gary reeder
it would be closer to 10 years ago or maybe more.A good
Tuesday, April 28, 2020, 20:33

friend, Ernie French, who was head of TC's custom shop told me they had had some problems with the belt on the brass breaking extractors and it would be a good idea if we dropped the belted magnums.. He never told me we had to but I figured Ernie knew a lot more about the Encores than I did so we dropped them. We never had any problems with them other than they were hard to get the round in the chamber due to the belt and even harder to get the fired round out.

As far as the scope base, if I put it on, it was put on with a small dab of 2 part epoxy and it is there for the duration. Also a 3 ring set up is no stronger than a 2 ring if the 2 ring is the Leupold dual dovetail base. I consider the Leupold dual dovetail base and rings the best set up ever made. With that set up there is no way the rings can come loose. Also if I put the scope on there the adjustment knobs would be flush up against the front ring. That keeps the scope from moving forward during recoil. Simple physics. If the recoil causes the gun to come back the scope would normally go forward and if it is flush against the front ring, it can't do that.

So whether I did the scope base set up or not is no big deal. Anyone can do as good a job or better than I can. Shoot factory ammo in it and you should be fine. We built maybe 20 barrels in the belted magnums before we stopped so that must be one of them.