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Bestill Omega Custom Breech Plug 3/22/2020
I’ve been shooting and hunting with five different .50 caliber inlines for 14 years. One thing they all have in common, left unmodified, is that they puke soot, and plenty of it, from the 209 primers in the rifle’s breech area. It takes me longer to clean this blowby and the filthy breech plug than the bore and rest of the rifle combined, and I have come to despise the task .
Following advice from this forum for Omega rifles, I tried measuring and using Winchester W209 primers that are .302” in length or longer. This does work, but who has time to do all that measuring? Especially when I was only getting about 13 out of 100 that are long enough, from stock that is maybe ten years old.
Another problem, at least from shooting my desired elk loads (mid-to-heavy weight conicals with a hefty powder charge which is near maximum loads for an Omega), is the short life of the standard breech plug.. The high pressures create erosion of the flame hole after only a couple of hundred rounds, necessitating replacement of the bp.
Then, Bestill Creations advertised a fix for these problems, a custom fitted breech plug to alleviate blowby, along with a tungsten carbide bushing that should just about last forever. Click HERE I contacted Jeff Fisk. Since the bp has to be custom head spaced for each rifle, he asked me to take some simple measurements. With the standard bp in place in the rifle, take a couple of W209 primers that are .302” in length, place them in the bp, and close the breech, but do not fire them. Then remove and measure the primers again to see how much “crush” I’m getting, which, in this Omega, was .002”. This gave Jeff the info he needed to fit the bp using his preferred primers, Federal 209A, and soon it arrived in the mail.
Left is original standard bp; right is Bestill custom.
Left is standard; right Bestill with carbide bushing held in place with a hollow set nut.
Bestill bp installed in a clean stainless steel Omega.
Since I lean toward the compulsive side, I went through the trouble of measuring and sorting a package of Fed 209A primers. If any blowby occurred, I wanted to know what length of primer caused it. I started my shooting with the LONGEST primers first, .298 and .297”. When closing the breech on these, I could definitely feel a significant crush going on.
My usual load is a homecast pure lead conical of 420 grains with Ben’s Liquid Lube over 100 grains volume of BH209. Since I should be getting complete and consistent primer sealing, Jeff had suggested that the most accurate load might change from what I was seeing before. Therefore, I started using loads of 80gr vol and moved up to 100. I applied nothing to the bp threads.
Breech area after firing 13 shots.
After the first 10 shots were fired using the longest primers, the breech was perfectly clean – HOORAY – MISSION ACCOMPLISHED!! The next three shots I switched to the shortest primers at .294” long. In the pic above you can see just a hint of blowby.
The bp was easily removed without any binding, and cleaned up quickly with citrus spray cleaner and a toothbrush.
The powder end of the bp looks nasty, but since it is exposed to the combustion area, you’ll get the same fouling on any bp. A little scrubbing with a brass brush and solvent restored it to like new.
Just what I had hoped to see, nice clean primers!
Since an Omega rifle with a scope is difficult to prime and deprime with bare fingers, I am in the habit of using the handy metal CVA capper/extractor tool. After firing, the primers were all fairly snug fitting in the bp, but easily popped out with the tool.
Since I got a late start heading out to the shooting range, I had to hustle to get my shooting in before dark. Therefore, I didn’t have time to be super careful about my aiming, although every shot felt good at the point of firing. The range was 100 yards, Leupold scope set on 12 power, with about an eight mph wind coming from 4 o’clock. The groups were abysmal except for one, but then this rifle often misbehaves. Three shot groups were as follows: 80 gr BH209 – 5” (on a cold clean bore), 90 gr – 1-1/16”, 95 gr – 4”, 100 gr – 3”. Since I recently wrapped up some woodworking projects that ate up my winter free time, I can now move on to removing the QLA on this rifle and recrowning. Hopefully this will help accuracy.
Then, I installed the bp in my blued Omega, just to see how it would work. Unfortunately, the rifle’s head space dimensions must be different, because after three shots it produced pretty much the usual nasty blowby that I’ve been getting with the standard bp. Looks like it would have to be fitted for its own new bp.
In the stainless Omega, though, I am very happy with the initial testing of the Bestill custom breech plug. Hopefully my woes of breech cleaning and flame hole erosion are past. Thanks so much to Jeff Fisk at Bestill Creations for a great product!!
