I have a Encore with a 20" stainless barrel chamnbered in 510 whisper. It shoots a 700-950 grain bullet at 1050 fps. Since the gun is only 7.5 pounds including the scope, and I can not use the suppressor all the time because I live in WA, the recoil is doing bad things to the gun. It has ripped off the bipod adaptor twice, broken two scopes, and most recently, stripped the forend screws.

I was able to fix the scope and bipod adaptor problems, but finding a way to keep the forend from siding around eludes me. I made a barrel band to replace the front screw, and this holds it on the barrel, but it can still slip. Is there any way to keep the forend from slipping? I can not have dovetail mounts installed due to the thin wall of the barrel. I tried adding several pounds of lead to the hollow stock, but that is a poor fix in my opinion. I made a muzzle brake for the barrel, but since the bullet outweighs the 30 grain poweder charge so much, it is hardly effective. Any ideas? Thanks.

Ranb

ranb40,

My best idea for you would be to buy a book on physics and pay special attention to the chapter on Newton’s 3rd Law of Motion.

Your 7.5 pound rifle weighs 52,500 grains (7,000 grains to the pound). You are shooting a bullet that weighs 950 grains. That means that your rifle weighs approximately 55 times more than the bullet you are firing. To put this in perspective...a nine pound .30-06 firing a 150 grain bullet weighs 420 times more than the bullet does.

Whatever force it takes the powder gases to push that 950 grain bullet out of the barrel at 1,050 fps is exactly the same amount of force pushing back in the other direction against the rifle and you.

I will say one thing though...you are far tougher than I ever want to be!

If you tie the forend down with Ductape it will last until your retinas detach.
Good luck!

Under recoil bipods act as a lever and depending upon how planted the feet are they can exert a huge amount of shearing force on the attachment point on the rifle's forend.When you "fixed" the broken bipod attachement problem you only accentuated the force being applied to your forend.

So far you have been pretty fortunate because up until this point a portion of the recoil energy has been eaten up by breaking stuff. When, and if, you do get everything on the rifle to stop breaking guess where all that new recoil energy is going to go?

It's simply a case of: "Something's gotta give" because you are trying to disperse far more energy that your equipment can handle.

You might try one of those grip hanger assemblies that replace the small screws with a steel bar to which the forearm is then attached. Another idea is to drill and tap for 8-40 screws. Or, you could just JB Weld the forearm to the barrel. It's ugly, but it might work...