Suppressors & Single Shot Pistols
This past year I have been experimenting with suppressors on my encore pistols and a savage 110 PCS I have. Thought I would share what I have found incase it helps anyone. My Savage 110 PCS in 308 has the same POI (point of impact) with or without a suppressor (10" barrel). My 14" 308 Encore pistol is another story all together. The POI shifts are probably greater than 12" up and down with and without suppressor. I have noticed that the recoil impulse of the encore changes greatly with a suppressor. Way more of a straight push back vs. muzzle flip up. The encore setup ends up being a lot of weight forward (16oz suppressor), whereas the savage has more weight in the rear with the action, shorter barrel, and everything which I think helps keep the POI consistent. I have all but given up on using the encore suppressed for now. My conclusions have me thinking shorter barrels, more weight back is better for suppressed setups.
I am wondering if anyone else has experimented with suppressors on encores or contenders pistols and if so are you seeing big POI shifts as well or is their a way to mitigate this? I think maybe the xp-100s would be a good platform to try next, but I don't see a lot of folks running suppressors on xp-100s either which has me thinking its for a reason.
So for now the Savage PCS seems to be the way to go... I have started to really enjoy the Savage. A lot of complaints early on with barrel length being too short and giving up velocity. After doing the majority of shooting and hunting with this gun suppressed this last year I am starting to come around and like the shorter barrel even at the cost of velocity. Once you thread on the suppressor your back to a 15-16" barrel so I think the 10" barrel length is actually nice for that. I have been shooting the old 150gr A-Max bullets at 2,300 fps and they really perform nice when you slow them down to that speed.
Cheers!
I had planned to take my suppressor to south africa for my 7-30 waters. I use the old AAC SDN-6 with the 3 prong flash hider. I had an extra 2 chamber compensator and a couple month before my trip, decided to swap it out. Cleaned threads, same small amount of rocksett and torqued the same way with the same torque wrench. Barely on paper when I brought it back to 100 yards. I was grouping 1.5" off of a tripod before. I hoped the comp would make it quieter by retaining the gas a bit longer. I got it on paper, grouping was ok, ended up blowing my chamber open but that was because I was running ammo fast, got very hot and apparently my loads were above book (nosler vs hornady data, I wrote a post about it). I then swapped to a compensator with 1 chamber and 3 short prongs. shifted about 5 or 6 inches and groups were about 2". I put the original 3 prong back on and got it back close to what I had before about 2 weeks before my trip. Because of some confusing laws and an event that happened in Utah with CBP, I got nervous and left it at home. Brought extra ammo, sighted it at 50 yards, and was 3 inches high. Got it to bullseye next shot and confirmed a few at 100.
long story short, short barrels are more forgiving, less flex, or as we call in my line of work, shorter L/D, but everything makes a difference. Just not good to use in a climbing stand...hard to hold a 13" barrel with a pound of suppressor on the end haha