How much of an impact shift would you expect after running a patch worm?

It resulted in a different dwell time in the barrel, and is leaving the barrel differently. If you lead in the barrel you may see it get closer to the zero before the cleaning.



A rule I heard a long time ago is

- Only clean once you established the groupings are worse, but check EVERYTHING else first.

all screws and nuts, optics, optic mounts, everything

After checking all that, clean. Then shoot at least 1000 pellets before you start trying to group.

At least 1000 pellets before you start trying to group? Rare indeed is the barrel that will be grouping optimally after a thousand pellets.

Applying wax after a deep cleaning has shown to significantly reduce the number of seasoning shots needed for the POI to stabilize, and sometimes grouping straight away from the first shot. 

https://www.airgunnation.com/topic/wax-and-gun-bores/page/2/#post-673470

i dunno .. typically i dont use snake oil solutions to clean an airgun barrel .. a dry patch several strokes is almost always sufficient .. at least for 'pellets' .. if your running an old nasty slug its liable to muck up your barrel sumpin fierce ...

Call me weird, but I use a spotless bore as a reference to accuracy. I strip the bore down to a mirror shine and then wax the bore. After a shot or two I am back to groups below MOA. It could be another year or so before I strip the bore again. With the wax and silicon burnished projectiles, the bore rarely needs to be removed and polished new. I do use a brushless bore snake on occasion between stripping down and polishing again. I also sized all projectiles, which helps.

I've been shooting both my PCPs at 25 yards (my normal squirrel dropping distance in the back yard) approximately daily. My Avenger stopped shooting nice little 1/4 inch groups like it normally does. So I cleaned it. First 3 shots were about 3/8 low, the fourth moved up. The next day I shot a nice little 1/4 inch or smaller group. So it took 3 or 4 shots to get back to zero. 3/8 at 25 yards would be about 1 1/2 at 100. I clean with ballistol and then put a patch with Johnson's paste wax down the bore, usually a couple times. I keep my tub of Johnson's in a drawer under my table saw, I also use it on the top of the saw. It's a pretty good protector against rust for steel.

I haven't polished either of my guns bores. I will try fire polishing them with JBs when it arrives. I hope to get more shots before they need cleaned.

I don't clean unless I find an inconsistency issue. My one barrel has over 14,000 rounds down range and never cleaned it yet! Another is approaching 10,000 rounds, and another near 6,000. Haven't had an accuracy issue or suffered any FPE loss, so haven't cleaned them yet.

At least 1000 pellets before you start trying to group? Rare indeed is the barrel that will be grouping optimally after a thousand pellets.

Applying wax after a deep cleaning has shown to significantly reduce the number of seasoning shots needed for the POI to stabilize, and sometimes grouping straight away from the first shot. 

https://www.airgunnation.com/topic/wax-and-gun-bores/page/2/#post-673470

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I was speaking to possible regaining the same zero from before the cleaning. Like anything, its always on a each rifle basis.

I know my cheap PP700S-A will take more pellets to lead in then my Georgia Airguns accuracy treated Kalibrgun.

I'm sure the inside of the Artemis looks like I-94 going through Detroit in January, whereas the Kalibrgun bore looks like a brand new formula 1 track.

I believe all of this to be barrel and projectile specific. Some barrels have larger bores than is desired for the desired projectile one wants to use. In this case, allowing the bore to lead up over time can be beneficial. Other tighter bores when shooting a desired projectile that may have a larger head diameter may require more frequent cleanings. The roughness of the bore can play a big role here as well with bore lead fouling.

I believe properly polishing the bore with JB non-embedding bore paste would be a benefit to any bore as you start out with a good chance of eliminating any rough spots that could collect lead bits and skew results randomly. Following up with a clear floor wax (Trewax) will further fill in any imperfections for a really smooth bore, which shouldn't collect lead bits nearly as bad as unpolished and unwaxed would.

I do these steps to seven different bores. I also weight sort and size projectiles to each bore along with burnishing all projectiles with silicon oil. I can say with all of these efforts combined, that I rarely ever see a flyer. In fact, I couldn't say the last time I have seen a flyer.

Those Ceramic or Graphine coatings could be something new to try after polishing, being they are Nano tech that could fill in even smaller scratches/imperfections. If you want to hunt or compete, or have the tightest groups you are able to shoot, you want to do what it takes to achieve that. Otherwise you just get what you get.

Some get really lucky and are able to shoot the projectiles available locally to their satisfaction without any additional efforts. Nothing wrong with that approach either, but flyers has to part of that satisfaction.

The wax trick did the jog. I sprayed a couple patches with some bike chain wax I had handy and she was back to one hole groups after 5 shots.

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Good deal! Sounds like your setup needed some help and you gave it what it needed.