BFR
06-19-2024, 01:13 PM
Gentlemen,
I recently went down the rabbit hole of creating a 3" long bullet/case 45 colt round for my Magnum research BFR in 45LC / 410. This was actually inspired by a post about 14 years ago on this forum. This project wasn't as straight forward as you would think but for anyone interested I've listed my progress and tips and notes for anyone else considering this or just in for a interesting read. Feedback, tips or advice would also be appreciated as I'm sure I'm not the first or the last to do this or think about doing it.
Disclaimer:
If your thinking about a 450 mongo don't, just go buy a 45-70 BFR and call it a day. If you are still determined a gunsmith is highly recommended. Again if that doesn't dissuade you and won't do that either. Know that you are completely on your own if you end up blowing your gun or yourself up. Magnum research will not warranty or condone any of this. They even say hand reloading the regular 45LC voids your warranty/not recommended. Or something to that effect when I emailed them. So understand this is at your own risk. Also for anyone thinking about doing this in a Taurus Judge DO NOT! The BFR is a magnum rated revolver. Meaning the frame and cylinder is the same as all the rest of the BFR revolver line and is rated at the same SAAMI specs as all their other guns. the 460 for example is 65k PSI if i remember correctly. Your regular governors/judges are not and you WILL no question about it blow up your gun and be missing a hand. DONT TRY IT! I don't think those guns are even rated for +P 45LC ammo.
Introduction:
I wanted to shoot a long case +2" COL to make up for the 3" cylinder on my 45 BFR to get a bit more accuracy due to that bullet jump. Let me be clear the BFR 45 colt is no slouch and groups excellent to begin with but I wanted something with a bit more umph than a +P 45 colt. Yes it would have been easier just to buy a 460 454 45-70 etc. from BFR but I just wanted a project and I'm not stranger to gunsmithing.
First thing to know. The BFR has a machined lip in the cylinder so nothing longer than a 45 colt can be cambered. This is to prevent the smarter portion of population to try to camber something that shouldn't be put in that gun. You know to stop people like me... I won't go into details on how I removed that lip and polished the chamber but you get the idea. I did document and photograph that process though if anyone is interested. If your not comfortable drilling or polishing up your $1k gun you should probably consider purchasing on of the ones I've already listed above. Once I got past that hurdle I then went about creating brass for this monster. As others have done .444 marlin brass was used and ordered from midway/powder valley. This brass needs to be fireformed. Basically the process of resizing the brass to fit the larger 45 colt chamber by shooting a reduced load out of the gun. I made brass 410 shotshells. shot them and it really only formed the top inch. So I had to do it again with a light 250gr bullet which formed the brass almost down to the base and needed one more full power load to completely fireform it. Also I though I could skip the first two steps and that only resulted in a split case and ruined brass. As you can tell this was wasting a lot of money and supplies just getting the brass formed. So I ended up making my own expander die for my RCBS press to expand the brass cutting out the first several steps of fireforming and cut out the shotshell portion completely. Saving me several loads of powder primer and bullet, not to mention wear and tear on my gun shooting round after round just to get the brass formed. Pictures attached. This process worked great and only about 8% of the brass needed a fireforming session after resizing. I did about 150 rounds total.
Load development:
I used minimum load for .444 marlin and worked up from there. I utilized Gordons reloading tool (Free computer program) to calculate pressures ballistics and powder choice. Do not use a pistol powder as the ignition is too fast and generates too much PSI to stay below what the gun is rated for. Case volume is slightly less than a 45-70 and used that as an additional tool to develop loads. Good powder choices are H335 H322 H4198 TAC 2200 2230 H4895 or anything listed in .444 marlin or 45-70 load tables. These are all rifle powders. I've tested with H335 and TAC personally. Both of which does leave some powder residue and some unburnt grains but works very well H335 better than TAC. There is some faster rifle powders I'm going to try and also If I can get my hands on some large rifle magnum primers to clean that up but I haven't seen any of those in years. H4198 is a much faster rifle powder and would recommend using that but again I haven't seen that in ages on the shelves. 2200 is another option as it has similar burn rates and have yet to try that yet.
