Thompson Center QLA

[Taylor]

Just picked up a Black Diamond,at first I thought something was wrong with the bore,thus my intro to the QLA.

Any thoughts,as I haven't shot it yet.I don't much see how it could work.My first thought was to cut and re-crown.

[Maven]

Taylor, I'd give it an extensive range test before I cut & re-crowned that bbl. There was a poster, "Roundball," on the Traditional Muzzleloading Forum, who had several QLA-equipped T/C rifles and got great accuracy from them. Test it first, then have at it if you must ...Just sayin'

[bubba.50]

I have had T/C's with & without the QLA & never noticed any difference in loadin' or shootin' or accuracy one over the other. best advice is to just forget it's there. I truly believe that most of the people who claim to have a problem with it is because they know it's there & subconsciously let it affect there shootin'.

[Taylor]

It was just that it is the first one I have encountered.And I own several TC's.After doing a internet search I found that it indeed was intentional by the maker.Kinda scared me,thought I had a defect.That's were the cut and crown idea came in.

[tomme boy]

I have two TC New Englanders in 50 cal. One with and one with out. I shoot both guns. The older one has a pitted bore. It also does not have the QLA. BUT, it is the more accurate gun. By as much as half the group size.

The gun with the QLA has a brand new barrel on it from TC before they were sold to S&W. It is very smooth and shiny. It shoots OK at best. But maybe I have just not shot it enough to find what it likes.

[OverMax]

QLA does make loading easier no matter the conical ball.
No doubt some shooters don't care to have a barrel equipped with one. But I surely wouldn't cut my Factory barrel/s so's to eliminate it's QLA due to having to shorten the ram rod_barrel under-rib_ plus re-drilling & tapping the last under-rib mounting screw. And of coarse polishing & re-bluing everything to make things look nice again. Lots of work for so little gain.

[OnHoPr]

Just think of it as a super deep crown. Makes loading easier IMO. If you plan on using sabots then it can make for quicker loading with cold fingers and such or balls or conicals. From my barrel it doesn't effect accuracy. Though, when I was experimenting with the PP Lee 500 S&W it made loading easier, except a few times when I was playing with the BHN and got them a little hard, to hard to get down the barrel. All I had to do was take the breach plug out and drop the ramrod down a few times to push the boolit back out. Just a 1/4 to 1/2" when you know it the alloy was to hard for pushing down the barrel.

[Squeeze]

the QLA is fine for sabots. you will have problems (usually, not every time) with full bore conicals. More often than not, the Bore is not concentric with the QLA, and throws off sabotless loads.

[Hickory]

I have QLA on my T/C Firestorm.
I didn't like it at first, but can load quicker with it, I don't think it takes away from accuracy.

[Good Cheer]

Taylor,
I had a .54 New Englander with the QLA. Mine was not so good.
The QLA counterbore was cut with a flat bottom. There was no bevel on the entrance into the bore. Zero, zippo, nada. I couldn't believe that TC would have done this to their products on purpose so I called up and talked to the guys in the shop. Yeah, that square bottom is the way they made them.
After the shock and disbelief wore off I set about to fix their screw up.

I had tried shooting it with plain base bullets and the flat bottom on the counterbore interfered with loading. Had to pound them in. Had tried shooting it with round ball. It butchered the patches. Bad results. So I made up tooling to reach down in there and grind a bevel on the bore. It was better but not good enough. So, what to do...

Now it's a sweet shooting .458 bore (semi-sorta-polygonal geometry) with 24" twist, relined to be my 26" long barrel caseless ammo 45-70 using finger lubed boolits from whatever off the shelf mold strikes my fancy. Paper patched pistola boolits work too. There's a Lee .457 sizer sitting on the shelf but I haven't got O2it. Not yet any how.

So that's my QLA story. Best of luck with yours. Lee REAL's might be good ones to start with 'cause they have an alignment bevel on the bottom to get it lined up to start with.