Thanks for the info 400. I take it at face value.

I'll help with photos. I photo my knives for publication, and I know how tough it is to photo steel under lights. It IS difficult. I can give you some pointers, truthfully.

You misjudge me entirely. No more need be said, but I think that'll come out in the end.

As Daryl says, lots of fellows will help with pix. I can, too.

Look, ALL {?} of us have taken it on the chin financially in some way or another. Who hasn't gotten butched by some thing or another? Your gun broke. Maybe Barnes bullets caused it, or maybe it was ready to let go anyway?

YOU are not a wart.

But all guns have warts. At least all the guns I buy... ALL guns. Maybe I'm unlucky. The difference between me and you is, I think, you are more trusting. I don't trust any maker of any product, gun, bullet or diaper {as I remember, they all leak}.

My trust goes down as the price goes up.

I have many years of experience shooting hard bullets. Mostly in junk milsurps. But they do weird things there, too, at times... Your doubles may be more like a $79 Mosin Nagant than you think...

Can you give us some pre- and post- mono measurements of your gun? What did the monos do internally? The dimensional differences would be very instructive to us all. No BS.

I never shoot any "oddball" gun without slugging, first, and I assume others are the same. I cannot imagine shooting a gun worth the price of a nice car without slugging it and the bullets intended for it. Yes, I check bearing surfaces, too, an work up slow. Steel-core solids teach that the hard way.

I called Merkel today.

I spoke to Kent Barnard at 205-655-8299. I asked if there were any problems with using properly sized mono bullets in Merkel doubles. He said; "none whatsoever". He said no guns have been sent back to him due to damage caused by monos. He was very familiar with OSR, but said he has not seen any evidence of it with their guns. This is interesting, as I have heard different elsewhere.