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Do I or do I not need to break in the barrel on a new rifle. I have read both sides of the argument, but am still on the fence whether it is needed.

HOWA 1500 in .308 I have found a PDF form Howa about barrel break in but not sure if it is old or no longer relevant.

Any advice most welcome before I get to the range a week Friday....

You'll read both sides on here too.. :-)

I've done both.... shoot one then clean and repeat, shoot 5 then clean and repeat, etc, etc, and i've also given one a good clean then shot the cr*p out of it...

To my mind theres not much difference, but then i'm not a precision target shooter trying for V-bulls at 1k.

I will say that the one i "broke in" properly is very easy to clean now, but that could have been luck of the draw in getting a relatively smoothly rifled gun.

All I can advise is what do the instructions advise with the rifle? the manufacturer should know best!

When I purchased my AI AT, there was a recommended breaking in procedure within the instruction manual, so I followed that, why wouldn't you? Also, when I have the rifle re-barreled in 6.5CM, I will follow the same procedure.

It can never be proved either way is better but if you have lost confidence in your barrel because of break in then that will affect your shooting.

So; do what you think is best and it will be.

I’ve done both, used the fire & clean & just shoot it methods & in all honesty couldn’t tell the difference.

I personally think the only advantage to ‘breaking in’ a barrel is psychological, you won’t have any nagging doubts.

The main problem with a new barrel is copper build-up. If you do the 'shoot one, clean' method you are creating only a small amount of copper and removing it as you go. If you just shoot it, you will (could) get a much greater build-up of copper which can literally take days to remove. In fact some shooters probably never get their barrel copper-free. Only the use of a borescope will tell you.

However, the latest thinking is to shoot about 25 rounds without cleaning/de-coppering. This (apparently) has the effect of burnishing the barrel -rather than constantly deep cleaning it back to virgin metal every few shots. There is a good paper on this written by a shooter/metallurgist. PM me on targetshooteronline@icloud.com ncb2734 I'll be happy to forward it. I now use this method but it does take some time to get all the copper out.

I have a border barrel on my Remington 700 and have fired around 1,000 rounds through it from new (6.5x47 Lapua). I didn't observe any barrel break in method other than giving it a full clean after each range session (between 20-50 rounds). The last inch of the barrel has copper fouling which I've never been able to remove.

The rifle is still extremely accurate to this day. When I say accurate, I mean 0.5 moa at 100 yards using known good loads. For me, this is more than good enough.