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Have any of you fellas ever heard of the .460 Wby being shortened to 2.5" and then necked up to .510"?

I know of three cartridges that are based on the 2.5" shortened .460 Wby, the .375 Van Horn, .460 Van Horn and the .460 A-Square Short.

Gil Van Horn designed the Van Horn line

Gil did the .510-caliber with a 2.575"-length .460 Wby case necked up:







Dr. Ken Howell's book drawing here, as well as an article on the cart by Sam Fadala, here:

https://www.24hourcampfire.com/ubbt...1/t-the-tinkerer-223rm-heavy-bullet-data

Well, I'll be darned! I didn't know about the .500 Van Horn Express.

Bob Hagel did the articles on the .375 & .460 Van Horn in either Handloader or Rifle magazines in the early to mid-70's.

Thanks Riflecrank!

Welcome. My pleasure.

Yes, good ol' Bob Hagel in Wolfe Pub. WILDCAT CARTRIDGES VOL. II:

.375 Van Horn ... .378 WBY MAG shortened to 2.635" case length, with about a half inch of throat free-travel to lands

.423 Van Horn ... 404 Jeffery Improved with 2.845" case length, +2650 fps with 400-gr bullet in 24" barrel

.460 Van Horn ... .460 WBY MAG shortened to 2.500", 2300 fps with 500-gr bullets in 19-15/32" barrel length, 1:20" twist, had about 0.4" throat free-travel to lands

The article above on the .500 Van Horn Express by Sam Fadala was from GUNS 1991 ANNUAL.

That 600 grain er should be a penetrating son of a gun! memtb

Riflecrank, didn't Gil Van Horn also have a .416 on the shortened .460 Wby case too?

I could not find it (.416 Van Horn) in Dr. Ken Howell's book, but it might have existed ...

Gil Van Horn did a .585 Van Horn Express, page 423 of Howell:
"Turn off rim of .577 Nitro Express brass and cut extractor groove. Form in RCBS form die."
The case is 3" long, .585-caliber bullet.

I bet Gil Van Horn did that before the .585 Nyati, .577 Tyrannosaur, etc.

I have yet to find a John Buhmiller cartridge in the Howell book.
Might be some more Van Horn carts out there.
Dr. Howell could not get them all, or his book would have been much larger than 596 pages.
and thousands more carts.
Uncle John did the .460 Weatherby Magnum before Ed Weatherby did it,
and many other calibers on the .378 Weatherby case necked up, including the .416, IIRC.

The .500 Weatherby Magnum (Howell pg. 414, beneath the belt-turned-off .500 Van Horn Express)
should have been credited to John Riley Buhmiller, long before the Weatherby "designer"
who never put it into factory production.
Also long before the copycats, .500 A-Square, .50 Peacekeeper, etc.

In "Wildcat Cartridges Volume II" Chapter 87 .423 Van Horn page 552, Bob Hagel writes "The majority of wildcat cartridges of recent development use the .416 bullets, but the old Kynoch solid with its heavy steel jacket is impossible to obtain unless you can find someone who has some leftover from yesteryear who is willing to part with them. For this reason, the .416 Van Horn simply had the neck expanded to take the .423 bullets made by RWS in 347 and 401 grain FMJ and imported into this country by Dynamit and Nobel."

So, it seems the .416 Van Horn brass was made but due to the lack of Kynoch bullets it was then necked up to .423. Wonder what would have happened with the .416 Van Horn if .416 solid bullets were more readily available.

So, the .416 Van Horn was a full length .404 Jeffery necked to .416 and modernized in shoulder angle and neck length.
Thanks for that, long time since reading that Wolfe pub.

So the .416 Dakota is a plagiarization of the
.416 Van Horn.
Art Alphin did a lott of that stealing.
The grape vine says Art did a lott of cartridge designing for Dakota Arms.

Gil Van Horn lived in Littlerock, California. Also helped Roy Weatherby when Roy first started

Wouldn't surprise me in the least if Art Alphin did that.