Well fellows, I was one of the few who got a carrierless breechplug from Hubbard. I can see why Ben dropped the idea. His work is very precise, but the factory plug and thread depth in the barrel are variable from gun to gun.
When mine came in, I threaded it into the barrel and it was about .065 from threading in deep enough. My first thought was "What's going on?" Then I remembered that my factory breechplug would thread too deep and would have a lot of blowby. I started backing the plug out until I had a good fit with the barrel face. That meant for four years, I had been acculumlating crud in the bottom of the threads.
I used Kroil and a barrel brush to slowly clean the threads and ever so slowly I would turn the new plug deeper. Finally, I bottomed out the plug on the interior recess of the barrel. At that point I used a belt sander to take off about .007 inch from the bottom of the plug and I filed one complete turn of the threads off the plug. After all that, I have a new carrierless plug that is perfectly flush with the barrel face. It was considerable trouble, but I believe it was worth it.
Seems to me that if Hubbard would make the carrierless plug with one turn or so of thread removed from the bottom of the plug, we could grind down the bottom face of the plug and have a good fit. I doubt though that Ben would do that. He is into making a precision product, and the lack of precision on the NEF threading would turn him off.
I plan to finally shoot the Blackhorn this weekend.
Leon
