Oh Jesus, here we go again! The ignorant and biased painting the Savage with a broad brush based on ONE incident of failure where the circumstances are unknown and the motives are suspect.

First of all, Lil' Gun is NOT a recommended powder for use in the Savage 10ML-II, at least it's not in my manual. Secondly, Toby Bridges admittedly and repeatedly used loads that were well in excess of the published and tested loads Savage endorses for the rifle. He also publicly endorsed the use of "duplex" loads (mixing two different powders together). Bridges was also in the middle of a monetary dispute with both Savage and the Ball's about his purpose and compensation. When Savage decided stick to its guns (pun intended) and not allow themselves to be blackmailed by Bridges, suddenly one of Bridges 10ML-II's suffers a catastrophic failure that happened months before it was made public by Bridges, I might add. Seems to me Bridges intentionally blew that gun up and was using the pictures to blackmail Savage, and only published them AFTER Savage told him to go **** himself.

It's my opinion, based on the evidence I've seen, that Bridges is a worthless, lying, egotistical, s***bag who blew his gun up in an effort to make a buck and/or in revenge for Savage not paying him what he thought he was worth because he continously tested and endorsed using loads that Savage did not.

Here are some links where you can read up on the Savage 10ML-II/Toby Bridges issue:

http://forum.hunting.net/asppg/tm.as...age=1&key=10ml (Of note, 1SHOT_1KILL is Bill Ball, who if I'm not mistaken is the son of the 10ML's designer, Henry Ball).

http://randymagic.tripod.com/savage.htm

http://dougva.proboards34.com/index.cgi?board=Savage

And among the most interesting links:

http://www.angelfire.com/mech/wolfho...ls/savage.html

Which includes the following email sent to Henry Ball by Bridges well after Bridges 10ML-II was blown up but BEFORE he went public.



That's what I'd call MOTIVE.

As for the 10ML-II, I own one (that is identical to the one Bridges intentionally blew up) and have shot many rounds through it with smokeless powder exclusively without a single problem. I use a powder that is among those recommended by Savage and is within the max load guidelines provided by Savage (40.5 grains of Vhita-Vouri N110 with a 300 grain Hornady SST-ML at 2200fps). This load is well within the max for this powder (which is 45.0 grains) and meets or exceeds the performance of all but the hottest loads using T7. I see no reason to try to exceed this level of performance, nor do I see the need to endanger myself or others with reckless attempts to make the 10ML-II exceed its designed levels of performance like Bridges regularly did. The gun is of the finest quality of any muzzleloader I've seen except, perhaps, the T/C Encore which is based on a smokeless design. For that price I wouldn't hesitate to pick up another 10ML-II. Even if you can't hunt with smokeless powder, the 10ML-II is still better than most of the other inlines out there today in terms of features, quality and function.

Mike