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When one gets a new muzzleloader is there a need to shoot so many shots before the barrel is broke in? The same question for a barrel that has been realigned like from Bobby Hoyt? Thanks
 
Just depends on the barrel.
First thing is see if it will group at 25 yards. Find best load, patch material and lube.
Some will be right and some won't.
If it doesn't group I scrub the barrel with steel wool and keep shooting.
 
Yeah. In my experience.
You can try any and all of the "tricks" they'll tell ya here to expedite the accuracy,,
But truth is it takes about 200 shot's,,
But it's not ALL about barrel break-in.
It's about You, learning the proper combo of patch thickness, lube properties, ball size and load charge combinations to understand what the barrel and rifle, loaded with your technique,, want's for it's best performance.
 
Some can have jagged edges and shred patches, especially cheap foreign makes.
I don’t have your experience with the cheap foreign makes, but the two Green Mountain roundball barrels I purchased a few years back were real patch shredders when new. Both required work on the muzzle crown and rifling before they became very good shooters. Out of habit, I’ve polished the crowns of Hoyt barrels and they were shooters from shot one. I recently fired the initial shots through a new Rice barrel without issue. As other as said, depends on the particular barrel.
 
Most of todays quality barrels do not need a "break-in" I've even had excellent service from imports. If one has a problem bore it's best to "Scotch Bright it or 0000 steel wool it". I do not think "breaking in" is is ever necessarily needed at all. But it's a no-brainer that any new rifle should be fired enough to come up with the best load and to gain familiarity.
 
All above is good advise. Shoot and enjoy. I will add though that like a big dummy I wasted my time running a patch coated with auto metal cleaner up and down the barrel 50 times. All I got out of it was a barrel that felt smoother on loading and cleaned up way easier than before. The amount of time and patches saved over the long haul was obviously not worth 10 minutes of polishing. I'll never learn. 😉
 
Most of todays quality barrels do not need a "break-in" I've even had excellent service from imports. If one has a problem bore it's best to "Scotch Bright it or 0000 steel wool it". I do not think "breaking in" is is ever necessarily needed at all. But it's a no-brainer that any new rifle should be fired enough to come up with the best load and to gain familiarity.
Thanks
 
When one gets a new muzzleloader is there a need to shoot so many shots before the barrel is broke in? The same question for a barrel that has been realigned like from Bobby Hoyt? Thanks
I’ve begun using the Lee Shaver break in for any new barrel. Here it is.

Excerpt from “Breaking In a Barrel” by Lee Shaver:
Several years ago, I developed a process for breaking-in barrels for lead bullet use
that eliminated the afternoon of shooting and cleaning with jacketed bullet. It
began because I would occasionally have to get bad leading out of a barrel for a
customer, and when you charge what a gunsmith must charge to stay in business
you don’t want to spend an afternoon scrubbing the lead out of a customer’s gun.
And I’m sure the customer would rather not pay for said services.

What I learned was that when scrubbing lead out of a barrel, I could run a tight oily
patch through a few times and then take the patch off the jag. I would then unroll a
little 0000 steel wool and cut a piece the size of the patch. Place that over the
patch and then run it all through together. (The proper fit is when you have to
bump the rod a few times with the palm of your hand to get it started in the bore.)
When you shove that steel wool over a patch through the bore of a badly leaded
barrel, it may sound like paper tearing as the lead is ripped out of the barrel in a
pass or two. I can clean the lead out of the worst barrel in about ten or fifteen
minutes that way, and an average leaded barrel will be clean in a few strokes.

After using this technique for a while, I began to notice that the rifles that I was de-
leading that way seemed to lead less afterwards, which got me to thinking. We use
fine steel wool on the outside of old guns all the time to do some cleaning or spot
rust removal, and it does not damage the surface of the steel. It just scrubs it.
Which lead me to consider the fact that we are trying to break in a barrel by
smoothing the surface without cutting, and it seems to me that process would go
much quicker if we used something on the inside of the bore that was closer to the
hardness of the barrel instead of lead or copper. So I started trying the steel wool
and oiled patch technique on new barrels before shooting them. I use it about as
tight as I can get in the bore and wear out a steel wool pad or two in about 15
minutes, then I go and shoot the rifle.

How well does it work you might ask? On a few occasions, I have built a new rifle
and taken it to a match without ever having fired the rifle. All have performed
flawlessly in their first match and several times I won the match or set a record
with them. On one occasion, I set a new 300 yard range record with the first 13
shots out of a barrel. This method has become a service we offer to our customers
here in the shop and I have shared the technique many times with others.

So the next time you get ready to shoot that new rifle, just remember it is important
to break in a barrel properly, but if the operation you are doing to the barrel cuts –
it is not breaking it in. It may be making the barrel smoother, but to break the
barrel in you need to polish the bore by burnishing not cutting either by shooting it
or scrubbing it.
Lee Shaver”
 
There’s gonna be no absolute on this. Some may some may not depending on tooling wear and other things. I bet one never shot worse after a couple hundred rounds. Unless you let it rust up.
+1. I’ve had Hoyt barrels that were very clean and smooth. I’ve ha at least one that had a chattering and such showing in the grooves. They shot well and all but a smooth barrel always seems to clean easier, and often they shoot better too.
 
Maybe I missed it. And I do not want to march deep into forbidden territory. But I can not recall either break in problems or break in discussions with the barrels of new unmentionables. Is this strictly a ML/BP thing?
 
Maybe I missed it. And I do not want to march deep into forbidden territory. But I can not recall either break in problems or break in discussions with the barrels of new unmentionables. Is this strictly a ML/BP thing?
I’ve used various break in procedures like the shaver technique as well as lead lapping and fire lapping for unmentionable items.
 
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