Lee 500 Grain Bullet

[Castaway]

Tried it and liked it. After playing with my Hoch 560+ bore rider and getting it to shoot, I decided to find a hunting load. I felt there were three problems with the Hoch mould; exposed grease grooves, failure to extract an entire cartridge if I needed to unload, and a small meplat. Looking at the C Sharps load data site, they mentioned 60 grains of powder under a 500 grain Govt bullet. I loaded some at 60, 63 and 68 grains. 68 grains of compressed powder bulged the case to a point it wouldn’t chamber. 63 grains was a loose 6” group. The 60 grain load of OE 1.5 gives a consistent and honest 1 1/4” group at 100 yards. I can now chamber and extract a cartridge, no grease grooves are exposed and can fire three plus shots without needing to wipe. Biggest problem was finding correct seating depth. Initially, I seated to midway of top driving band and cartridge wouldn’t chamber. Ended up with an OAL of 2.455”. As an aside, this is where I found the mysterious “ring” or lack of ring at the bottom of the case that was noted in a previous post about Starline brass.

[Larry Gibson]

I've compressed hundreds of 70 gr ffg and fffg BP loads in several different makes of 45-70 brass with a compression die and have never bulged the case. If you are using the bullet to compress the BP then you are probably swaging the the bullet out giving the chambering problems.

[Wayne Smith]

Larry, I have buldged a couple 44-40 cases trying to put 40 grains of 3FG in them! It can be done.

[Castaway]

Using a Lyman compression die. All bullets are thumb seated and dropped on top of powder column. I’ve crammed an honest 40 grains of 3f in a Starline 45 Colt case. Got it to fit but sure wasn’t pleasant to shoot