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

Test question to see if anyone is paying attention besides Fury01 and Riflecrank:

Which one is called "Old Ugly," the rifle or the rifleman ?



As you were.
Continuing the good, bad and fugly theme, it is time to look at the underwear of Old Fugly and consider how it might be improved
and possibly made even fuglier.

Her underside where opened at front of action only, she started off as a standard magnum action .458 WinMag:



Here is the cut on the front of the ejection port to allow ejection of unfired cartridges:



Front of integral box was cut off and extension welded onto it:





Welded, brazed, soldered ... my local GUNSMITH in Kentucky did that with whatever technique he preferred.
That happened in the early years of this century as an attempt to do right by Old Fugly.
I adopted her in 1987 from Boondock Sporting Goods in Eagle River Alaska.
I have chronograph results from her as a .458 WinMag dated 1988, soon as the public range had thawed,
and she was bedded in a Brown Precision blank smeared with epoxy all over.
I just called her Warthog back then.

Then on a day that will live in infamy, in 1993, she had a .458 Lott wildcat reamer run into her by an Alaskan GUNSMITH.
She has never been right since.
She went 10 years (1993- 2003) with a short box and a long chamber,
mag box carrying .458 WM, single-shot loading .458 Lott off the top of box.

Old Fugly is now like a rescue dog, a pet so fugly it is endearing.
From 2003 to present she has had the welded box.
I am trying to do better by her before another decade passes, surely before 2023 comes.
Her current mag box is barely long enough inside to fit 3.6" COL,
and then only with pointy spitzer bullet.
Ideal when loaded with 400-gr spitzers and less than 3.6" COL.
She can do no better than a .458 WM+ with any heavier bullet anyway,
whether using 2.5" or 2.8" brass.
The SAAMI .458 Lott cannot fit a lot of bullets into 3.600" COL without trimming the brass a little short,
as advised in the Barnes Manual for the 450-gr and 500-gr TSX bullets.