Anybody try a 480 Ruger?

[David2011]

SteveM, that is a beautiful pistol. The figure of the wood and color case hardening are gorgeous.

Tim,

I hate it when people jump in with "I don't know anything about that" comments but now I'm doing it. I can bracket around your caliber, though.

Never shot a .480. I've shot a 2-1/2" .454 Casull- one of the S&W survival pistols IIRC. I shot it five times and my hand was tingling afterward. Big power and nasty recoil. I shot a 4" ported S&W 500 recently. Twice. That was enough- still felt it the next day. The only reason I can see for that kind of power is self defense against bear or other dangerous animals or with a longer barrel for hunting. Neither was fun to shoot. I have a 14" Contender in .44 Mag that slings a 255 gr boolit at 1600 fps and it shot through about 18" of feral hog- in the right shoulder and out the left ham. That's enough power for me.

David

[calinb]

Finding this thread got me tinkering with my 480. Well...I don't have time to go shoot it, but I decided to do a few Quickload runs to compare the 480 Ruger to the the 475 Linebaugh using heavy bullets with the maximum velocity powder, Lil'Gun. I opened up the Hodgdon Reloading center 480 and 475 pages, side-by-side, and did some Quickload runs on the Hodgdon heavy loads and my 480 loads, which I've chronographed.

Quickload confirmed what many people here already know. The extra case length/powder capacity of the Linebaugh is its greatest "resource" advantage compared to the 480. The 2000 psi maximum pressure advantage doesn't result in much benefit (it corresponds to only 0.3 extra grains of Lil'Gun and 18 fps in my Quickload runs with my 393 gr. Lee bullet).

On the other hand, if it's possible to load a 480 cartridge long, you can recover nearly all of the Linebaugh advantage. This is consistent with what I've measured with my backwoods carry load crimped on the second Lee groove. Quickload says a second groove crimp length (1.785 COAL) can achieve 1486 fps at 48,000 psi using Lil'Gun whereas a top groove crimp length (1.665 COAL--still 0.005 over SAAMI) results in 1394 fps. Even if the Quickload velocity predictions are not spot-on, the difference prediction should still be very accurate. Of course the longer load requires more Lil'Gun to achieve the same 48,000 psi, but the longer COAL load is also less compressed (108.3% vs. 116.0%). I wouldn't want to run Lil'Gun with 116% compression. My high velocity load isn't this hot, but the velocity level I'm getting would still require too much powder compression for my likes, if I crimped on the top Lee groove.

The bottom line from my investigation is that heavy bullet 480 loads can produce virtually the same velocity as Linebaugh loads, if loaded at the same COAL (in excess of SAAMI COAL for the 480). On the other hand, Quickload indicates that the Linebaugh can achieve a similar velocity increase from loading heavy bullets longer than Linebaugh SAAMI. Whether or not the longer COAL is possible in a Linebaugh revolver with any given bullet is unknown to me, and I don't have a Linebaugh to find out.

[calinb]

I shot a 4" ported S&W 500 recently. Twice. That was enough- still felt it the next day. The only reason I can see for that kind of power is self defense against bear or other dangerous animals or with a longer barrel for hunting.

I've never shot a handgun more powerful than my 480, but I've given the subject of last line bear defense a lot of thought. Such an event is likely to impart permanent hearing loss on the shooter (assuming they survive the attack ). A ported (or perhaps very short barrel) is likely to increase the hearing damage.

[HollandNut]

My brother has a 500 smitty , whole nother ball game there