12-24-2011, 02:12 PM
Hello everyone I know this is a well heated subject so I'll get right to the point. As you all know by now I'm new to the AR platform. While on a hunting trip in November this question came up around the camp fire. A friend of mine had just purchased a new 223 rifle and was anticipating shooting it at the range after the morning hunt. To make a long story short, he shot the rifle for 2 full days, I would guess putting somewhere between 100-150 rounds throughout it, with no particular procedure and without any cleaning. Basically just load and shoot. The rifle shot sub MOA all day long during this time. Now, two days later, a guy comes in to camp and so happens to have all the necessary equipment to "clean" the rifle. He talks my friend into letting him do the "proper" break in on the barrel, shooting, cleaning, repeat, repeat, etc. Now, what Ive noticed during this procedure was, the rifle was shooting sub MOA right out of the box. Now after every cleaning it was shooting 2 MOA with the first 3 shots but consistently improving with ever shot. It took about 10 shot to get it back to sub MOA. All testing was done with the same ammo ( right now the brand and gr has slipped my mind) at 100 yards from a bench with a sand bag rest and a 12 power scope. Do barrels need to be "broke in"? This 1 obviously didn't.... But I must say this is the only experience I've had with barrel break in. I sure some will argue that things weren't done right out of the box and that this had an effect, and so on. I'm not claiming to know a lot about this, as I don't , I just thought I would share an experience I had. What do you seasoned veterans think about barrel break ?