and then when the groups seem to be opening up but that's about it. The action gets cleaned every time, just not the barrel.
Klem I'm glad you posted this.
This has been my experience as well, and at times I wonder if the old conventional wisdom on such was still quite so relevant today. Today's modern machining, metallurgy, powder technology, and jacket technology; I'm just not experiencing much benefit to frequent cleaning, and often think it works against me, as it seems like it takes a few rounds (or strings even), to settle back down.