I’ve been shooting and hunting with five different .50 caliber inlines for 14 years. One thing they all have in common, left unmodified, is that they puke soot, and plenty of it, from the 209 primers in the rifle’s breech area. It takes me longer to clean this blowby and the filthy breech plug than the bore and rest of the rifle combined, and I have come to despise the task .
Following advice from this forum for Omega rifles, I tried measuring and using Winchester W209 primers that are .302” in length or longer. This does work, but who has time to do all that measuring? Especially when I was only getting about 13 out of 100 that are long enough, from stock that is maybe ten years old.
Another problem, at least from shooting my desired elk loads (mid-to-heavy weight conicals with a hefty powder charge which is near maximum loads for an Omega), is the short life of the standard breech plug.. The high pressures create erosion of the flame hole after only a couple of hundred rounds, necessitating replacement of the bp.
Then, Bestill Creations advertised a fix for these problems, a custom fitted breech plug to alleviate blowby, along with a tungsten carbide bushing that should just about last forever. Click HERE I contacted Jeff Fisk. Since the bp has to be custom head spaced for each rifle, he asked me to take some simple measurements. With the standard bp in place in the rifle, take a couple of W209 primers that are .302” in length, place them in the bp, and close the breech, but do not fire them. Then remove and measure the primers again to see how much “crush” I’m getting, which, in this Omega, was .002”. This gave Jeff the info he needed to fit the bp using his preferred primers, Federal 209A, and soon it arrived in the mail.
Left is original standard bp; right is Bestill custom.
Left is standard; right Bestill with carbide bushing held in place with a hollow set nut.
Bestill bp installed in a clean stainless steel Omega.
Since I lean toward the compulsive side, I went through the trouble of measuring and sorting a package of Fed 209A primers. If any blowby occurred, I wanted to know what length of primer caused it. I started my shooting with the LONGEST primers first, .298 and .297”. When closing the breech on these, I could definitely feel a significant crush going on.
My usual load is a homecast pure lead conical of 420 grains with Ben’s Liquid Lube over 100 grains volume of BH209. Since I should be getting complete and consistent primer sealing, Jeff had suggested that the most accurate load might change from what I was seeing before. Therefore, I started using loads of 80gr vol and moved up to 100. I applied nothing to the bp threads.
Breech area after firing 13 shots.
After the first 10 shots were fired using the longest primers, the breech was perfectly clean – HOORAY – MISSION ACCOMPLISHED!! The next three shots I switched to the shortest primers at .294” long. In the pic above you can see just a hint of blowby.
The bp was easily removed without any binding, and cleaned up quickly with citrus spray cleaner and a toothbrush.
The powder end of the bp looks nasty, but since it is exposed to the combustion area, you’ll get the same fouling on any bp. A little scrubbing with a brass brush and solvent restored it to like new.
Just what I had hoped to see, nice clean primers!
Since an Omega rifle with a scope is difficult to prime and deprime with bare fingers, I am in the habit of using the handy metal CVA capper/extractor tool. After firing, the primers were all fairly snug fitting in the bp, but easily popped out with the tool.
Since I got a late start heading out to the shooting range, I had to hustle to get my shooting in before dark. Therefore, I didn’t have time to be super careful about my aiming, although every shot felt good at the point of firing. The range was 100 yards, Leupold scope set on 12 power, with about an eight mph wind coming from 4 o’clock. The groups were abysmal except for one, but then this rifle often misbehaves. Three shot groups were as follows: 80 gr BH209 – 5” (on a cold clean bore), 90 gr – 1-1/16”, 95 gr – 4”, 100 gr – 3”. Since I recently wrapped up some woodworking projects that ate up my winter free time, I can now move on to removing the QLA on this rifle and recrowning. Hopefully this will help accuracy.
Then, I installed the bp in my blued Omega, just to see how it would work. Unfortunately, the rifle’s head space dimensions must be different, because after three shots it produced pretty much the usual nasty blowby that I’ve been getting with the standard bp. Looks like it would have to be fitted for its own new bp.
In the stainless Omega, though, I am very happy with the initial testing of the Bestill custom breech plug. Hopefully my woes of breech cleaning and flame hole erosion are past. Thanks so much to Jeff Fisk at Bestill Creations for a great product!!
. They work Perfectly. Compresses / Crushes the .297” long Federal 209As to .293” for Leak Free Seal 
Serious Upgrade from the OEM short loose primer pocket. Can’t say enough for what Jeff Fisk has done for the TC Omegas
