12-25-2011, 03:31 PM
It is the consensus of the High Power National Match competitors that barrel break in is a bunch of huey invented by the barrel makers to allow them to blame bad performing barrels on the shooter not following their documented break in process. This is from shooters who routinely burn up a barrel every year, and do it year after year. I've personally gone through three barrels now on my personal competition rifle. The first one I followed the normal drawn out process of shooting one shot and cleaning shooting five shots and cleaning and so on. On my last two I just shot them to get a good zero, perhaps 20 shots and cleaned and then cleaned after every match or practice session there after, normally 88 shots with 40 of them fired rapid fire. I can tell no difference in accuracy or ease of cleaning. All three of these barrels shot .5 MOA from day one through their life of 3,000-5,000 rounds.
Bob
Bob