I'm admittedly new to the ownership of precision rifles--fired lots of them, but never had to break one in from scratch before.
After reading Gale McMillan's thoughts on "barrel break-in" proceedures, I decided to clean my rifle after 5 round groups. The rifle (a Remington 700vs) has 15 rounds through it, and after the first two 5 round groups, I soaked a patch with Remington bore cleaner (the thick grey stuff), swabbed it back and forth through the barrel on an eyelet about 5 times, and let it set. Then using ran about 25 dry patches on a jag through it until the residue on the patches was almost nil.
After my third 5-shot group, I've repeated the process. Just for grins, I wet a patch with bore cleaner and ran it down on the jag. It came out filthy. So I've repeated the process again and again, and while there is less fouling now, I can still run a wet patch through and have it come out dirty. I've used 80 patches now...
Is Remington bore cleaner not that good? Should I break down and use the brush?
After reading Gale McMillan's thoughts on "barrel break-in" proceedures, I decided to clean my rifle after 5 round groups. The rifle (a Remington 700vs) has 15 rounds through it, and after the first two 5 round groups, I soaked a patch with Remington bore cleaner (the thick grey stuff), swabbed it back and forth through the barrel on an eyelet about 5 times, and let it set. Then using ran about 25 dry patches on a jag through it until the residue on the patches was almost nil.
After my third 5-shot group, I've repeated the process. Just for grins, I wet a patch with bore cleaner and ran it down on the jag. It came out filthy. So I've repeated the process again and again, and while there is less fouling now, I can still run a wet patch through and have it come out dirty. I've used 80 patches now...
Is Remington bore cleaner not that good? Should I break down and use the brush?