I'm in the
clean and start shooting camp also.
The number of shots "required to properly break in a barrel" is anywhere from 30 - 600 depending on who you ask.
As it relates to my shooting... I go hunting a dozen times a year and do some target shooting now and then for fun, my go-to rifle is my stainless Tikka 7mm-08 which shot under 0.4 MOA straight out of the box (and still does hundreds of rounds later I might add).
Why would I EVER spend anywhere near $600 worth of ammo, days of my life, and life of my barrel putting 600 rounds through it to "break it in"
It won't noticeably improve accuracy. For arguments sake pretend it would, so what? It's more than accurate enough now so wouldn't actually be a gain of any sort.
Increases accurate barrel life? I'm not convinced but same as above, it would be no real gain to me.
Cleaning stainless is easy as anyway, no benefit there.
<insert more arguments here>, but end of the day it would be a complete waste of time and money for me as there is zero actual benefit.
Regardless of that, there are plenty of fanboys (not anyone here) who are adamant it must be done
Others can speak for themselves but IMO and observations what I've mentioned above is the case for the vast majority of shooters.
If the benefits were as black and white as some people argue it would be very easy for a gunsmith/range/brand to say "here are 3 rifles we ran in properly, here are 3 rifles we didn't, here are the results and you can see run-in rifles have benefited in X way(s)". If it were that easy plenty of people would have done it. I'm yet to see one such comparison.
Gwion wrote:You decide for yourself after your own reading from various sources.
At the end of the day it boils down to that I suppose. If you feel better about having put 30 rounds through it following some process then so be it.