These are the loads I've created so far using H335. Warning, don't substitute with another powder as each powder has a different density. So if you prefer your hand and gun not go missing and receive a darwin award dont mix and match. You'll need to work up your own loads manually starting at minimums and work up.
These are my personal loads I've worked up and would consider these MAXIMUMS as case capacity is dang near at 95-100%. I wouldn't push it any further. Plus anything more and the gun isn't any fun to shoot as it'll kick like a donkey on cocaine. Which the 500grainers already do. Bullet Diameter .452 (DO NOT USE 45-70 bullets as they are .458) you'll either need to resize .458 down to .452 or buy .452 to shoot out of the 45 colt or slug your bore to be certain.
255gr Lead FP 54g H335 COL 2.35 case length trimmed to 2.05" (estimated GRT: 1560fps 1378ft/lbs 7.5" barrel)
328gr Lead FP 51g H335 COL 2.50 case length trimmed to 2.05" (estimated GRT: 1468fps 1569ft/lbs 7.5" barrel)
500gr Lead FP 45g H335 COL 2.85 case length trimmed to 2.18" (estimated GRT: 1283fps 1828ft/lbs 7.5" barrel)
All in all this was a really fun project and the gun is an absolute joy to shoot now. accuracy is phenomenal and outclasses the 454 in almost every metric (judging by feel alone) I do need to get a chrono on these rounds to get accurate measurements as all the above are computer generated estimates using GRT. Unfortunately I don't have a chrono, so that's the best I can do as of right now. All of these loads stay under 40k PSI (again estimated with GRT) which is well under even a 454 casull loading. So the gun is well within its safety limits.
Thanks everyone and I hope this post at the very least talked some of you guys out of doing this and just buying another gun. Which honestly is the best option and I'm probably going to be doing anyways but it was a fun project. BFR 45-70 is in my future and the inevitable question from my wife "why do you need another gun?"
327682327683327684327685
I recently went down the rabbit hole of creating a 3" long bullet/case 45 colt round for my Magnum research BFR in 45LC / 410. This was actually inspired by a post about 14 years ago on this forum. This project wasn't as straight forward as you would think but for anyone interested I've listed my progress and tips and notes for anyone else considering this or just in for a interesting read. Feedback, tips or advice would also be appreciated as I'm sure I'm not the first or the last to do this or think about doing it.
Disclaimer:
If your thinking about a 450 mongo don't, just go buy a 45-70 BFR and call it a day. If you are still determined a gunsmith is highly recommended. Again if that doesn't dissuade you and won't do that either. Know that you are completely on your own if you end up blowing your gun or yourself up. Magnum research will not warranty or condone any of this. They even say hand reloading the regular 45LC voids your warranty/not recommended. Or something to that effect when I emailed them. So understand this is at your own risk. Also for anyone thinking about doing this in a Taurus Judge DO NOT! The BFR is a magnum rated revolver. Meaning the frame and cylinder is the same as all the rest of the BFR revolver line and is rated at the same SAAMI specs as all their other guns. the 460 for example is 65k PSI if i remember correctly. Your regular governors/judges are not and you WILL no question about it blow up your gun and be missing a hand. DONT TRY IT! I don't think those guns are even rated for +P 45LC ammo.
Introduction:
I wanted to shoot a long case +2" COL to make up for the 3" cylinder on my 45 BFR to get a bit more accuracy due to that bullet jump. Let me be clear the BFR 45 colt is no slouch and groups excellent to begin with but I wanted something with a bit more umph than a +P 45 colt. Yes it would have been easier just to buy a 460 454 45-70 etc. from BFR but I just wanted a project and I'm not stranger to gunsmithing.
