Encore and Black Powder

[iplaywithnoshoes]

Anyone shot BP through any of the centerfire chambered barrels in the Encore? I have a custom .45-70 barrel coming in soon and will be loading for smokeless for a bit to get used to the recoil with really heavy boolits. Anyone have experiences with BP in this action, including accuracy results, fouling in the action/frame etc...

shoe

[oldred]

I have a shooting buddy who played around a bit with both BP and one of the subs, Pyrodex I think, and he had no problems at all. He had been coming to my place and had shot my HighWall 45-90 BP loads so he decided to try it in his 45/70 Encore, both the real BP and the sub loads he brought with him functioned just fine (although I fail to see the point in using the subs but that's another subject) and the action design makes cleaning a breeze. He had annealed his cases as I had suggested to him so they sealed perfectly and thus there was no leakage into the action. I shot this thing with the BP loads and loved it, loads of fun and if I had one of my own I wouldn't hesitate to load BP for it!

[bigted]

My Encore came to me with the 50cal blackpowder barrel named the "209-50 Magnum". Now i shoot it accasionally and that 209 primer will leak more BP residue then any cartridge chambered barrel.

After shooting mine for a few years i tore it down completely to discover what fouling i had built up ... Long story short ... Only a small bit of vrry oily black substance that very simply and completely wiped rite off anywhere it was found.

No worries my friend.

[curator]

I do occasionally load FFg black powder in my Encore .500 S&W. This gives me an modern equivalent of the old .50-70 Government round. Fun to shoot and low recoil. I do wipe the bore every 3 or 4 shots to keep the fouling under control otherwise accuracy goes south pretty quickly. I would heve no problem loading black powder in the .45-70 Encore either.

[koger]

I have a friend who hunts with it in his, and my 2 TC omegas, use the same breechplug, barrels, just solid, both will shoot a ragged hole at !00yds for 3 shot groups. I use Harvester brand blk crush rib sabots, and their 260 & 300 gr plastic tip .451 slugs. With BH 209, I am shooting under 3" groups, at 300yds!! Pm me for more info if interested.

[iplaywithnoshoes]

Really good stuff here everyone, I got the barrel put up and sighted in at 100yds on Saturday. I tried some Trail Boss, H4198, 5744 and RL7 loads through it. Not a whole lot of fouling in the action as you guys predicted and now I'm pretty excited to to put some Goex or Swiss Powder through it soon. The closest I have to BP is BH209 and Pyrodex but I may just try the former in case I am worried about corrosion. I know that most subs can leave some nasty fouling. To all of you referencing the Muzzleloader Barrels, I agree, without an o-ring sealing the primer there is a lot of blowback that needs to be solved from the breech plug. I also have a 209x50 that is notorious for this.

shoe