What's so special about a "Keith" boolit ?

[44MAG#1]

Ross hunted with handguns in this country and Africa. And so goes the story.
Everyone will believe as he or she wants too. If the shoulder in a SWC does the work then it wouldn't matter if the point was a Spire or Spitzer point then. Why, because the shoulder of the SWC would be doing the work.
Deep down we know that isn't the case.
So where do we go from there? And those that uses an alloy that deforms the nose how could they prove or disprove anything either way?
And so it goes again.

[megasupermagnum]

The above quote is in reference to the shoulder of a SWC cutting in game. This was not disproven, in my opinion. Ross shot gelatin with sand in it after marking the nose and shoulder with a permanent marker or paint and looking at the bullet for abrasion after the shot. The problem with that is animals aren't made of gelatin. Lots of different material in them including bone and hide. Brian Pearce strongly disagrees with the statement that the shoulder doesn't cut in game. He has written of his observations in dead animals, not gelatin.

There has been a lot more testing than that. Think about it this way. If it did cut, then they would do the same job as a full wadcutter. They don't. The H&G #68, the gold standard 45 acp bullet is about the most extreme example of a tiny meplat SWC I can think of. If the shoulder did anything, that bullet would be an awesome hunting bullet. It doesn't though, and it leaves puny holes in things. If one were to shoot a deer with one, you would have one heck of a tracking job. Swap that to a non-SWC bullet like a 200 gr RNFP with a decent sized flat, and you have a bullet that makes a much larger hole.

Don't take my word for it. Take an H&G 68 and a WFN, and shoot a roadkill animal with them.

[Lloyd Smale]

im a big fan of elmer. Even named my last dog Elmer Keith. The reason his bullets were so good is at the time there wasnt much for cast bullet designs. Most were round nose bullets. Elmer made what at the time was hands down the best hunting bullet. He knew that a flat metplat was much better for killing animals. It still is a great bullet but as much as i dont like pompous veral smith he came up with the lfn design which kills as well and is most of the time more accurate at any velocity. Now i dont have much use for his wfn or especially his wlfn but he changed the cast bullet hunting world with the lfn. I still use kieths and Lfns about exclusively but most of my most accurate handgun loads are with lfns. Ive found it takes about half the farting around developing loads to find accuracy with it and it flys as well at long range as a true keith. Now true kieth is the key word. IT is probably the most abused term in bullet casting. Any swc that resembles a Keith bullet is called a keith. Accually he had some strict design specs on his keith bullet and very few of the swcs today fit his design specs. Look even at the most famous swc the 421429. That bullet has at least 3 differnt designs. All made by lyman and all called the same thing. Rcbs is another they made 2 different 250 swcs that are called kieths. I dont know if theres even a single mold maker today making a real kieth bullet that fits his design criteria's. Its about like calling a ford truck a chev because there both trucks.

[Cosmic_Charlie]

RCBS BULLET MOULD .45-255-SWC 424 and the design tweaked version RCBS .45-270-SAA 424 are supposed to be very good bullets. I might buy one of these after a little more research.
I don’t know if a SWC will feed smoothly into a Win M73 rifle. I can’t imagine they’ll just drop into the chambers of my Ruger New Vaquero’s without snagging on the chamber edge.

My only experience with a SWC design bullet is with some commercial cast for 357 Mag.
The SWC lip that is responsible for cutting nice clean holes in the target paper gave me fits trying to load them into the cylinder of S&W 686. That paper cutting lip would snag on the chamber edge every time whether I loaded singly or jiggled 6 in a speed loader.

Lesson learned from loading my 357, for my 45 Colt cartridges I prefer to cast a smooth feeding RNFP, I don’t care that they tear a ragged hole in the paper target.

You can seat them deeper and crimp over the shoulder so they feed in a lever gun. I used to do that with those Speer semi jacketed hollow points. I noticed yesterday the RCBS 250K loads were a bit fussy going into my Model 24 cylinder even loading them one at a time.

[robg]

im a keith fan ,his boolits just work .

[cowboy4evr]

I hear ya , about all the different designs called " Keiths " . I have a box full of repro's , Lyman , RCBS etc . I finally was able to find the company that had all the H&G drawings . They made for me , the actual H&G 503 , the design that Elmer had H&G make after he got mad at Lyman for changing his 429421 . They also made for me his design for the 41 magnum , H&G 258 . The Lyman design for the 41 magnum is NOT Elmers design . They just put his name on it . He wrote them a scathing letter about it .
Kind of interesting is that when my mold for the 41 magnum arrived , it had seen a bit of use . Apparently someone cast himself quite a few bullets before it was sent out . I didn't mind , just glad to get the " real Keiths " . Regards Paul

[dahermit]

Elmer Keith was not God... He was in fact a pompous braggart. However, I don't think he was a liar (his 500 yard shoot with a 4 inch .44 magnum).

Although his bullet design for the .44 was good (or good enough), it most certainly is not perfect. I take two issues with it. Firstly his grease grove (flat-bottomed, not the early Lyman 49421 with the shallow round grove), was excessive. As I remember, he stated that the flat-bottom was to help hold the bullet lube in place during firing (a good thing... my early 429321 had a shallow-round groove in which the bullet lube was observed to dry-out and pieces drop out.) and to assure that there was enough lube to do its job. However, there was no evidence that more lube was required than that which could be provided by a more modest lube groove. Secondly, his crimp groove was unnecessarily deep which encourages handloaders to over-crimp their Keith-type bullets in their cartridges thereby shortening case life unnecessarily. Nevertheless, I have two RCBS .44-250-kt molds (higher production with two at a time) from which I cast and shoot his bullets exclusively in my S&W 696 .44 Special... believing that his design is not perfect, but is certainly good enough for any purpose.

