Big hunting magnum barrel break in question

B

Boyd Allen

Active member
A friend is becoming frustrated trying to break in a .300 RUM to the point where Barnes TSX (all copper) bullets will stop copper fouling. He has got it to the point where regular gilding metal jacketed bullets don't foul but, no matter what he does, the copper bullets leave some in the barrel. I think that it is probably unrealistic to expect to not have some copper left in the barrel from these bullets, and as long as the accuracy is good for the number of rounds that the rifle is likely to be shot between cleanings, that there is no real problem. Do any of you have any experience with this sort of "problem". His next attempt will be to coat the bullets with HBN. Does anyone have any experience coating these bullets? Thanks
Boyd
 
Boyd Allen said:
I think that it is probably unrealistic to expect to not have some copper left in the barrel from these bullets, and as long as the accuracy is good for the number of rounds that the rifle is likely to be shot between cleanings, that there is no real problem.
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Boyd

I agree. I have not shot as many Barnes bullets lately as I did 10 years ago, but all my experience is with “match grade” barrels on hunting rifles, and I never saw one that would not leave some fouling with Barnes X bullets. Barnes bullets are pretty well known for fouling, and the firm has spent a lot of effort in the past trying to reduce fouling with coatings and more recently the “triple shock” design.

Particularly using the bigger cases, I believe that with the higher velocities and longer barrels, fouling does tend to become more of an issue than in smaller cartridges. Having said that, I never had any accuracy problems in a hunting rifle that I would attribute to Barnes bullets fouling. Even when culling feral animals in Australia where I might shoot a number of animals in a day, I never fired enough shots to see a drop off in accuracy on game. This MAY have been a problem in a factory barrel (I don’t know, as I rarely used them) but certainly did not seem to be in a well made, lapped barrel.

Unless your friend is planning to shoot the load in a competition, I doubt they will see any meaningful issue with the level of fouling you are describing. What fouling they do get sounds like it will be very easy to stay on top of in a hunting context.
 
Jerry,

Wasn't one of the "features" of Reloader-10 something in the coating that limited copper fouling? Not that you'd use Rel-10 in a magnum, but maybe there are similar powders with a slower burn rate?
 
Charles E said:
Jerry,

Wasn't one of the "features" of Reloader-10 something in the coating that limited copper fouling? Not that you'd use Rel-10 in a magnum, but maybe there are similar powders with a slower burn rate?
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Charles, there are several new innovations in powder technology and new decoppernats are part of that. Hodgdon has brought out newer, less coppering products.

Alliant is doing the same. They introduced RL-10x with added decoppering qualities and a couple of the new releases have better non-coppering qualities. Incidentally Alliant powder may be renamed BAE. BAE Systems has taken over the Radford Virginia Alliant powder operation. Don't know for sure if the retail powder products will be given another name as did Alliant when they took over from Hercules at Radford.

I feel these new decopperants and high-energy products do a better job for hunters and occasional shooters. Benchrest is not a big part of their consideration but we are having new products this year, made primarily for our market.

A few years ago we learned that in our Prairie Dog loads that about 20 grains of technical grade moly to the pound made cleaning needs less frequent and easier.
 
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