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

As a stress reliever on the funeral trip to Florida,
I sat in the hotel one night while wife was in the shower,
and drew a bullet on a scrap of Holiday Inn Express note paper.
I may not get to be a commercial pilot by staying the night there,
but now I am a bullet designer !

A reference on copper and brass 450-gr/.458 FN solids:



Concept done on graph paper after I got home,
here is a cutie that looks a lot like Sir Saint Bill Bagwell's PH hardcast of 475 to 480 grains in .458" diameter for BPCR
("Smoke Over Africa").
That killer-diller at 1300 fps was 1.22" long and had seven grease grooves on it, and a flat nose and base.
My concept in copper could be exactly 400 grains and travel at 2500 fps, BOL 1.200"



The basic shape is the base frustrum of a right circular cone with 26-degree cone angle, 0.240" height, 0.458" base diameter,
sitting on top of a right circular cylinder of 0.458" diameter and 0.960" height.



That basic shape in copper of specific gravity about 8.9 would weigh about 424 grains, I SWAG.
After whittling away the Hammer PDR bands/grooves X 7 along the sides
and radius-beveling the nose down to 0.300" meplat diameter (about 65.5% of caliber)
and rounding the flat base edge,
if anymore reduction in weight is needed to get 400-grains exactly: A tiny hollow in the base.
This would work in the .45-70 Gov't. lever action with .458" groove and any other .458-cal rifle I know of.
"405-g" would be OK too if a catchier number than plain vanilla "400-g" is desired.
400 grains or 405 grains, since 402 and 404 are already taken by Hammer .458 bullets.






This basically copies the BBW#13 FN solid nose shape of Sam Rose, Sir Michael "Doc M" McCourry, CEB, and North Fork.
But with the PDR bands, I think the "nose projection" issue is a non-issue
since with the low drag bands of Hammer Bullets, the whole length of the bullet becomes "nose projection."
About 0.600" minimum of nose projection ahead of the "high drag" CEB bands is recommended for best penetration.
How about twice that amount using PDR bands ?