Not off-topic at all. I have fired a few rounds of Cor-Bon .500 Special that Peter Pi gave me, and they are good loads, but I haven't really done any testing at all with the caliber.

Based on the experiences of both the factory and a lot of users with the .460, I'd expect accuracy of the .500 Sp. to be degraded only slightly if at all. Users of scoped 460s off of sandbags are reporting 100 yard groups around 2" with the 460 case and 3" when using 45 Colt brass. 2MOA VS 3MOA is a difference you can't detect when shooting an open-sighted gun offhand.

As a handloader, I prefer to shoot all magnum revolvers with full-length brass to avoid the issue of residue buildup in the chambers, among other things (having to reset my progressive loader, an extra type of brass to deal with, etc.)

The .500 Sp. is an excellent round with a SAAMI spec working pressure of 38,500 PSI VS 60,000 for the mag. The ideal platform for this cartridge would be a shortened X-Frame in both steel and Ti-Scan, as I have urged for over 5 years. Such a gun (with the right barrel contour) would have even better balance than my 5" mag, and would give the kind of ballistics that most 500 mag handloaders are now shooting on a regular basis, i.e. 400-450 grain bullets at 1350-1450 FPS.

All the engineering AND TOOLING for an X-frame with a cylinder 1.900" long has already been done by Brett Curry, including a 7-shot .44 Magnum version in both steel and TiScan, but management at S&W changed and the project got shelved, for reasons that continue to elude me. A 7-shot X-frame .44 mag with a 1.900" cylinder would eat 320 grain loads forever and drive Redhawk sales off a cliff, particularly if the steel gun was also available in a 5-shot .454 Casull and 5-shot .475 Linebaugh.

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JR, the 500 Specialist