First thing to know. The BFR has a machined lip in the cylinder so nothing longer than a 45 colt can be cambered. This is to prevent the smarter portion of population to try to camber something that shouldn't be put in that gun. You know to stop people like me... I won't go into details on how I removed that lip and polished the chamber but you get the idea. I did document and photograph that process though if anyone is interested. If your not comfortable drilling or polishing up your $1k gun you should probably consider purchasing on of the ones I've already listed above. Once I got past that hurdle I then went about creating brass for this monster. As others have done .444 marlin brass was used and ordered from midway/powder valley. This brass needs to be fireformed. Basically the process of resizing the brass to fit the larger 45 colt chamber by shooting a reduced load out of the gun. I made brass 410 shotshells. shot them and it really only formed the top inch. So I had to do it again with a light 250gr bullet which formed the brass almost down to the base and needed one more full power load to completely fireform it. Also I though I could skip the first two steps and that only resulted in a split case and ruined brass. As you can tell this was wasting a lot of money and supplies just getting the brass formed. So I ended up making my own expander die for my RCBS press to expand the brass cutting out the first several steps of fireforming and cut out the shotshell portion completely. Saving me several loads of powder primer and bullet, not to mention wear and tear on my gun shooting round after round just to get the brass formed. Pictures attached. This process worked great and only about 8% of the brass needed a fireforming session after resizing. I did about 150 rounds total.
Load development:
I used minimum load for .444 marlin and worked up from there. I utilized Gordons reloading tool (Free computer program) to calculate pressures ballistics and powder choice. Do not use a pistol powder as the ignition is too fast and generates too much PSI to stay below what the gun is rated for. Case volume is slightly less than a 45-70 and used that as an additional tool to develop loads. Good powder choices are H335 H322 H4198 TAC 2200 2230 H4895 or anything listed in .444 marlin or 45-70 load tables. These are all rifle powders. I've tested with H335 and TAC personally. Both of which does leave some powder residue and some unburnt grains but works very well H335 better than TAC. There is some faster rifle powders I'm going to try and also If I can get my hands on some large rifle magnum primers to clean that up but I haven't seen any of those in years. H4198 is a much faster rifle powder and would recommend using that but again I haven't seen that in ages on the shelves. 2200 is another option as it has similar burn rates and have yet to try that yet.
These are the loads I've created so far using H335. Warning, don't substitute with another powder as each powder has a different density. So if you prefer your hand and gun not go missing and receive a darwin award dont mix and match. You'll need to work up your own loads manually starting at minimums and work up.
These are my personal loads I've worked up and would consider these MAXIMUMS as case capacity is dang near at 95-100%. I wouldn't push it any further. Plus anything more and the gun isn't any fun to shoot as it'll kick like a donkey on cocaine. Which the 500grainers already do. Bullet Diameter .452 (DO NOT USE 45-70 bullets as they are .458) you'll either need to resize .458 down to .452 or buy .452 to shoot out of the 45 colt or slug your bore to be certain.
255gr Lead FP 54g H335 COL 2.35 case length trimmed to 2.05" (estimated GRT: 1560fps 1378ft/lbs 7.5" barrel)
328gr Lead FP 51g H335 COL 2.50 case length trimmed to 2.05" (estimated GRT: 1468fps 1569ft/lbs 7.5" barrel)
500gr Lead FP 45g H335 COL 2.85 case length trimmed to 2.18" (estimated GRT: 1283fps 1828ft/lbs 7.5" barrel)
All in all this was a really fun project and the gun is an absolute joy to shoot now. accuracy is phenomenal and outclasses the 454 in almost every metric (judging by feel alone) I do need to get a chrono on these rounds to get accurate measurements as all the above are computer generated estimates using GRT. Unfortunately I don't have a chrono, so that's the best I can do as of right now. All of these loads stay under 40k PSI (again estimated with GRT) which is well under even a 454 casull loading. So the gun is well within its safety limits.
Thanks everyone and I hope this post at the very least talked some of you guys out of doing this and just buying another gun. Which honestly is the best option and I'm probably going to be doing anyways but it was a fun project. BFR 45-70 is in my future and the inevitable question from my wife "why do you need another gun?"
327682327683327684327685