Can .416 cast bullets be swaged down to .410?

[Brazos_Jack]

Is it possible to size or swage down cast bullets intended for a .416 Remington Mag (.417-.418?) to work in a modern .40-82 Sharps (.408 bore, .410 cast bullets?). If so, what tooling would I need and where could I get it. The .416 bullets are mostly 400gr gas checked and I plan to use Blackhorn or 5744 powder.

I bought the bullets for a .416 RM barrel for my R-93. But I am getting rid of all my R-93 barrels in .22-250, .338 WM, .375 H&H, & .416 RM.

Right before I got transferred over seas in 2004, I bought a Pedersoli 1874 Sharps in .40-65 and had Dave Higgenbotham of Lone Star Rifles re-chamber it to his version of the .40-82. I never got to fire it then and still haven’t. But plan to. I have some .410 410gr bullets left over from my previous BPCR, a C. Sharps .40-65. But I have A LOT of the .416 cast bullets. I have no intention to use the .40-82 Sharps for anything but casual target shooting or maybe whitetail hunting.

[Wayne Smith]

If they have lube in the lube grooves you probably need to size them in multiple steps and you will have a longer boolit. Pay attention to the condition of the base - that is what steers the boolit and needs to be basically perfect.

With no lube in the lube grooves you will collapse the lube grooves and have a smooth sided boolit.

[onelight]

I would trade them or recycle them back into the pot.

[Mk42gunner]

Probably better to remelt and cast into the proper size and shape boolit your rifle desires.

With that said, I have not tried sizing a boolit down 8-9 thousandths, but everything I have read says that all grooves need to filled with lube prior to attempting this or you will collapse or otherwise wipe out the lube grooves.

What alloy are they?

Robert

[rintinglen]

Yes, you can!
I have done .359 into 350 often for use in my Winchester 71, 348 Winchester.
Ideally, do it in two steps, first, size and lube at .416, then run it through your .410 sizer. You may want to give them a light coat of LLA, BLL, or Recluse 45/45/10 before sizing, especially if they are hard cast commercial boolits. But you can easily do the reduction you are asking.

[fredj338]

Sure, I would just do it in two equal steps. I have sized 0.430" bulleys down for my 404jeffery. Accurate enough for 100y plinking.

[lar45]

I have taken .458" boolits down to .452". Just lube and size first, then run through the smaller die.
Try a few first to see if they tolerate it well before you do the whole batch.
If they don't come out as clean as you would like, you can always trade or sell them to some .416 fan.

[elk hunter]

I'm quite sure you can size them to .410. If it were me I'd do 10 or so and try them to see how they shoot as they will be quite a bit heavier/longer than a standard 40-82 bullet and your velocity and rifling twist will need to be correct to stabilize them.

[15meter]

A picture is worth a thousand words----left is sized in a Lyman 410 die, right was originally sized in a 417 die. Sized it gas check and all.

I had just cleaned out a dead guy Lyman 450 of 30 year old lube and it was on the bench when I saw this question. Easy to stick in a 410 die and pull the handle.

Always like "this is what happened when I did this" answers better than speculation. I got lucky in having the right setup at the right time.

Hope this helps.

PS: the nose is a little deformed because I just stuck a flat nose punch in.

[Lloyd Smale]

right answer. I used to shoot 460s in a 45 colt all the time sized down to 452. Shot some impressive groups with them too. But the heavy bullet for caliber thing caught on and heavy molds became available so I haven't done it in years.

Yes, you can!
I have done .359 into 350 often for use in my Winchester 71, 348 Winchester.
Ideally, do it in two steps, first, size and lube at .416, then run it through your .410 sizer. You may want to give them a light coat of LLA, BLL, or Recluse 45/45/10 before sizing, especially if they are hard cast commercial boolits. But you can easily do the reduction you are asking.

[MT Chambers]

If they are cast hard, they will be harder to size down so much.

[onelight]

I would recycle , unless I wanted to continue use of that bullet in that cartridge.
Why waste the time and lead working up loads that you don't plan to use in the future. Unless you just want to do it for the fun of messin with it . What is practical does not always match up with what we like to do . 99% is for our own entertainment on this type project.

[dale2242]

I have sized and lubed at the same time .321 bullets down to .315 with no issue.
I use 50/50 lube. I don`t know if that makes a difference or not.

[sharps4590]

I do it for several rifles because I have molds that are very close and it makes more sense to size down a few thousandths than buy yet another custom mold. As several others have said, yes, of course you can and, as they have also said, lube the bullet first and I would also do it in two steps. They will probably shoot like a house a'fire. I'd rather size them as melt them down and re-cast.

[MOA]

Yes, 15meter is it correct. Here is a cast for my 375 Winchester sized down to fit in my 9.3 The sizing went from .3795 down to .369 in two steps. Resized 375 on left. Resizing down 6 thousands is almost nothing. But I would load a few and see how they shoot. If you don't like it you can always remelt. See how it shoots to minute of deer. You might just like it.