I've been playing around with "non traditional" loads in my No.1 450/400. Pushing both round nose and spire point Hornady 300r bullets very accurately and very fast... but at this point I have giant varmint bullets, since they were not designed to go this fast. So I decided to try some Barnes TSX's. The Hornady loads seem to match up with Quickload's predictions on velocity and I'm guessing pressures. With the Barnes however I'm getting pressure "signs" much sooner than expected and my velocities are around 200fps slower that predicted by Quickload. A disappointment. If I shoot them at that speed, I might as well just use the much cheaper jacketed bullets at that same speed, down where they'll be fine.

So I do some more reading about where I should be seating the Barnes, instead of just picking an OAL that was close to the others. (though it is the OAL used in Quickload). I don't have the proper tools to measure the chamber/throat and I'm too lazy to find my Cerosafe, so I used the poor man's method of chambering a long loaded round. I was a bit surprised at what I found. (I did it many many times, the bullet isn't pulling back when I eject)

[Linked Image]


Are they all this way? (All 450/400's? All No.1's?) Is it because they're chambered for round nose 400r bullets?

I had been seating to the second driving band. .050" off of this is still going to leave a lot of bullet hanging out there in the wind.