[questor]

Yes, I know there are many postings about theory etc. on weapon break-in. I find this one interesting, because it is written my Remington Arms on the M24 (military version of the Remington 700).

This procedure seems really time consuming, maybe that is why many have adapted some variation of:

1-20 - Clean after each shot
21-100 - Clean after every 10 shots
101-200 - Clean after every 20 shots

In any event, the following is the procedure for the M24 by Remington, wonder if TM 9-1005-306-10 has the same info. Attempted to download, it went successfully, but sort of screwed up when the zip file was unzipped.




M24 Cleaning and Maintenance Procedures

By Michael Haugen,
Military Products Representative
Remington Arms Company

M24 Cleaning and Maintenance Procedures

The M24 Sniper Weapons System (SWS) is a precision military grade weapons system capable of extreme accuracy if correctly maintained and cared for. Many times M24’s are damaged due to incorrect cleaning techniques.

The M24 should be cleaned and maintained as any custom style precision weapon system in that the carbon and copper left in the weapon during firing must be removed to retain accuracy though the life of the system.

The following procedures are recommended by Remington Arms Company to guarantee that the M24 SWS delivers the required performance in the field. In the following procedures you will find barrel break in, routine maintenance, cleaning materials list and information of painting the weapon system. All of these issues pertain only to the M24 SWS but can be applied to any “sniper” or precision rifle.

BARREL BREAK IN

The M24 comes from Remington ready to shoot, however it is recommended that the gun be broken in to enhance the life and accuracy of the weapon. Should you need to immediately employ or use the weapon you may disregard the break in procedure; however weapon life may suffer depending on how it is used. In order to break the weapon in follow the following steps;
1. Clear the weapon.
2. Remove the bolt.
3. Insert the bore guide.
4. Dry patch the barrel to remove any obstacles.
5. Remove the bore guide
6. Reinsert the bolt
7. Load one round
8. Fire one round
9. Clean the weapon (see ROUTINE MAINTENANCE)
10. Repeat this (firing 1 round and cleaning) until you have fired 10 rounds
11. Load and fire 3 rounds
12. Clean the weapon (see ROUTINE MAINTENANCE)
13. Repeat this another 9 times (10 iterations total) (firing 3 rounds and cleaning) for a total of 40 rounds being fired through the rifle (1 round x 10 and 3 rounds x 10)
14. Load and fire 5 rounds
15. Clean the weapon (see ROUTINE MAINTENANCE)
16. Repeat this another 9 times (10 iterations total) (firing 5 rounds and cleaning) for a total of 90 rounds being fired through the rifle (1 round x 10, 3 rounds x 10 and 5 rounds x 10)
17. Load and fire 10 rounds
18. Clean the weapon (see ROUTINE MAINTENANCE)
19. This should be 100 rounds total fired through the rifle, the M24 is now broken in.

Full article:

http://www.700rifle.com/forums/viewtopic.php?id=36

 

[pruhdlr]

A Barrel Is..........

.........a barrel,is a barrel,is a barrel.

High end,low end,factory,target,premium,ultra premium,golden,platinum,or even super dooper. They are all basically the same. Even stainless or chrome moly. There is some difference in the chrome lined.

As stated here before(probably several times) my bbls are all pre range broken in. Proper rod(I use Tipton). Proper jag. Tight fittings patch. Rem Clean,JB Cleaner,or some other mildly abrasive solution. 400 strokes(up and back is one)600 is even better. Keep the patch tight. Renew the cleaner every 25 or so passes. Make your arms ache. Burnish the bbl.

Then clean with regular cleaner(I use Break Free). Go to range and enjoy. If an "extended" range session,clean after every 25 shots or so. Smaller the caliber....more often you clean.

That's it for me. Hopefully I will never need a set of directions for barrel break in.

