We went out for our usual shoot. I took my NOVESKE SPR with Recon barrel and NF 2.5-10.
We have been bouncing around with a variety of ammo /powder - Benchmark, IMR8028 XBR …Accuracy T32 and the famous H322.
I start shooting my Recon and groups are all over the place. I’m talking 6 inch groups. Three or four of them.
When we change powders we are always cognizant that we need to run a couple fowlers. I try our 77 gr load with a couple groups of 5 back to back to back. Groups suck. So I grab a can of 69SMK’s , wolf primer and H322. I’m shooting my two fowlers at steel then back to paper as I was re zero ing the scope, still confused and speaking inappropriately. Group sucked. I said f%^* €£. Took my AAC mini 4 OFF. Same shit. Try another group and it gets to a little better.
Mark says, maybe it’s settling into this powder? Sure as shit. A couple more groups and its stacking groups sub MOA. I put the can back on, sub MOA.
It took about 20 to 30 rounds to season the barrel. And get it back to sub MOA. This has not been my experience. I have never seen a high quality barrel shoot 6 inch groups with quality ammo, dirty or not.
This was quite unique. It shot high quality SMK’s rolled to perfection like an 870 scattergun. We usually shoot two fowlers and then try our group with success. I was checking my scope, tugging on the barrel… I cleaned the gun when I got home.
No it wasn’t clean. I was wondering if there was some special recipe of powders that jacked up my barrel in a perfect storm. I may never know, I hope not.
It’s fairly new, it been shot a fair amount, but it wasn’t clean by any stretch. I’m going to accuracy test that gun pretty heavy next time out. It will be interesting.
As Littlelebowski stated, I run them dirty quite a bit. Bolt guns and AR’s.
I’m to the point where I don’t want to clean my barrel at all until groups open up. At most I’ll bore snake it to remove the loose particulate matter, but beyond that, I don’t see a point.
I’ve had good luck using KG2 too. But the headache and time involved doesn’t pan out.
When was the last time you shot the rifle before then?
You are like me. I don’t usually clean my barrels after a range session. I don’t pay much attention when I go to shooting again, but I have noticed after the first cold bore/fouling shot on a clean gun, the first shot is usually off a bit. Never experienced it taking that long to settle in though. Weird!
Once it got a bit dirty it shot cheap Blazer into extremely tight groups. Not quite as tight as the Remington Eley stuff I had, but it was pretty close. At the same time, it shot CCI Mini-Mags like absolute horseshit.
Once I had several thousand rounds through it (without ever punching the bore), it started to suddenly shoot like shit with the ammo that it normally liked. We are talking over the course of about 50 rounds. At the same time, the CCI mini mags that it used to hate, all of a sudden started to shoot very well through it.
Punched the bore, still shot like shit. About 100 rounds later, it settled down again with it’s old favorite ammo.
Always interesting to see the “personality” of a specific barrel. Never know how it’s going to be.
I might be talking out my ass here, but I’d believe it’s from the copper fouling filling in any rough/imperfect surfaces within the bore, thus creating a smoother, more precise, more consistent surface for subsequent shots.
In my understanding, there is a little bit of what DreadPirateMoyer offered, plus any remnant cleaning solution left in places where it is impossible to remove would be, in effect, a contaminate that must be completely scoured out of the bored by shooting through it before it settles into some degree of consistency needed for accuracy.
Yea, thats my understanding. Hodnett goes over this quite a bit and offers several interesting examples in the Long Range Magpull video.
I just clean the carbon out most of the time to keep the perfect smooth bore perfecto. I leave some copper in because Im lazy even when I use copper remover. Mark will do a full on copper removal more often, and he still hold .5moa in his 308.
It only makes sense that if your gun is a half inch gun out of the box, you could remove the copper and still have a half inch gun. But some guns definitely improve. My 5R 300 win mag. Went from a MOA gun to a half MOA gun, I suspect this same phenomena.
Some years ago I noticed that sometimes changing from one batch of hand loads to another with a different powder and the same bullet, a load that had shot well patterned like a shot gun until x number of rounds had gone down the pipe. Seems like some powders do not like to follow others.
I did find a chart of which powders can follow others and which can’t without cleaning but it seems to have gone into hiding.
This link http://www.usrifleteams.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=20489 has a chart that was compiled from folks experience (post #27) of which combinations work and which don’t. Perhaps this will help, perhaps not.
Sorry but no, carbon and soot filling those imperfections yes. Any copper present in the bore will strip more from the bullet and accuracy goes out the window.
Carbon fills the imperfections and seals any gaps between the bullet and bore. It protects the bullets from the dry, clean bore and if the bore is a little larger than it should be it tightens things up so the bullet doesn’t wobble. Top of land to top of land should be .218". A .218 inspection pin should slide through the bore with a very little resistance. A .219 pin should not fit in the bore at all but I’ll bet a .219 will fit in the muzzle apx 3/4" deep in most .224 barrels.
Soot tightens the muzzle play, accuracy improves.
