Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Express Rifles and Big Bores Only The great 458 Winchester. Everyone should own one at least once

Sir Russ, we did a little bit on CFE 223 on this thread on 2/26/21 or then-abouts.





Same load and rifle specifics using Alliant Power Pro VARMINT:



Federal offers this SAAMI-compliant load data with VARMINT: Note the 500-gr TBSS at + 2200 fps and less than 3..340" and less than 60,000 PSI:



CFE 223 works great for cleaning your barrel.
It requires greater recoil with heavier charges than can be done with favorites like AA-2230 and AA-2460 for same velocity,
and may not get as high velocity as possible with those two AA powders.
Use some CFE 223 to clean your rifle of TSX fouling ?

Everything is relative and it depends.
Using 3.340" or lesser COL will allow you to get higher velocities with less powder.

Note the 90 grains of compressed ball powder with the .458 Lott at 3.580" COL to get over 2300 fps with the 500-gr TBSS.
The same load could be used in the .458 WM+ at 3.575" COL.
But those .458 Lott ballistics were beaten by Sir Jerry at 3.545" COL with only 83.0 grains of AA-2460 in his 24"-barreled .458 WM+.

QuickLOAD is very unreliable for the .458 WinMag. It makes no allowances for throat.

Best approximation with QuickLOAD for the .458 WIN is to pretend that the .458 WinMag has a case capacity of 108 grains of water instead of 95.
95 grains water is the default case capacity for the .458 WinMag in QuickLOAD.