[Lloyd Smale]

were you there to call him a lier. Ive never shot live animals at that distance but have shot enough long range 6 and 5 guns to know that someone thats good sure could pull it off. We shot 3/4 scale steel bison targets at the linebaugh seminar. One shot to range and 5 for score. they did a 357 44 45 475 fand 500 class. I won the 44 class with 5 out of 5 hits. Every class was one by a perfect score. Sounds like you just dont have any experience in long range sixgun shooting. Seems the braggard is here critisizing his design. How many molds have you designed that are in production. My guess is elmer shot more in a year then you have in your life. I NEVER call anyone a lier unless i have proof. 276 posts and we should listen to you correcting elmer kieth. Now thats comical.

[MT Gianni]

dahermit, I can't see comparing todays' lubes to older lube grooves. Our polymer based waxes can give a great lube with 1/8th the lube as that made from lamb fat and beeswax. I believe a crimp can change drastically depending on throats and powders. What #6 required for a crimp to burn we will never know. EK dropped Lyman as a mold maker when they went to a smaller lube groove than he specified. As one who has lived my adult life with in a couple hundred miles of country he hunted and grew up in I feel I know the old timers a bit. I think Elmer never felt he was respected as some others as he grew up poor and guided hunters, rather than was guided himself. He had to assert himself to be taken seriously. To quote Satchel Paige, "It ain't bragging of you done it".

[W.R.Buchanan]

He had a deer sized target at 600 yards up from his back door and would replicate the shot on demand for naysayers,,, who never doubted him again after seeing him do it.

There is being FOS,,, then there is being able to back it up,,, which usually shuts people up for good and removes the FOS from behind your name.

I sometimes bait people for fun. It's called Hustling.

Randy.

[dahermit]

were you there to call him a lier. Ive never shot live animals at that distance but have shot enough long range 6 and 5 guns to know that someone thats good sure could pull it off. We shot 3/4 scale steel bison targets at the linebaugh seminar. One shot to range and 5 for score. they did a 357 44 45 475 fand 500 class. I won the 44 class with 5 out of 5 hits. Every class was one by a perfect score. Sounds like you just dont have any experience in long range sixgun shooting. Seems the braggard is here critisizing his design. How many molds have you designed that are in production. My guess is elmer shot more in a year then you have in your life. I NEVER call anyone a lier unless i have proof. 276 posts and we should listen to you correcting elmer kieth. Now thats comical.

What is comical is that you seem to have not read my post. Read this part again: "I don't think he was a liar."
Aside from that, explain if you please, what a person's post count has to do with anything.

[44MAG#1]

I readily believe he hit the deer at 600 yards 2 out of 4 shots. Even though he didn't think that was his best shooting.

[dahermit]

I have to admit that that heavy RCBS-250-kt is an impressive thumper for my .44 Special.
https://uniim1.shutterfly.com/ng/ser...011055/enhance

[gwpercle]

For a bullet design that was put together and brought to the Ideal/Lyman mould co. about 1928 - 1929 time frame ... and here it is 2021 and we are still talking about the Keith SWC and just about every maker of moulds still cuts a SWC ... some called Keith and others just SWC ...
Still being relevant , talked about , used and seemingly going strong after 92 years ... the boolit Must have something going for it and like or dislike the man ... you have to admit the Keith SWC was a sucess and while I don't agree with Elmer on everything...( I will use gas checks) He got the SWC design right . Modern lubes have done away with the "need" for square bottomed grease grooves that had to hold a lot of bear tallow and hog lard lubes .
When I started reloading in 1967 the only way to get cast Keith SWC boolits was to buy a mould and cast them yourself ... which I did about week two into my reloading experience ...no inter net selling and the factory bullets were swaged of soft lead with little lube and mostly round nose design .
The Keith SWC may not be "The Perfect Boolit" for everything but ...it's pretty near it , and good enough for my needs .
Gary

[mehavey]

He was in fact a pompous braggart

Having read all his pubs over the last 30-40 years... well...
He was what my father would call... "a character"

[Lloyd Smale]

What is comical is that you seem to have not read my post. Read this part again: "I don't think he was a liar."
Aside from that, explain if you please, what a person's post count has to do with anything.

you called him a pompous braggard. by the way its shows right at the bottom of your post that it was edited after my post and "NOT" was added in. Nice try though.

[44MAG#1]

DAHERMIT,

What 500 yard shot with a 4 inch 44 Magnum are you talking about?

[Lloyd Smale]

elmer shot a deer with a 29 at 500 yards

[44MAG#1]

I am interested in the particular 500 yard shot with a 4 inch 44 Magnum that was mentioned.

[dahermit]

DAHERMIT,

What 500 yard shot with a inch 44 Magnum are you talking about?

The distance was evidently in error... it was much further than that. My memory of the exact distance was the result of reading about the incident back in the middle sixties. The point was that he shot a deer (or some other large game animal) at a great distance, and people (other gun writers) accused him of lying. There was ample evidence in his writing that he was a braggart, but none (that I can remember), that he ever lied about anything.