Oil soaked, some external pitting on the barrels,great wood under the grime, front sight is damaged, very good bores. I will sympathetically restore this one and work up a load for it.
I was re-reading old posts to re-engage on getting my 500 BPE 3” to regulate and wondered how your restoration and load work was going.
My earlier attempts with the Dickson were horrible and after trying my EM Reilly 450 BPE out and having very promising results, I’m ready to start again with the 500.
Hi Chris, I need to work on loads more myself. Old eyes and no time for personal projects. The gun cleaned up beautifully, I made a new front sight for it. I need to work on loads this spring and sent the barrels off to my engraver for a bit of work before bluing. I did find a nice oak and leather case for it with the proper trade label. Now that I sold my little Henry .360 double I need to get this one up and going.
That Reilly .450 is a real looker. Is it the one that was listed on gunbroker for a long time a couple of years ago?
I think the Reilly was on GB awhile back. It was definitely on there earlier this year. As it had sat for quite a while, I purchased it for a different price than what it was listed for as a starting bid. It's a very nice rifle. Quite trim in many ways. The buttplate is steel with scroll engraving and very effective cross hatched grooves.
Good luck with your load development. I just picked up a bunch more 500 brass so I can load more variations before heading to the range. Hoping to accelerate this trial and error.
I saw this gun in Mar 2021. Steve's work on the stock and barrels looks great. Steve was still working on the sight and loads at that time. I was shooting a 450/400 bpe and the 500 bpe is a lot more thunder than the 450/400. Of course, Steve was shooting BP loads and was using NfB loads.
