The ABCs Of Barrel Break-In - Brief Article

Preparing for this article, I checked with Doug Shilen, the famous Texas barrel maker, Woody Woodall of Lothar Walther Barrels, J.D. Jones of SSK Industries, Don Allen of Dakota Arms and Randy Barnes of Barnes Bullets. I combined all their suggestions with my own experience to distill the following procedure for breaking in a new barrel.

First, head to the loading bench and load up ammo. Now is your chance to use up those bullets you didn't like and that powder that didn't shoot so well. Load up whatever junk you want to get rid of because we aren't interested in accuracy, just in getting rounds down range.

Make certain your barrel is clean and free of oil or dirt. Do this by merely pushing a clean patch through it. Then head out to the range with the gun, 100 rounds of your junk ammo, a cleaning rod, plenty of patches and a bottle of bore solvent. A rag comes in handy too.

Shoot one round and one round only. Now clean the barrel. My favorite procedure is to run a rod through the barrel from the breech, and let the jag just stick out from the muzzle.

I happen to like the Dewey stainless steel rods and the wrap-around type brass jags. I don't recommend all-brass rods for other than occasional cleaning. This is heavy duty cleaning, so use a heat-treated stainless steel rod, with a swivel handle. If you really want to be professional, use a bore guide to keep the rod completely away from the rifling just ahead of the chamber.

Wrap a patch around the jag sticking out of the muzzle. Saturate the jag with solvent, and pull it back through, but don't let it come completely out the chamber. Stroke it back and fourth several times. The purpose here is to merely wet the bore with the solvent and remove some of the powder fouling that is covering up the copper fouling.

Next, push the jag back out the muzzle and you will likely see that it is black with powder fowling. Now change patches, and saturate the new one with fresh bore solvent. Stroke this new patch several times and your inspection should find that the patch is blue, showing that it has chemically melted the copper fouling present from only one bullet. If the patch is clean, you have the only new barrel I have ever seen that didn't pick up copper fouling.

Next, repeat this step with a fresh patch and solvent, and keep repeating this routine until the patch doesn't pick up anything. Then run one more dry patch through to prepare the bore for the second shot.

You guessed it, fire a second shot and repeat the cleaning procedure. This cycle should be repeated for 10 rounds. That's right, 10 single shots each followed by cleaning.

The next step is to fire three rounds and clean again, and repeat this cycle five times until you have used up 15 rounds. Total rounds fired up to now are 25.

Now fire five rounds and clean again. Do this five times to use up another 25 rounds. Then fire 10 rounds, slowly this time, and clean again. Do this five times to use up the last 50 rounds.

By now you should be completely worn out, but think what you have accomplished! You now have a barrel that is properly broken-in and is capable of top accuracy. You also have 100 rounds of fire-formed brass that is ready to fill with your favorite accuracy load.

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COPYRIGHT 2001 Gale Group