swheeler
04-24-2006, 12:00 PM
I've been playing with an old 721 Rem chambered for 450 Watts AI cartridge. The purpose of this exercise was to develope a good plinking-gopher load for the rifle. The full power loads are a little much for anything that walks around here, but the rifle belongs to a friend and he was getting tired of being beat up by it, both his shoulder and pocket book. A year or so ago he found a custom loader that supplied him with loaded ammo for 6.00 per cartridge! I told him I thought I could beat that price by a few dollars, and give him something he could shoot all day without a bruse or concussion headache. RCBS wanted 280+ dollars for dies, so I measured up a fired case and desided the cheapest route was to load them in 460 Weath dies- they neck size the brass only, and stop about .030" short of sizing all of the neck,PERFECT. He had 19 rounds of once fired brass, some generic belted basic(no headstamp) and some HDS and I picked up 50 /458Lott to fireform in his chamber. I checked and slugged the barrel dimensions-.458+/.450, 12 groove, 1 in 16 RH twist. I had a Lee 457/450/F plain based mold that dropped boolits too small, so lapping was in order- it ended up Still out of round(although not as bad as when Lee shipped it) with .461/.450 dimensions, run thru a .459 sizer. I took one of the fired cases he had and sized about 1/32 of the neck, chamfered the inside good, and started a boolit straight into the neck and seated to the first lube groove. I then took the dummy round and slowly-and gently-chambered the round, then carefully removed it-3.597", I used this to set the seater die, put the round in my inertia puller and a couple gentle taps moved the boolit back out and repeated-3.595", I backed the seater stem out 1/4 turn and locked it down. With the seater set this way the loaded 458 Lott brass was ready to fireform, you just had to pinch the bolt shut on a loaded round. The load I'm shooting now cost 2.46 /box of 20, that doesn't include the brass- a little SAVINGS! I have tried various loadings from 1100- 1530 fps, Unique,2400,5744, and IMR 4895, with and without dacron, boolits of 14/17/21 bhn, seating depths from 3.480(long jump) to 3.600( squeeze closed) they all shoot good, just some better than others. The load that fits the plinking/gopher hunting/low recoil needs -brough the recoil down from approx. 90 to 20 lbs ft-is 2400/14 bhn boolit/1400fps, looks like it will be accurate enough, trajectory isn't stellar, but a 50 yd zero will put you less than -4@100 and -12 @150. I seriously doubt that very many gophers will take more than one shot, but you never know!
That's the Watts in the middle, flanked on the left by 7mmRM and on the right by 22/250. 50 yd target, 5 shots, .631" CtoC
That's the Watts in the middle, flanked on the left by 7mmRM and on the right by 22/250. 50 yd target, 5 shots, .631" CtoC