Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Express Rifles and Big Bores Only 450 G&A Short

Yup, 23" barrel is as short and handy as I like on a .458 bolt action.
Anyone not a dwarf should do well with 23" barrel.
My ancestors survived running around with 44" barrels.
You want to do more poking than swinging when you get into the brush.

#5 sporter contour will work great on any .458 bolt action rifle, ideal.
#4 sporter contour and 23" barrel is minimum, if a featherweight is the goal, requires 2-pound stock.

Yup, you can easily add a pound with well-balanced lead and epoxy and/or mercury tubes
in butt and forearm of stock.
Phil Shoemaker made his Old Ugly gain a pound by doing that.

Until you get proper dies, if you can shorten a .450 Rigby die by about 0.060" ground off at the base
that would be a dandy neck sizer,
since the .450 Rigby has a 0.500"-long neck and the 460 G&A has a .458"-long neck,
and the Neck-1 location at shoulder juncture would line up pretty easily.

2.3998" - 2.3415" = 0.0583" (see cartridge drawings below, brass maximums)
Grind off base of die and adjust die upward to fine tune jam fit in chamber.

Thus, neck-sizing of brass, after fire forming,
using a reversed bullet loaded with base into the rifling, to blow out the 404 shoulder to 460 G&A.

Grinding that tiny amount off the base of your .450 Rigby FL die won't hurt it for future use, if you have a headspace gage for the .450 Rigby.
Obviously nicer to have a spare to do the shortening on, at base of die.





And for redeeming social value, the .450 Howell is very like the .450 G&A Short Magnum with sharper shoulder:



And the .450 Dakota: Thicker in neck wall and has wider shoulder and narrower base than the .450 Rigby.
The .450 Dakota is more like a 460 WBY with belt turned off and angulated shoulder.
At the time it was designed, before the .450 Rigby, .416 Rigby brass was rare as hen's teeth,
but 460 WBY brass was easy to come by: