me somewhere along the line. The gist of it is forget the case head back thrust on any of the calibers I mentioned or the ones Huey mentioned. The early Contenders were prone to stretch. i have stretched 2 or 3 thru the years, but with overly hot loads and in early Contenders. This was when I was developing the 450 GNR, 475 GNR, 416 GNR and such. It was not just the case head back thrust that stretched these frames, it was the overall pressure spike when trying to push a 500 grain jacketed bullet up the barrel hoping for 2000 fps out of an older Contender. The gun just wasn't meant for that. The original Contenders were chambered in cartridges like 45 ACP, 38 Special, 22 Hornet, and other super low pressure rounds. Take that same old Contender (serial number under 150,000) and run a hot 450 GNR or 416 GNR thru it and you will eventually get a stretched frame.
Ernie French, who has worked for TC for years and was head of the old TC Custom Shop is a good friend. he and I hunted together at the Celebrity Handgun hunt several years in a row. Most of what I know about the TC I got from Ernie.
Years ago he called and asked me if we were chambering any Encores in any of the Short Magnums, Ultra Mags and pretty much any belted magnum. At the time we had built a few in 300 Win Mag in the Encore. This was before the G-2. He asked me not to do so as they were getting a lot of damaged frames in that had shot these rounds.Thankfully none were barrels we had built. And he never mentioned case head thrust at all. It was just the overall high pressure and the lack of locking lugs like a normal rifle bolt has.
I immediately stopped and mentioned on here that if anyone had one, to send it back in and I would replace it with a barrel in the caliber of their choice.
In the mid to late 80s we built a LOT of 50-70 barrels and never had any case head thrust. If a large case head meant you destroyed your TC, then the 50-70 would blow the gun up. And TC would have never chambered the Contender in 45-70, and none of J.D.Jones wildcats based on the 444, nor any of mine based on the 405 would have ever made it past the test firing stage. So my recommendation would be to take the words "case head thrust" out of your vocabulary completely. There is a potential problem with simple back thrust but that is mainly when you set off something like an Ultra Mag or Short Magnum with extreme high pressure. You have a lot of powder trying to light off and get thru that little case neck. I have used the example of a water hose often to explain this. If you have a 1" water hose running full blast and you pinch it down to one third of that size, that is extreme frontal pressure and extreme back thrust. Not case head thrust as there isn't one. It doesn't throw your hand off the hose, but the pressure is there. In a cartridge like the 50-70 or the 45-70, recoil can be a bitch but the case is not necked down so the actual pressure is not anywhere as bad as a necked down Short Magnum.
Now Huey mentioned the 6.5 Creedmore in his line up. I have no idea what the pressure is on that highly over rated cartridge and really don't care. My objection to it is all the mis-information and blatant lies going around about it being the absolute best you can get. But nuff said on that one.
![[image]](images/uploaded/201809161545145b9e7a8ab138c.jpg)