how can two guns from the same manufacture be so different, red i have shot m/ler's long enough to know when something aint right, i've got a t/c 209X50 encore and my freind just bought one, we couldn't load the same things i was shooting out of my gun to load in his, even after a very intense cleaning, maybe i do need to go to gold's but at 5'10" 225 i think i shouldn't have the kind of problems we were having, we ran a maxi ball down the barrel of his and it looked horrible, when i figure out how to put pics from my digital camera on here i'll post them, your only response would have to be send the gun back to t/c, also when trying to run a cleaning patch thru it was rough/jerky, maybe t/c dropped the ball on this one. we used lapping compound from brinnell not valve lapping compound, and the problem has been solved. btw the gun is not "easy" to load now but it does load more like mine, and i agree you could ruin a barrel very quickly, but we had very little time to get ready for m/ler season and he didn't want to be barreless.
(especially the stainless ones which as you know stainless tends to machine rougher than 4140 or other carbon steel).
most people don't have a clue on something like this, stainless cuts very rough