Good Shootin' ----- pruhdlr

 

[gunho1954]

barrel break in --please show me some PROOF. -a copper jacket ,glides down a tube and does what?-it fouls.-you remove the copper fouling and she continues to do what it does. if you think that by shooting a hundred rounds,and cleaning every 5 shots or so is going to smooth out the bore and stop fouling,then you are sadly mistaken,unless your barrel is made from cs10/20.or st/10/12-cs 250.(22 rim fire).COPPER DOES NOT LAP EN4140--4153 OR 440 S/STEEL.-check the brinell or rockwell A scale.--after 40 years in the engineering game,i will stand corrected if some one can show me what im missing here.--heard this over the last couple of decades. if it works for you.well and good.-never had to to do all the cleaning break in stuff and think its BS.-P R O V E to me HOW it works.

 

[questor]

barrel break in --please show me some PROOF.

Just presented what Remington Arms states in their M24 Manual. All very confusing to me. But you certainly know "The Shadow Knows and he isn't talking!"

****


Of course another procedure written by whomever Ed Brown is for the American Handgunner in 2000:
1-10 – Clean following each shot
11-25 – Clean following each three rounds
26-50 – Clean following each five rounds
51-100 – Clean following each 10 rounds

The ABCs Of Barrel Break-In - Brief Article
American Handgunner, Jan, 2000 by Ed Brown

Preparing for this article, I checked with Doug Shilen, the famous Texas barrel maker, Woody Woodall of Lothar Walther Barrels, J.D. Jones of SSK Industries, Don Allen of Dakota Arms and Randy Barnes of Barnes Bullets. I combined all their suggestions with my own experience to distill the following procedure for breaking in a new barrel.

First, head to the loading bench and load up ammo. Now is your chance to use up those bullets you didn't like and that powder that didn't shoot so well. Load up whatever junk you want to get rid of because we aren't interested in accuracy, just in getting rounds down range.

Make certain your barrel is clean and free of oil or dirt. Do this by merely pushing a clean patch through it. Then head out to the range with the gun, 100 rounds of your junk ammo, a cleaning rod, plenty of patches and a bottle of bore solvent. A rag comes in handy too.

Shoot one round and one round only. Now clean the barrel. My favorite procedure is to run a rod through the barrel from the breech, and let the jag just stick out from the muzzle.

I happen to like the Dewey stainless steel rods and the wrap-around type brass jags. I don't recommend all-brass rods for other than occasional cleaning. This is heavy duty cleaning, so use a heat-treated stainless steel rod, with a swivel handle. If you really want to be professional, use a bore guide to keep the rod completely away from the rifling just ahead of the chamber.

Wrap a patch around the jag sticking out of the muzzle. Saturate the jag with solvent, and pull it back through, but don't let it come completely out the chamber. Stroke it back and fourth several times. The purpose here is to merely wet the bore with the solvent and remove some of the powder fouling that is covering up the copper fouling.

Next, push the jag back out the muzzle and you will likely see that it is black with powder fowling. Now change patches, and saturate the new one with fresh bore solvent. Stroke this new patch several times and your inspection should find that the patch is blue, showing that it has chemically melted the copper fouling present from only one bullet. If the patch is clean, you have the only new barrel I have ever seen that didn't pick up copper fouling.
Next, repeat this step with a fresh patch and solvent, and keep repeating this routine until the patch doesn't pick up anything. Then run one more dry patch through to prepare the bore for the second shot.

You guessed it, fire a second shot and repeat the cleaning procedure. This cycle should be repeated for 10 rounds. That's right, 10 single shots each followed by cleaning.

The next step is to fire three rounds and clean again, and repeat this cycle five times until you have used up 15 rounds. Total rounds fired up to now are 25.
Now fire five rounds and clean again. Do this five times to use up another 25 rounds. Then fire 10 rounds, slowly this time, and clean again. Do this five times to use up the last 50 rounds.

By now you should be completely worn out, but think what you have accomplished! You now have a barrel that is properly broken-in and is capable of top accuracy. You also have 100 rounds of fire-formed brass that is ready to fill with your favorite accuracy load.



http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0BTT/is_144_24/ai_57886929/

 

[MikeG]

In theory you'll accomplish the exact same thing, if you just clean to bare steel once in a while. It may just take longer.

