Another single shot workout, with a nice surprise.

[BrokenolMarine]

Great shooting, as always... and I like the creative way they allowed the Encore to shoot rimfire. Good information a good trip to the range.

[North Country Gal]

Thanks, Marine. Specialty pistols have always been, well, ... a specialty of mine. Really have to redefine the word "pistol" with these things in so many ways.

Gene, here's a couple of pics which really are worth more than a thousand words. At least I hope so because no one is going to read a post of a thousand words.

Here's two barrels. The one on the right is a standard Encore centerfire barrel, in this case, my 44 mag. Note that the chamber is perfectly centered in the barrel. On the left is the 22 LR rimfire barrel with its two piece construction you can even see at the chamber end. Note how the chamber is offset in the barrel so that the Encore firing pin hits the cartridge rim.


Here's a side view of the 22 LR barrel, also showing the two piece construction.

[Sir Henry]

Thanks Joanie, that makes sense to me know.

[Rifletom]

Darn nice shooting and two very impressive firearms NCG. Thanks for sharing. The barrel work on the Encore really is someting.

[North Country Gal]

Thanks, Rifletom. In the last couple of decades before TC was bought out by S&W, TC built their own barrel making shop and could do barrel jobs like that rimfire. In fact, S&W bought out TC specifically for their barrel making shop.

Unfortunately for the good folks at TC in Rochester, N.H., S&W did the typical buyout and fired all the TC employees and moved everything to Springfield, Ma. Had an online friend who lived just down the road from the TC facility and said the old TC outfit was outstanding. No one took better care of their customers than TC. Really hurt the town when TC closed.

[BrokenolMarine]

It's often the case that when the main industry in a small town leaves. The town we live in is an official Ghost Town in Oklahoma. It was a boomtown, fueled by oil and gas drilling in it's heyday, but then the politicians in Oklahoma decided to make Oklahoma some "Big Money" by "taxing the heck out of the oil bidness." (Or so I'm told.) Not only did they tax the products they produced, but they taxed the search and drilling operations to the point that the big oil said, "Texas and Louisiana have plenty of oil, as well as Alaska and other locations. We don't need to get robbed by the state we are bringing money into." They left. They took all their workers, and jobs. The stores that sold their equipment and supplies died. Hotels died. The everyday businesses that supplied the workers... died. The small town we live outside of, had a gas station, bed and breakfast, hotel, diner, country store... meeting hall, administration building... You know... it was a town. Now... it has ... a population of 300. No trace of the gas station and the rest. The admin building feel in last year and is still there, a pile of rubble and a few standing walls. The only government building still in use is the post office. It's a small wooden building about the size of a backyard storage shed, with LIMITED service.

MANY of the towns in Oklahoma suffered the same fate. I might not have all the facts right, I'm a latecomer to the party.... but when the Oil and Gas business was run out of the state by greed, it suffered. There are still operational pumps around the state, looking like those weather bird things my grandmothers had on the window sill, constantly dipping their heads in the colored water. You see them in pastures, in front yards even. But the exploration is not what it was and Oil and Gas doesn't rule.

[North Country Gal]

So true. The other problem with oil and gas for small towns is the boom and bust cycle. The town changes dramatically when the cycle switches.