Break In

I could be convinced otherwise

But, for me, a firearm 'break-in period' where you shoot it a bunch to round over any sharp corners and condition it or 'shoot it loose' is bushwa.  If a gun left the factory 'too tight' and they expect YOU to make it a functioning piece through use?  That's not right.

That said, pobodys nerfect.  Sometime a gun fails, when new, and that does not necessarily mean it is a lemon.  It might need a adjustment that the factory failed to make.  The gun assembler isn't as expert as they used to be.

Example:  My Hudson.  Glad I didn't send it back.  All it needed was an adjustment to the extractor and it runs fine now, and I was lucky enough to have the expertise to toubleshoot that myself.  If you mailed yours back and the company went bankrupt?  Well, sucks to be you.

What a 'break in period' does do, for me, is determine a baseline reliability of your new firearm.  I have learned, through my gunsmith training, it is a good idea to see if your new gun can do 250 rounds of the ammo you intend to shoot through it without failure.

If it fails on round 240 for your Federal HST, well, make you adjustment, and start this expensive test over.  If you buy a custom gun you should expect this sort of test to be done for you before they slap on a $5000 price tag.

If you believed you had to do the break in period to loosen up you custom gun, well, YOU are doing the build testing, not the reliability testing.  A gunsmith worth anything (or lucky) should aim to make a gun that WORKS when it leaves the assembly bench and heads to the range. 

(I was the lucky kind, I must admit.  Twice.)

Now let me read that Shooting Illustrated article past the headline....

Yup, condition your new pistol is a scam and a cover for non-existent QC.


And since you can count on a LOT of $600 or less guns to work through 250 rounds flawlessly right out of the box, you'd think the $6000 one would work AND be pretty.