500 grain in 500JRH

[lar45]

I bought a 500gn mold from Accurate Molds about a months ago. It's there #50-500A
http://www.accuratemolds.com/b...bullet=50-500A-D.png (http://www.accuratemolds.com/bullet_detail.php?bullet=50-500A-D.png)
I asked for .502" and the bullets drop at .503" but size down to .501" easy enough. The mold was listed as 500 grains, but the bullets cast from wheel weights drop at 493 grains. The bullet is 1.00" long with a .4" nose. I cut a case down the side to measure the thickness and it looked like it was going to be pretty close on wether it would work or not. With the bullets seated to 1.8" there is just a little bulge at the base of the bullets that measured .534", the chamber is .533". So I ran the loaded rounds part way into a 50AE sizer die to just kiss the base of the bullet a little and they chambered just fine.
For load data, I compared the published data for 400s and 440s, then put some numbers into Quickload and everything looked reasonable, so I went ahead and loaded some today and fired the starting charges.
I used 18.4gn of WC820 with a CCI Mag pistol primer, Quickload said that it should be going about 900fps from my 5.25" bbl. The starting load should have been around 18kpsi.
My Chrono is lost in a box somewhere from our move, so I couldn't confirm the velocity.
Recoil was abit stiff and felt about like shooting 400s at 1250fps.
Looking at Quickload I should be able to get 1100fps with 22gns of WC820. Ramshot Enforcer and 2400 should be able to do 1200fps while staying under 50kpsi.
I'm not going to shoot any of the hotter loads until I can find the chrono just so that I can confirm that things are where they should be.

http://www.lsstuff.com/misc/500gn-01.jpg

http://www.lsstuff.com/misc/500gn-02.jpg

[ole 5 hole group]

You're in there pretty tight - take a look at the Hornady 500 grain XTP, as that puppy fits the JRH due to the slightly beveled base. On the heavies I load for the JRH, I run them through a 500 SW sizing die for chamber fit and I personally don't think it hurts the accuracy, at least that I can tell.

[44man]

Lar, I mentioned brass thickness in our PM's and was worried about it. Looks like that is what you found.
Watch you do not break case tension by sizing the brass with a seated boolit. It might give boolit pull troubles.
Will that boolit fit the cylinder if crimped in the upper GG? Still not the best because there will be motion under recoil due to the width.
The same happened to us with the .500 Linebaugh and I cured it by milling the top of the mold enough so it fit. Linebaugh brass gets thick very fast.
Each cartridge just has a boolit length limit.

[ole 5 hole group]

I've used 500 grain "leadhead" cast bullets in the JRH by resizing the brass with a seated bullet and noticed no bullet pull at velocities up to 1,050fps. Once I use up the leadheads, I'll just stick with 500 grain Hornady's jacketed bullet when I feel the need to go heavier than 440 grains, which won't be very often.:)