I know its an Encore not Contender...
Found a post from 2020 from
J E Custom. I sure many here remember him. He was Heck of a man
He was testing 460 S&W barrel length differences, etc. before he passed.
I told him when he was done I wanted to buy one from him. We stayed in contact by PM. I know we all miss him. Here's the post.
Thought I would post the results of one of my latest projects. After building a bolt action 460 S&W with a 22" barrel and finding that the cartridge has more potential, I decided on a 26" barrel in a TC Encore to save overall length.
Using the 200 grain Hornady factory loading I found 500 ft/sec more velocity in the 22" barrel than in the 8.5" HVR pistol. Chronographing the new barrel during brake in basically told me that 26" to 28" is optimum barrel length.
Here are the velocities in the order fired. (All shots were cleaned before the next shot was fired).
1 = 2978 ft/sec
2 = 2981 ft/sec
3 = 2997 ft/sec
4 = 2999 ft/sec
5 = 2992 ft/sec
6 = 2992 ft/sec
7 = 2897 ft/sec
8 = 3004 ft/sec
9 = 3004 ft/sec
10 = 3015 ft/sec
11 = 3012 ft/sec
12 = 3026 ft/sec.
Once it broke in to the 3000 ft/sec velocity range, all velocities remained very close for factory loads.
The 22" barreled rifle exceeded 2900 ft/sec by a little and the 26" barrel did the same at 3000 ft/sec. 4 more inches only produced 48 ft/sec more after break in so I think it reached the optimum barrel length
The next step is to load and test the 300 grain bullets and the 325 grain bullets to see if the longer barrel length will benefit the heavier bullets and gain more velocity percentage.
Best accuracy with the Magneto speed attached was .757 and should improve with it off and more attention paid to accuracy.
Hogs beware !!!!
J E CUSTOM
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…..except that is a TC Encore. 
