Break in problems?

[Riflemanse]

Hi

Im in the process of breaking in my new Rem 700 ADL in 300wm.
So far I have fired 10 rounds with cleaning in between each round
and to day I fired the first 2 shot series and doing the cleaning right now.

The problem I have with the barrel (factory) is that Sweets hardly gets any copper out, patches are white but I see copper with my naked eye. I have used Shooters Choise and bronze brush for the carbon, then dry patch, I have even tried alcohol in between the Shooters Choise and Sweets.
I now use Milfoam, similar to Vipeout I belive. (Milfoam Ltd - barrel cleaning solution for all firearms - artillery, infantry, navy and air force)

It removes all the copper after I have removed the carbon with Shooters Choise or Ed´s Red.

Tha question is, will it ever stop collecting copper, I mean it still coppers after one single round? I will continue to shoot 2 rounds and clean now for another 8 rounds.


// Johan

 

[goodgrouper]

I've had factory barrels take over 20 rounds to break-in. You are doing fine.
Your bottle of Sweet's may be contaminated though.

And you should stick to just one shot and clean until it becomes much easier to clean and you have much fewer blue patches. If you shoot two shots inbetween cleanings you're not going to hurt anything, but you will just waste the second shot.

 

[Riflemanse]

Hi

Ok, back to one shot then.
Does it even matter it I just do the one shot/clean routin during the break in? Or do I have to step up on 2, 3, 4, 5 rounds between cleaning?

 

[goodgrouper]

Hi

Ok, back to one shot then.
Does it even matter it I just do the one shot/clean routin during the break in? Or do I have to step up on 2, 3, 4, 5 rounds between cleaning?

Only after it gets easier to clean will I go to multiple shots between cleanings. This just finishes it out nice but is not really necessary. Once it gets easier to clean on the xxth shot, it is broke in. It will take another several hundred shots to get seasoned and truly start living up to it's potential. But you can just clean whenever it starts shooting poorly during the season period.

 

[Gene]

Barrel cleaning

You might try some patches with JB compound. Make about 20 strokes without exiting the muzzle. Clean it out with denatured alcohol. Then check for fouling with very wet patch of Sweet's, Montana Extreme, etc. If its still fouling, try the JB again. You can take a one size smaller brass brush, wrap a patch around it, and stroke the JB back and forth till your arm hurts. JB will not eat steel. For carbon, I am using GM Tech, bought at a Chevy dealer. Works real good. When carbon disappears, I go after the copper. When you have near all the copper out, clean it up thoroughly, then let Wipe Out or Milfoam sit in it overnight. Next morning, it should come clean.

Factory barrels are known for fouling. Caused by rough land surface which picks up the copper from bullet jacket. As the lands smooth out, the problem will lessen. This is why JB will help.

 

[Riflemanse]

Hi

Just got home after firing another round (so cold so I cant clean at the range...)
After cleaning out the copper it takes about 30 minutes for the milfoam to get the copper out, so its not stuck that hard. But the bore is copper red after one shot as I said...

I have tried a little JB earlier but maybe I should continue with it.

My LTR in .223 also fules terribly but I have given up on breaking it in, but it shoots extremly good for a factory barrel. I have bought a David Tubbs final finish kit for it that I will try as soon as the hunting season is over.

Edit:
Did a real polish with JB now, 150 complete passages (forward and backwards = 300 passages) without exiting the muzzle. The bore now shines a little more then before.
I sure hope that JB doesnt eat steel... And if it do, I have a reason to rebarrel it

 

[Varmint Hunter]

Just one thought - Some fouling isn't all that bad providing that the rifle SHOOTS.

Many knowledgable shooters will tell you that any barrel, factory or custom, only needs to be cleaned enough to return accuracy. Additional cleaning is not necessary and is often undesirable.

Some of my custom match barrels have visible copper at the muzzle. It is often referred to as copper wash. I rarely, if ever, clean the bore to the point that the copper wash is totally removed. They still shoot great.

It's not uncommon for barrels that have been cleaned to the max, to have to have a couple of "fouling" shots put down the bore before the rifle groups well again.

Once your barrel has been broken in (another controversial issue) you may want to lighten up on you cleaning routine. More than a few barrels have been "cleaned out" before being "shot out".

Just a thought

 

[Riflemanse]

Hi Varmint Hunter

I haven´t got my scope yet so right now I cant tell how it shoots.
On my 308 which have a Lothar Walther barrel I hardly ever get any copper in it and I guess im spoild by that. But then thats a custom barrel.

 

[pigfarmer]

barrel break in problems

To shed some light about barrel break in. Everybody has a different way.This is what works best for me. Clean barrel before shooting the gun with hoppes. Then use iosso bore cleaner,10 to 15 short strokes in throat only. New patch with iosso short strokes one pass through barrel. Clean barrel with lighter fluid.Then us JB with the same steps as above. Most barrels have very uneven cuts on the throat. Most copper is scraped off here and the plasma heat created by powder burn liquidfies the copper and starts laying it down about the tip of of the forend to the crown. don't use strong chemicals! I also don't care for use of a brush. I hope this will help. P.S. I can't spell so let's get this behind us. As a farmer @ builder of things that are related with this website,i hope these is imformation you can use.

