Had a blast today
 

Went to the randge with the Encore .45 and tried sa few different bullets out. The ones I shot today included 350 cast, 195 gr Powerbelts and 200 gr 10mm XTPs with a Harvester blue CR sabot. Test groups of 3 shots each at 50 yards determined the rifle liked the XTPs the best putting the 3 shots into a out 1/2". I gave the bore a good swabbing until clean (I did swab between shots) and put a target put at 100 yds. Fired a 3 shot group about 1 1/4". Charge was 80 gr of Pyro P. I need to do a little more experimenting with it but its good enough for this year.

Those little 40cal XTPs do just fine with milder loads like 80gr of Pyro. I like shooting resized Gould 458 HPs best for mild loads just because they are cheap and whack the snot out of deer. Cast in pure lead they are about 346gr and retain nearly all their weight with 70ish grain loads of powder. Expansion is huge too.

Like many TCs you might have problems getting conicals to shoot with a QLA. Easiest solution is cut the petals off of sabots and use the sabot base as a wad. This gives the conical time to get past the QLA and keeps the hot gas from going around the side.

That's a clever idea GM. I'll have to try that

Yeah Bronko, 1 1/4" groups at 100 yards just might be good enough for this year. (Or any other year. :D :happy0157:)

Good shooting buddy. My 1:30 twist Green Mountain barrels loves those 10mm XTPs in Harvester sabots. What's the twist rate on that Encore barrel?

Semi back in 2010 I believe T/C changed the twist rate of the super 45 from 1:30 to 1:28 same as the 209x50. I would really like to get my 350 gr cast bullets to shoot as well out of that barrel. I took GM's advice and cut the petals off of a dozen sabots to use as a base wad.I might head to the range again on tuesday. I have my Pedersoli .50 cal Frontier rifle flinter I want to try REAL bullets in.

TC's early 45s were 1-20 and they changed to 1-28 but i dont know when. A 1-28 is fine for the 200gr XTP. Good for a 350gr conical too. So if it dont like conicals it could be the known QLA problem. They are really too deep and often not cut centered to the bore.

Like i said though 80gr of Pyro should be very close to the sweet spot for that bullet. Not too fast but still more FPE than a 44mag pistol and a 200gr.

I have a dozen sabots that I transformed into a base wad. Going to be going out tomorrow with the conicals and see how it shoots. Too rainy and windy today.

GM-54 just wanted to let you know I tried those sabot/sub base today with the 350 gr bullets and there was only a slight improvement over shooting without them. No problem though because these bullets shoot good out of my .45 Hawken GM-LRH barrel when sized to .451" and out of my .45-70 when loaded as cast.