 

[MZ5]

Gunho1954: I agree with you re: the necessity (or lack thereof) of barrel 'break-in' procedures of this sort. Still, in answer to your request re: proof (or al least info?) about what can burnish what, I ask you this: Is the rockwell hardness of cotton less than barrel steels? Is it also less than copper or gilding metal? Won't a cotton rag, if rubbed across steel, polish it up? Won't it even wear it away, if rubbed across the steel for long enough?

Again, I agree with you re: barrel break-in procedures and cleaning. Still, a comparison of rockwell hardness numbers seems to not tell a complete story.

 

[hailstone]

Recently reading a book run across a discussion on this same topic. Author went to several different barrel makers for interviews getting there thoughts and opinions. Most had various regimes similar to the above but one maker was honest with the writer. He said they only came up with a break in proceedure because there customers were taking up so much staff time calling, writing or emailing about such a proceedure. When asked did it help his only comment was it couldn't hurt if proper cleaning proceedures were followed i.e. correct type cleaning rod, tip, cleaning from the chamber end etc.

My thoughts on this are it gives the manufacturers another means to deny warrenty coverage like they have done with reloads and steel case ammunition.

 

[StretchNM]

Why do high-end barrel makers lapp the bores?

If we buy their barrels, are we paying for that service? ANd...is it paying for something we don;t need?

And if we don;t need those high-end, bore-lapped barrels, why are so many buying them? And, if they're not buying them, why are they all still in business?

Just wondering......... sorry for asking so many questions.








Break it in, I say.

 

[hailstone]

StretchNM its called salesmanship. Given the right conditions some salesman can sell ice to eskimos. If you think about your questions in light of an aggressive salesman and a customer who doesn't know much about what he's about to buy you'll find your answers.

If you ever bought a new product that you were familiar with from a salesman I bet you had some chuckles about things the salesman stated. I've overheard salesman in chain gun stores make ridiculus claims about rifles, cartridges, products whatever just to make a sale. Many of these claims bordered on outright lies although some had a thread of truth.

I've had too many new rifles over the years shot with no break-in that were sub MOA. Recently have tried the "break in" on numberous rifles and I cannot see where its done much good accuracy wise. I can tell there is some burnishing going on because the patches tend to go through the bore easier after each additional shot. Probably if I went PD hunting and shot several hundred rounds before cleaning it would do the same thing.

 

[StretchNM]

I'd have to agree, Hailstone, about salesmen and some of the silly claims I've had made to me when some idiot thought I was too. Like the guy at the gun show who tried to tell me the Marlin 336C was "brand new" (as I was examining it), with only the factory rounds fired through it....and that Marlin was no longer making the 336C in .35Rem and is why it commanded a 25% price increase. Yes, salesmeanship sells alot of things to some people.....

But! The theory behind the break-in procedure, what I've read anyway, appeals to my logic. Perhaps the number of rounds fired between cleanings, or the total number of rounds to fire to complete the process, or something else in the procedure itself is wrong, I don;t know, but the overall theory - that of repeatedly burnishing a clean barrel for the first "few" rounds, makes an ennormous amount of sense to me, without re-explaining the process or theory all over again. Now, as I've said in other threads about this issue, I'm no expert. And I have rifles that shoot very accurately that have never been "broken-in" as we're talking about here. Why that is, I cannot explain.

Yet I go back to this: It cannot hurt the rifle unless the cleaning or other aspect is done improperly. It simply defies logic if we say it will (which no one has yet in this thread). So.....what it amounts to is a terrible waste of time. A time that I think is terribly worth the waste, if that's all it truly is. So for me, and me alone, the more I read, the more I think about it, and the more of these threads that pop up, the more convinced I am it is the proper thing to do.......... for my rifles.....but not for others.

If a barrel lasts 7000 rounds, for example, and we clean it about every 20 rounds or so, let's say..... the rifle not subjected to the break-in procedure will have been cleaned 350 times. The rifle subjected to the break-in procedure will have been cleaned 378 times.

If I break-in my rifles, they will shoot more accurately and last longer with less fouling than any other rifle. If another person doesn;t do the break-in on his rifles, they will shoot more accurately, last longer, and have less fouling issues than mine will. I don;t know why this is, but I'm working on it in my spare time.....................

