Thanks Sir Ron and Big Beretzs, working with Saint Bagwell's old rifle will be a fun and honorable project and will easily fill time from now to Africa as my 458 WM+ is like lunchmeat, always ready, no need to waste the ammunition, 450gr TSX's at 2418 fps are landing a foot low at 300 yards, the 500gr TBSS at 2350 fps land within an inch of the TSX's at 100 yards through scope, solids dead on at 50 yards with barrel sights, were a Buffalo to flee the 450gr TSX he would quickly be caught with a 500gr solid.
Sir Ron, Saint Bagwell gave me that mould to cast bullets for my two original 45 2-7/8's rifles, he had a man with the last name of Mos cut the mould, he spoke a lot of two of his favorite round nose paper patch bullets, one weighing 496gr, the other 511gr, he mostly cast and loaded with 50/50 wheel weights and pure lead, this bullet falls from the mould at 0.440 and patches up to 0.446 with Seth Cole 55W paper, i'll run all these soft at 40/1 alloy for deer and pigs this fall, it'll be the only Sharps rifle i hunt with this year.
The load is a mix of Starline brass i had plus 100 rounds Bill gave me, i annealed all cases, FL sized then trimmed at 2.100" CCI-BR2 primer 75gr KIK 2F black powder compressed 0.400" with 0.010" playing card wad on top 0.200" Black Magic grease cookie with another playing card wad on top Patched bullet hand seated then case mouth closed slightly with Lyman taper crimp die.
I was able to fire all three rounds with no wipe, no blowtube, also able to load then unload round number three before firing it, all that's necessary for hunting rifle loads.
I can do no better work, just want to honor the rifle and our Old Buddy Saint Bagwell.
