Breaking in a new rifle or die trying

H

Hardbawl

New member
Greetings from north central Pennsylvania.

Just purchased a Savage Model 16 Weather Warrior in .308. Nice rifle. Feels good. Good trigger and the safety works naturally. I was anxious to savor some of that heavily advertised Savage accuracy.

Bought three boxes of Winchester .308 150gr Power Points planning to do the shoot one and clean break in for the first 10 shots, then move to 3 shot groups and clean. Fortunately I can shoot off my porch, because the first 10 shots took me an entire weekend. This ole girl eats copper. Using Butches Bore Shine, patches, brass brushes, and JB I struggled to remove the copper from just one shot. I would use 2 wet patches, followed by 10 brush strokes, followed by another wet patch, followed by 10 passes with JB, followed by another wet patch. It took 3 or 4 repetitions of this to get the barrel clean for each shot. After shooting the 10 single shots, I made the mistake of trying a 3 shot group. It took a steady half hour of cleaning to get rid of the copper.

A friend told me about a Tubb's kit of bullets with a series of different abrasives on them that were sold to polish and smooth out a barrel. He said that the kit was cheapper than shooting hundreds of bullets and spending countless hours cleaning.

My question is: have any of you used Tubbs polishing kit? Does it work?
What I am doing now is no longer fun. Any suggestions would be appreciated.

Thanks,:confused:
 
Just my opinion here: Stop, there is no need to "break" in your barrel. This well happen naturally as you shoot and cleaning after evey shot is just not needed. Shoot your rifle until the accuracy is affected, then clean it. You've got a hunting rifle and while bench rest people may find value in breaking in a new barrel I've not seen any real value doing to any of my hunting rifles.
 
I have only broken in Browning barrels and maybe a couple others. I have found that with the barrel nice a clean, a patch with JB Bore Paste rubbed thinly on it will smooth things out if you work it back a forth many, many times. It is an abrasive so be careful, but it sounds like the machining marks are not yet smoothed so the copper is building. Another one is Remington 40X. It has a ball in it like a spray paint can, so shake it up good. My gunsmith loves the stuff but cautions to use it with care as well. Keep at it as in my opinion it will help with fouling once things are smoothed out. In theory, this should help accuracy as fouling should not build up as much or as quickly.


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+1 on not trying to break in the barrel.
I have a Savage .308 and it may show some coppering after 100 rounds but it doesn't lose accuracy until it has at least 200 rounds through it.
I didn't break in that barrel. I am not sure that it makes any difference.

Two other things to consider:

1) If you were using a bronze brush, you probably were seeing more copper from the brush than you were from the barrel.
Also, I only use a nylon brush and only use it sparingly.
My Savage has almost 4000 rounds through it and still shoots as good as the first day I got it.

2) Every rifle tends to be particular about ammo and I found big differences in my Savage .308 with manufacturers, bullets and weight.
Don't concluded anything until you try several kinds of ammo.

With factory ammo it averaged 0.881 for 47 measured groups but its best ammo average was 0.682 with 168 grain match bullets.
It didn't take me long to realize that I had to tune the depth and velocity in order to get better accuracy so I switched to shooting hand loads.

It has averaged 0.655 over 800 measured groups of hand loads, including all the groups that I shot in order to find the rifles preferences.
Its top 10 hand loads using 150, 168 and 175 grain bullets has averaged 0.457 inches at 100 yards. There is no real difference in accuracy between the preferred 150 and 168 grain bullet loads as long as I tune the velocity and seating depth to the rifle.
The best of the 175 grain bullets seem to be about 0.05 inches less accurate than the lighter bullets. Perhaps I haven't found the perfect tuning for them yet.
 
I don't think anybody ever heard about "barrel break-in" before the Internet. We just went out and shot sub-MOA groups. Cleaned as appropriate.

I first learned of break-in here, in 1999. Sadly, I'd had forty-nine years of center-fire sub-MOA ignorance.
 
Rimfire wrote:
"1) If you were using a bronze brush, you probably were seeing more copper from the brush than you were from the barrel.
Also, I only use a nylon brush and only use it sparingly.
My Savage has almost 4000 rounds through it and still shoots as good as the first day I got it"

Rim, after firing a single shot from a clean bore, I get a strong light and look at the rifling at the muzzle. I can see copper wash on the lands and in the middle of the grouves. Then I start with patches wet with Butch's, then a brass brush. After brushing, there is no copper in the grouves, but there still is copper on the lands.

If this girl was shooting tight groups, I would move on. The factory ammo started out shooting around 3" at 100 yards. Handloads shoot tighter but not really good. I have gotten 2, 1" three shot groups with handloads, but most groups are around an inch and a half. The rifle now has about 60 rounds fired through it.

You help is appreciated.
 
I'm going to agree with Allenj and Art Eatman, Even after you "break in" this rifle barrel, it still might collect copper fouling... I learned fast that it takes alot of cleaning scrubbing and undesirable language to remove all copper fouling....
Take my word for it the "Butch's Bore Shine" aint that good. Try Bore Techs Eliminator, you can scrub a warm barrel with it and leave it overnight if you like and it won't harm your barrel.
The biggest thing is to shoot that sucker and it Will come around just be patient, and practice your shooting technique, we all could use some practice.:rolleyes:
 
http://www.6mmbr.com/gailmcmbreakin.html

Break in is a myth IMO. A patch with solvent on it doesn't physically alter the barrel to shoot better. I don't break in my rifles, they're more accurate than me and i've never had problems.

