Swaging .458 projectiles down to suit .45 Colt

[HogRider666]

Hi all, this is my first post, but been lurking here for a long time. It's a great site.
I have a Miroku made model 92 in .45 Colt, I have many .458 300g jacketed hollow points, I am wondering whether running them through a Lee .452 sizing die would make them suitable for use in my rifle?
i have slugged my barrel at .451, after running the jacketed boolits through the die they come out at .453.
Do you guys think that these boolits are too big in dia to use safely?
I'd like to use Lil Gun powder behind these projectiles if they are safe to use?
thanks for your advice

[DougGuy]

If it will chamber a loaded round it will probably be fine. If the base of the boolit is seated to the same depth as say a Lee C452-300-RF boolit, you could use data for that boolit. I run my Lee 300gr seated long (in the bottom crimp groove) with 20.5gr LilGun for around 1150f/s out of a short barreled Vaquero. It's about 85% of the 30,000psi pressure ceiling, not a max load by any means, but very accurate and not as punishing to shoot as a max load with H110 would be. I am not sure these would feed in the 92 seated long, may have to be seated deeper in the case which would need a reduction in charge weight.

[dh2]

If you can get it to size down , I am thinking that the thicker jacket of the 300gr. jacketed HP made for the 45/70 Gov. would give you expansion like a fmj at the 45lc speeds.

[midnight]

Just my opinion, I wouldn't do it. When you size a jacketed bullet down the jacket springs back slightly but the lead does not. This leaves you with a core that is loose in the jacket. You may not get the performance you want. This is why all bullet swaging is based on the "swage up" principle. When the bullet is released from the die, the jacket tries to spring back slightly and thus grips the core more tightly.

Bob

[reed1911]

I was going to say the same thing. Can you do it? Yes. Should you? No. You will be miles ahead to sell them and use the funds to buy the right bullets. They would work in a pinch to throw lead down range, but not for accuracy use at all. Even drawing regular cast bullets that far destroys the hardness of them.

Just a note on verbiage, to Swage is to increase in size, when you go down it is considered drawing. So the dies to reduce the bullets are draw dies.

[Prospector Howard]

That's a long way to size them down. I've taken alot of .310 and .311 sized bullets down to .308 with no problem and no noticeable difference in accuracy. You should take then down 7 thousandths to be safe, and that's probably too much for reasons mentioned.

[HogRider666]

Thanks for your advice guys, I think I'll stick to cast Boolits from WW, but will update if I decide to try the resized jacketed.
As a point of interest I measured a jacketed boolit from an American Eagle at .456.
regards