Barrel brake-in ???

montanajoe

Got a brand spankin new Sig pro 2022 9mm. Should the barrel be broken in before cutting loose with full mags ? If so, how do you recomend I do it ? Thank you.

Hawk Carse

Some say yes, some say no on rifle barrel breakin.

There doesn't seem to be much point to it with a pistol.

perry shooter

You may need to clean more often until the bullets sort of LAP the barrel . Many times you will have some small machining burrs that will smooth out. However IMHO this is Not a 100 yard sub MOA pistol and most likely you will never notice the different no matter if you try to Break it in or not.

dcs shooters

I've just shot them. Put rounds through slow enough so the barrel doesn't get too hot for the first couple hundred.
Handguns mostly don't need the break-in like rifles.
Some companies tell you to shoot so many rounds to break-in the whole gun before carry.

montanajoe

O.K. then. Thank you all

beantownshootah

No need to do anything special.

Just make sure you clean the bore well before shooting it the first time, as gunk/dust/shavings from manufacture can get in there and if so, firing rounds through that bore isn't going to be good.

After that, shoot the gun normally. . .that will break in the barrel and the rest of it.

Even on rifles, the utility of break-in is controversial. Good points made here by Gale McMillan (who knows a little bit about barrels, I think):

http://www.snipercountry.com/articles/barrel_breakin_II.asp


Edit: To be clear, there is a difference between breaking in the GUN and breaking in the BARREL.

Many (but certainly not all) semi-automatic pistols benefit in reliability and smoothness from being shot, as the action cycling from normal use wears in rough spots and machine marks. 500 rounds is the number usually quoted for a full break in to establish maximum reliablity and smoothness, though I think in practice, many guns don't need nearly that many (if any).

SOME people believe that rifle barrels can benefit from a labor-intensive breaking in regimen of firing individual rounds, cleaning in-between, and gradually increasing the number of fired rounds between cleanings. There is right now another "Ask the Experts" open thread on this very thing with respect to breaking in a DPMS "sweet sixteen" AR-15 type rifle.

I've never heard anyone advocate doing this for a pistol. Pistol barrels are not only shorter, but also the rounds are being fired at substantially less velocity than rifle bullets so that issues of copper buildup tend to be greatly reduced in pistols. Due to their small size, pistol barrels also tend to be far easier to remove and clean than rifle barrels.

In fact, I'd probably advocate AGAINST trying it for a pistol, as the multiple cleanings are more likely to wear/damage the barrel than contribute to accuracy or reduction in fouling.

codenamepaul

Never saw the sense in removing the material from a device whose functioning depends on the presence of this material. In other words, why make a barrel bore bigger by abrading the hell out of it when accuracy is dependent on a tight bore? Never made much sense to me. A pistol is likely to need more cycling on the remainde of the components than the barrel as other posters have said.

glabray

Break-in for a handgun is for functioning and reliability. Especially with an autoloader. You want to cycle several hundred rounds through the gun before you trust your life to it.