Barrel Break-In (or how to shorten a barrel's useful life)

[Buster]

I think the general consensus on the board is "clean less, shoot more". I only clean when I have a functional issue, ie. rounds won't chamber or extract, or accuracy begins to decrease. I have barrels that haven't been cleaned since last April, although they have been shot plenty.

And no, I don't believe in break-in. That's what the barrel maker does when he laps a barrel and what I pay for when I buy a high end barrel!

I'm glad I read this thread.
I mostly shoot at a public range and talk to the AR shooters (as well as the FUDS) and their consensus has been the "dirtier" their AR is, the tighter it shoots. That has been my (non-scientific) findings as well.
See how it shoots at 100, 500 and then 1000 rounds....or if/when it malfunctions, clean it.
This philosophy has worked for me the past 3 years.

I "broke in" my Lilja barrel build last weekend; shot, swabbed it it with a patch with Butch's Bore Shine, swabbed it with a patch saturated with Kroil and then a dry patch, lather, rinse, repeat....20 times. I was glad when it was over,,,took almost 2 hours.
I didn't save the paper, but the cardboard back looked like this; 50 yards, GG&G iron sights...basically 1" MOA @ 50 yds.



Talking about barrel break in; (3rd hand information), I had a guy tell me that worked for me, when he worked in an armory when he was in the service, whenever they replaced a barrel in an M4, they would load a 30 round mag, set the selector switch to "Pew Pew Pew" and dump the mag and then say, "Barrel is broken in".