 

[broom_jm]

I always have two thoughts when it comes to barrel break-in threads:

1) What effect does the searing heat of the gases, and friction on that copper-jacketed bullet, have on its ability to burnish the steel, particularly at the throat (where heat from gas is highest) and at the crown (where heat from the bullet is at its highest). From what I understand, the throat and crown are where accuracy is most determined.

2) Few people will argue that following a "break-in" procedure, even on a 20 year-old gun, will result in a barrel that is easier to clean, with each subsequent firing/cleaning process. What this suggests to me is that SOMETHING is happening in that barrel to improve the cleaning characteristics, so perhaps that will also improve accuracy.

The advice offered by many knowledgeable sources to extend the life of throat-eroding cartridges like the 220 Swift and .264WM, has always been to shoot fewer rounds to avoid excessive heat in the barrel and to clean often. Since that is EXACTLY what this barrel break-in process results in, I figure if it's good enough for those hot, overbore rounds, it's good enough for all of my guns. Plus, who wants to hurry up and shoot all their ammo so they have to head home from the range early?!

 

[nvshooter]

Plus, who wants to hurry up and shoot all their ammo so they have to head home from the range early?!

Excellent point, _jm! A mediocre day at the range is always better than a really good day at work. We go out to shoot to relax, kind o' like going to play golf. If I ever win a lotto, I'll relax more often...

 

[DOK]

Excellent point, _jm! A mediocre day at the range is always better than a really good day at work. We go out to shoot to relax, kind o' like going to play golf. If I ever win a lotto, I'll relax more often...

If you're able to play golf and relax, you're a better man than I

 

[So Dakota]

I shot one of those M24's in the Ilion Sportsman Club. 3/4" at 300 yards with Military National Match. Remington wouldn't let me keep it tho.

 

[pisgah]

I asked my Army sniper nephew, "How do you guys break in a new rifle?" He looked at me as though I were dotty and said, "We go to the range and shoot them, of course, Unc."

 

[broom_jm]

Did your Army sniper nephew happen to mention if a sniper rifle will have "x" number of rounds shot through it before it heads into combat? A whole lot of shooters have noticed that a barrel doesn't always shoot its best groups right out of the box...that some barrels don't shoot really well until 200 or 300 rounds later. I know a few benchrest shooters who don't even bother doing load development on a rifle until they've put a couple of hundred rounds down the tube.

Does the Army do that? Perhaps there is more to this notion of "breaking in a barrel" than just cleaning in-between a lot of rounds. For those of us who have followed this process, on brand new or even used guns, there is a distinct and quantifiable advantage to it: Conditioned barrels consistently clean easier. That's worth the price of admission, as far as I'm concerned.

 

[MZ5]

Perhaps there is more to this notion of "breaking in a barrel" than just cleaning in-between a lot of rounds. For those of us who have followed this process, on brand new or even used guns, there is a distinct and quantifiable advantage to it: Conditioned barrels consistently clean easier.

Well, I've followed the process before, and I disagree. The issue with the whole premise is that you CAN'T tell; there's no way to shoot a given barrel two different ways at the same time, so you actually _can't_ quantify any difference. IF there was an advantage, though, lapping would do the same thing, only better (and maybe faster). I still don't follow a 'break-in' procedure other than just shooting any more. If I have a problem fouler I either Dyna Bore Coat it or lap it (or both, just for fun ).

 

[Darkker]

Why do high-end barrel makers lapp the bores?

If we buy their barrels, are we paying for that service? ANd...is it paying for something we don;t need?

And if we don;t need those high-end, bore-lapped barrels, why are so many buying them? And, if they're not buying them, why are they all still in business?

Just wondering......... sorry for asking so many questions.

Break it in, I say.

This part is like a warranty(to me at least). Let's just use Toyota for the example. They make very good quality vehicles. So honestly 95% of their vehicles don't "need it". And yet people will brag about their good warranty.

Why pay for what isn't needed?? Much like your later post, it lines-up with your senseabilities; which is perfectly fine.

If it feels good, do it.

 

[langenc]

If you're able to play golf and relax, you're a better man than I

I have a couple brother=in-laws that play golf. I dont think they relax. Maybe after they get to the 19th hole-or home.