I think the last time I did load work with my 480 Super Redhawk was 2005! Time flies when your babies turn into teenagers. But since I’ve gotten back into shooting handguns and casting (maybe with my daughter going off to college I’m subconsciously regaining my shooting skills for perspective boyfriends), I thought I’d try some new loads. Sadly my shooting skills have deteriorated and being at an age where my eyesight isn’t quite what it used to be certainly isn’t helping. But, I did put some lead down range and tried some new combos with some old bullets today at lunch.
First the bullets. Both of the molds were customs from Mountain Molds, a 275 gr swc that I designed trying to stay as faithful as possible to the classic Keith design and scaling it up. It’s got a 73% meplat, .10” driving bands and a nice sized lube groove and crimp groove and 275gr seemed right at where it should fall. The second mold was designed by my shooting buddy and termed an 400 gr XLFN gc. The bullet nose as I recall is 0.51” long, which in the srh cylinder is about as far out as you can get and provides a powder capacity on par with the 475 Linebaugh.
Back when the gun was scoped and I could shoot, my accuracy standard was 1” @ 50yds for 5 shots, and most every cast bullet I tested was capable of that sort of accuracy. Sadly I seem hard pressed to group 3” at 25 yds with irons, in the past I could group 2” at 50 with irons from a rest. I know that’s partly due to poor form on my part, and partly due to that blasted orange insert on the factory front blade that makes getting a precise sight picture a challenge.
Bullets were cast from clip on ww’s and air cooled. Ran through a lyman 450 .476” sizer I’d made from boring out a .357” sizer years ago and lubed with lbt blue soft. I used to water quench all my handgun bullets, but just haven’t found the need. With the gc on the 400 gr bullet leading has never been an issue, and I never planned on really leaning on the 275 gr swc. In the future I’ll have to load up a pile of the 275’s with a heavy charge of 2400 to see if leading is an issue.
During my previous load workups with the 275 gr keith I’d tried unique, bullseye and blue dot. My goal for the 275 swc was steller accuracy at 700 fps, but I found I needed to drive the bullet a bit over 1000 fps and blue dot was the best fuel. This load session I tried 10 and 11 gr of unique, and 13 and 14 gr of blue dot. The 14 gr of blue dot was still the best blue dot charge, but the 11gr of unique showed promise. As I recall I’d tried 7 to 10 gr of unique previously, I guess I never tried enough of it to tighten groups. I also tried 2400 to see how hard I could push it. Loads were 18, 19, 20 and 21 gr. The cases ejected very easily with the lighter loads and even at 21 gr there was no stickiness. My gun is slightly sticky extracting Hornady factory ammo, so I’ve used that as a pressure sign in my gun, and I prefer to stick with loads that show no sign of resistance to extract the cases. Too bad my chrony is dead as I’d be interested to see how fast the 275 is clocking with the 2400 loads, and I might try going slightly higher.
Next up was the 400gr XLFN gc. In the past I’d just used what I found to by accuracy standard charge of 21 gr of H-110 lit of with a CCI 350 and called it good. The chrono was reading right around 1200 fps, and that was good enough to me. But, I got to thinking. If I have the powder capacity of a 475 Linebaugh, and if the Linebaugh starting load is 25gr of H-110, I wonder if I could work up to that charge weight. So, I loaded 22, 23, 24 and 25 gr of H-110. Well, turns out I seemed to be on the right path. The 25 gr charge had the slightest resistance on extraction, so If the hornady factory ammo is running to the rounds spec pressure of 48,000 psi, I’m guestimating my 25 gr load must be running in the mid 40k range. Best accuracy seemed to be with the 24 gr charge, so when I get the chrony setup I’ll try 23.5, 24.0 and 24.5 to see how fast they are running. Again guestimating I’m thinking at that charge level the 400’s are probably clocking 1300 fps from the 7 ½” barrel. The recoil is significant, but not unmanageable. Please do not use these loads for any other 400 gr bullet in a 480! This bullet provides significantly more powder capacity than any other 400 gr bullet I’m aware of, as well as less bearing surface. If you want a 475 Linebaugh, by all means by one. To me the 480 is really at it’s best with 400 gr @ 1200 fps and pressures under 40kpsi.
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Originally Posted by Lefty SRH
