i have noticed a apparent lack of information , especially un biased information, regarding the eabco sabot for reloading. most if not all information around them seems to stem from the remington accelerator factory load and not the the actual component. recently a friend and i decided to pick up a starter kit and give it a try. the only .22 caliber bullet i had on hand was a 53 grain hornady v-max and the only powder on hand that even comes close to the appropriate burn rates are vihtavuori n133 and blc-2. both rifles are remington 700's. both chambers measure nearly the same to the grooves. one barrel is 26 inches with a 1/12 twist, the other is 24 inches with a 5r 1/11.25 twist.

the sabots arrived in a timely manner, and the apparent quality seems on par with any other muzzleloader sabot. i was not so impressed with the seating die and "shell holder" style sabot ram base. the threading on the die was rolled when the chamfer was cut, resulting in the die not being able to immediately thread into the press. the sabot ram was also undersized so the sabot could not easily fed into the die without holding the sabot in place. these were a easy fix with my deburring tool and thread file.

there are a few kinks that i ran into. because the sabot has a long shank the sabot engages the rifling much earlier then most long rifle bullets. loaded to the rifling would mean the case would measure 2.743 with a 53 grain v-max in place. this means that the bullet can be in the grooves and still fit in a remington receiver. the second was not at fault of the sabot, but my lack of current powder selection. most powders will fill the case before even coming close to a maximum charge with my powder selections. sabots have very little gripping force in the case mouth so compressed charges will not work. this meant i was going to have to seat the bullets long near the rifling. the downside to this is that only the sabot is in the case mouth, the bullet does not technically reach down into the case mouth. at this point we decided to start out loads into the rifling. this meant that as the bullet is chambered, the petals of the sabot would be compressed to support the shank of the bullet in the chamber, preventing concentricity issues with the bullet wiggling in the sabot.

we will be shooting this morning. the number of loads is limited, as we dont have many sabots on hand. i will tune in with more information as it becomes relevant.