HOBB them throats glasshoppell (I miss Calfee)
Bingo.
I believe barrel break-in is pretty much nonsense, and with all the cleaning and scrubbing, and back and forth, if your equipment and technique aren't perfect, you're more apt to hurt your barrel than to do it any perceived good.
What would happen if you were to drag a piece of clay across your finger nail? The clay is going to come off on your nail...all day long. What you're not going to do is wear down your fingernail with the clay. You may eventually smooth it out a bit, but that's about it. Still gonna be a fingernail, and will still snag clay. The nail is harder than the clay, so the clay gives. Now think about that in the context of a barrel and bullet.
If you have a burr or imperfection in your bore, I am highly skeptical that barrel break-in is going to do anything meaningful to this imperfection other than to knock the edges down.
What barrel break-in will do is knock the edges down in the neck/throat area caused by the chambering process, that, until smoothed out, will collect copper.
But that is a lot of work, time, and components to do it that way. The same result can be achieved by wrapping a patch around a plastic bore brush, working a little non-imbedding lapping compound into said patch, and with a proper bore guide in place, short stroking the neck/throat area 20-30 times. In 5 minutes, those edges are gone. If you have a borescope, the before and after is as plain as day. Clean it up, and proceed with load developement.
It pains me to think of all the time, energy, and bullets I wasted on barrel break-in before I learned the above, courtesy of, IIRC, Dave Tooley.
Justin