 

[pigfarmer]

barrel break in problems

To shed some light about barrel break in. Everybody has a different way.This is what works best for me. Clean barrel before shooting the gun with hoppes. Then use iosso bore cleaner,10 to 15 short strokes in throat only. New patch with iosso short strokes one pass through barrel. Clean barrel with lighter fluid.Then us JB with the same steps as above. Most barrels have very uneven cuts on the throat. Most copper is scraped off here and the plasma heat created by powder burn liquidfies the copper and starts laying it down about the tip of of the forend to the crown. don't use strong chemicals! I also don't care for use of a brush. I hope this will help. P.S. I can't spell so let's get this behind us. As a farmer @ builder of things that are related with this website,i hope this is imformation you can use.

 

[Jeff In TX]

Hi

Im in the process of breaking in my new Rem 700 ADL in 300wm.
So far I have fired 10 rounds with cleaning in between each round
and to day I fired the first 2 shot series and doing the cleaning right now.

The problem I have with the barrel (factory) is that Sweets hardly gets any copper out, patches are white but I see copper with my naked eye. I have used Shooters Choise and bronze brush for the carbon, then dry patch, I have even tried alcohol in between the Shooters Choise and Sweets.
I now use Milfoam, similar to Vipeout I belive. (Milfoam Ltd - barrel cleaning solution for all firearms - artillery, infantry, navy and air force)

It removes all the copper after I have removed the carbon with Shooters Choise or Ed´s Red.

Tha question is, will it ever stop collecting copper, I mean it still coppers after one single round? I will continue to shoot 2 rounds and clean now for another 8 rounds.


// Johan

Diezel,

I mean this not a flame but to help. Stop this insanity of barrel breakin especially with a factory barrel, not to mention you're shooting a 300 WM which has a very limited and short barrel life to begin with.

Barrel breakin is a myth and a waist of time and effort. Now before anyone jumps up and down, show me hard core evidence i.e. progressive enhanced bore scope evidence that cleaning after every round is actually doing something. There's just no such thing as breaking in a barrel. About the only thing it can help with is smoothing the chamber transition into the throat area but using a bore scope we haven't seen any real evidence that cleaning is making a difference. Ever barrel is different and a factory barrel is a crap shoot, but after x number of rounds the throat and chamber area transition together and any sharp machine edges from cutting the chamber smooth out.

If you're worried about copper fouling and trying to smooth out your bore the best advice I can offer you is get a box of Tubb's Final Finish in .300 WM for $34.99 at Midway USA. MidwayUSA - Tubb Final Finish Bore Lapping Ammunition 300 Winchester Magnum Box of 20


This will help smooth the chamber and throat area transition and help smooth out the inside of the barrel to a degree. Most of the polishing of the barrel will be in the throat area and few inches past the throat and the rest of the barrel will also see some benefit also.

If you decide to use Tubb's Final Finish, don't fret it you still get a little copper fouling. That's not always a bad thing. The little bit of copper fouling you get is probably filling in any micro grooves that the Final Finish didn't get out and it helping to smooth the barrel out.

Best if luck and let us know how it goes.

 

[Chawlston]

You are not looking for bore scope evidence. You are seeking to eliminate any burrs or defects that can pick up copper which cause the bullet rotate in an imbalanced state.

Basically the cleaning process is gently eliminating the rough edges. Heck, some guys just take five bronze brushes and stroke each 100 times back and forth. This too works as it smooths out the rough edges.

The most recent one I did was a factory 338RUM Sendero and when I was breaking in the barrel, I shot all the shots on the target at 100 yards. The gun started shooting tight groups (at shot 35) when the fouling greatly diminished. I guess more of the bullet was exiting the barrel than being left behind. Anyway we got that factory rifle to shoot sub 3/8" with 225gr Accubonds @ 3100fps and we rarely see any copper at all during the cleaning process.

So, in short, it may be a myth or even an evil plot by the gun cleaning supply business to sell more product, but in every centerfire barrel I have ever used and competed with as well as any barrel I tuned for friends, they really started shooting when the barrel quit copper fouling.

At 200,000 rpm, it doesn't take much to upset the stability of the bullet by changing it's center of mass when you leave some of it in the barrel.......

James

 

[Chawlston]

The following is a listing of custom barrels that have benefited from barrel break-in (Kreiger, Douglas, Schneider, Hart, Lilja, K&P and McMillan):

338-378, 338 Lapua Improved, 338 Lapua, 338 RUM, 30-378, 30-338 Lapua Improved, 30-338 Lapua, 308 Hammonds (x2), 6x284, 7mm-08 imp, 25-06, 25-06 Imp, 30-06 Imp, 25x284(x2), 22-6mm, 22 Lapua (x3), 22 PPC, 6mm PPC (x12 +,-). I am sure I have missed listing some. And, I have a dozen or so waiting to be broken in as well. If any one of them does not repond to barrel break-in, I will report it on this thread. If you don't see any additional posts by me, you will know that the process continues to work here in SC.

Almolst forgot.......... When we do factory barrels, they respond better (takes a little longer) than the custom variety .

James

 

[goodgrouper]

Exactly Chawlston. Well said.

Those who debate the effectiveness of break in obviously have never done it. No matter how smooth or lapped a barrel is, if it has a chamber, it will have burrs where the reamer stopped. PERIOD. You can shoot them out with a thousand rounds without cleaning and take your chances with accuracy or you can break it in and "waste" 10 or 20 shots and get accuracy and easy cleaning immediately.

And proof is in the testing. If breakin did nothing, then what is to explain the sudden reduction of cleaning time and/or the sudden change in POI when it happens?