As hooligan said there is always room for improvement. Boretech Eliminator is good as well. Personally i don't clean my rifles until i see a degradation in accuracy.
 
Bladkop wrote"

Break in is a myth IMO. A patch with solvent on it doesn't physically alter the barrel to shoot better. I don't break in my rifles, they're more accurate than me and i've never had problems.

I am happy for you. How somever, I am having a problem.
 
All the posts here are kind of dancing around the bigger issue. What do you do with a bore that is excessively rough with tool marks? Those marks are going to cause copper fouling. Although I've never had to do it personally, I've seen cases where the only solution is to go at it with Flitz or another polishing compound.
 
hardbrawl said:
I am happy for you. How somever, I am having a problem.
Click to expand...

Have you tried different ammo? You said you bought 3 boxes of 150gr winchester. What's the twist rate of the rifle?

Did you read the link i posted?
 
Thanks Doyle. I have been shooting for over 40 years, and have never run across a barrel that fouls like this one. That is why I asked if anyone has any experience with the Tubb polishing kit. It uses Sierra bullets impregnated with different levels of polishing compound. It is designed to wear down the high spots in the barrel and does make a slight change in bore diameter. However, since you only have so many bullets in the kit, the wear is minimal.

Most of my using rifles are set up to use moly coated bullets. After coming back from a South Dakota prairie dog hunt and firing over 600 rounds, my Winchester M70 in .223 still shoots in the 3s and has never had a barrel cleaning since it has been moly coated. This rifle must only use handloads. I was hoping to get a rifle working so that, if necessary, I could use factory rounds.

Again thanks.
 
To snswer the original question, the Tubbs kit works and works well, but it may not make any difference in your barrel if it is too rough. Sure, it will smooth it out. Sure, the bore will be shiny. It sounds like you have a rough barrel, possibly some machining marks left in the bore before they button-rifled the barrel (Savage does not hone and polish the bore before rifling). The Tubbs system may or may ot take care of the machining marks, even shooting a full box of them is not intended to take out very much metal. Try iving Savage customer service a call. Be prepared to answer the hard questions, like what the problem is. I don't think they will be very sympathetic about the fouling issue unless it seriously affects accuracy. But hey, give them a try.

And FWIW, barrel break-in is not a myth, it's something we used to do to broach-cut barrels. Button-rifled barrels benefit very little from barrel break-in. Saying it is a myth is akin to sayng there is no need to shim your car's crankshaft bearings after 20,000 miles (again, something old-timers may recognize). It's just something there is no need for any more due to changing technology.
 
I've done the 1-shot, clean, for 10 rounds, again at 15 and again at 20, procedure on every rifle I've ever owned (or even handguns that shoot rifle cartridges). My family members do it also, in a similar fashion if not exact.

I and they have never had:

1) A gun which exhibits severe fouling.

2) A gun that shoots over 1" at 100 yards.

Why? There's nothing special about our abilities or cleaning methods. We don't even use bore guides, copper remover or anything else "fancy".

You should see the bore of my Ruger M77 in 204. It looks clean, right now, with at least 40 or 50 shots through it since cleaning. AT LEAST. I honestly don't remember but I've shot that many the last 2 or 3 times out.

A couple weeks ago, I shot about 3/4" at 200 yards with it.

Maybe barrel break-in doesn't do a whit of good. If you had my experience, would you stop doing it?
 
Brian, if it works for you and you're happy with it, don't change a thing. :)

Hardbawl, it sounds as though you might have a barrel which was cut with tooling that was near the end of its useful life. Odds are, some sort of polishing effort would/could be beneficial. I've never had the problem, so I don't know about the Tubbs kit.

But that's a different deal from the usual break-in process.
 
I think many see barrel break-in as analogous to breaking in a new automobile, for the latter the version I have heard is you drive around town for a week or two rather than driving on the Interstate at high speed. NIB semiautomatic handguns often benefit from a break-in period to allow the parts to properly mesh with each other and to find any quirks or peculiarities.
There seem to as many methods of break-in as there are cleaning methods and they all seem to work equally well. Also in my modest experience in firing large bore NIB rifles (emphasis on the word modest) I have found factors such as wood to metal fit, screw tension, bedding or free-floating more important than the barrel's interior. Just my $.02.
 
barrel break in is a myth. copper fouling is a fact of life, unless your lands are completely stuffed with it then you are not going to lose accuracy. some guns just do not like smaller bullets. my remington 700 does not like 80 grain bullets but it'll blow the bullseye out of a target with 100gr bullets. you are shooting cheap, very light ammo from a company that is not known for impeccable accuracy(not looking to start any brand wars). IIRC most match grade ammo is either 167 or 168grains so right in the middle of the 308 spectrum(145ish-180ish grains). maybe a good thing to try would be to grab a box of federal match ammo and a box of the heaviest remington coreloks as a control group and see if you are still having issues. I once knew a guy that swore up and down that you needed to break in your barrel so one day another friend had it and hooked his winchester 70 up to the back of his truck, dragged it about 300 feet down a gravel road and then immiediately blew a pine cone off a pine branch at about 100 yards(open sights of course).... the guy turned to my buddy and said "you know I think you're right, that break in was just what this rifle needed".

the first guy never once mentioned barrel break ins in front of us ever again.
 
Break-in = burnishing, which could help a rough barrel.

However, if I bought a rifle NIB that did exceptional fouling, I'd paint it yellow and send it back. I ain't runnin' no lemonade stand.
 
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