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

You're most welcome Sir Ron, it remains my pleasure, 10-roger on Ross and Otto, noted, Thank You.

Bill Bagwell's Smoke Over Africa, Chapter 1: Starts with historical discussion of BPCR bison hunters and show and tell of ammo and rifle.





















Rifle: The Shiloh Sharps 45-70 that fired 27,000 rounds over a 30 year period of study and mastery before this hunt.
Cartridges: .45-70 loaded with BP and the 480-gr PH grease-groove bullet that can also be used in lever actions,
and a heavier paper-patched bullet looking like the 514-grainer that Sir Jerry got the mould for from Sir Bill Bagwell.
Both bullets and both hunters are killer dillers.

Impala Chs. 1-2:

















Rifle: Shiloh Sharps 45-70
Bullet: 480-gr PH
Range: 140 yards, pass-through, ran 70 yards and died.

Warthog (SMOKE OVER AFRICA Ch. 2 continued):





















45-70 Shiloh Sharps BPCR, 480-gr PH bullet, 202 yards, pass through, ran and required finisher,

SMOKE OVER AFRICA, end of Chapter 2: Contemplating pork chops ? Yummy.

Bill Bagwell's SMOKE OVER AFRICA, Ch. 3 of snapshots from the video.

Zebra:

Zebra (continued)













45-70 Shiloh Sharps BPCR with 480-gr PH
161 yards, flattened zebra, DRT,
bullet deflected from boiler room hit into spine.
This is the only time Bill Bagwell has seen this bullet deflect from straight-line on a critter.
I am guessing the bullet hit the humerus of right shoulder (stoutest bone in the zebra) at such an angle as to cause this mischief.
Nevertheless it was an instant kill and a spectacular bullet failure of sorts, and a spectacular success nonetheless.
Blank happens.
I have heard tell of a monolithic brass solid from a .416-caliber rifle (400-grainer) turning a 90* angle promptly on entering the trunk of an elephant.

Chapter 4 of snapshots of Bill Bagwell's SMOKE OVER AFRICA video.

Blesbuck and more:





















45-70 Shiloh Sharps BPCR with paper-patched bullet of about 514 grains, my guess, not stated in the video.
160 yards, pass through, DRT.
In the video and snapshot one can see a burst of dirt/dust into the air, from impact of bullet with ground, well behind the blesbuck.

Field cleaning technique for BPCR as recommended by Bill Bagwell,
conclusion of Ch. 4 of snapshots from the video SMOKE OVER AFRICA:



1. Unload rifle, open breech and blow 4 or 5 breaths into muzzle of rifle and 3 or 4 more breaths into breech end of rifle.
Bill demonstrates this directly from his lips to his rifle, almost like he is kissing it on both ends. No jokes about that please.
(Edit: The censor function catches nasty slang, on the site.)
A blow tube might be handy except for having to carry it around in the field.

2. Dry cotton patch about 1.5" to 1.75" square: Push one dry patch down the bore from breech end using your wiping stick.
The BP fouling wetted by moisture from your breath clings to dry patch and is mostly removed by one patch.



3. Use a second patch that has been wetted by saliva from your mouth. Stick patch in your mouth and hope you are not too dry to get some spit flowing.
The wet patch is pushed through with wiping stick and removes all the fouling you need to get out.

4. The third patch is dry, and will feel a little grabby going down the bore from breech end on wiping stick.

5. The fourth patch is soaked with olive oil from a tiny plastic bottle in your pocket or field cleaning kit.
Push it from breech to muzzle with wiping stick.
This oils the bore, prevents any trace of hygroscopic BP fouling from attracting water vapor out of the air.
The not-too-clean barrel will shoot to desired precision with next shot.
Grease-groove bullets might be lubed anyway with olive-oil and beeswax 50:50 mix.
Paper-patch bullets clean the bore with each shot.

This field cleaning is good for hunting use after several shots, or if putting the rifle away for a week or two.
Do a more thorough cleaning and lubrication for longer term storage of the rifle.
Then you will need to get it properly fouled to shoot straight.
That is how I remember it from watching the video,
Hope I got it right: 4 patches, some spit, some olive oil, and a wiping stick.

The dirty little non-secret about Bagwelling with a BPCR: BP fouling with the grease-groove bullets must be controlled with a wiping stick.
Is there a fold-up version on shock-cord to fit in pants pocket ?
The one for the 26"-barreled CVA Paramount .45-cal muzzleloader might be a bit short for a 28" to 30" Sharps.
But, hey, one extra segment could be spliced in from a second CVA field ramrod.
Come to think of it, the Lyman 457121 Whitworth Parker Hale bullet might be used in the CVA Paramount muzzleloader too, with real BP instead of Blackhorn 209.
You will find the Lyman mould for Sir Bill Bagwell's "All Father" bullet in the Lyman listings under muzzleloader moulds.
That takes us back to 1000-yard muzzleloader shooting when it first began in the 1850's with good ol' Mr. Whitworth's engineering
of a proper recipe for bullet caliber, weight, and powder charge.
About 480 grains of .45-caliber lead at about 1300 fps was good then, and it is still Bagwelling nearly 170 years later.



Above is a PH loaded into .45-2.6" Starline brass, which is intermediate to the .45-70 and .45-110 that Bagwell so well.
The cartridge I show above is for the .45-70 Elko Magnum, which is the same as a .45-100-2.6" Sharps Straight with a .458 Winchester Magnum throat.
I called it the .45-2.6" Sharps Winchester-Throated until I found out I had re-invented the wheel.
It is only 2 grains of gross water bigger than the .458 Winchester Magnum 2.5".
The .458 WM can be loaded with same loads as the .45-70 Elko Magnum, just play with the COL.
If they are both loaded to same COL, the .458 WM 2.5" will have about 2 grains more net water capacity than the .45-2.6"-based cartridge.

Here is the Lyman 457121 mould for the PH bullet:



So, the .45-70 Elko Magnum and .458 WM are basically the same.
They are throated the same.
They have near identical case capacities.
They can both be chambered in .458"-grooved barrels.
The SAAMI .458 Winchester Magnum throat is ideal for paper-patched bullets, Paul Matthews told us so.
I have experimented a bit with this, enough to know that BP works best with PP bullets. I have done it in the .45-70 Elko Magnum.
Will do it in the .458 WM too.
A grease-groove bullet with BP may also be used to Bagwell with the .458 WM and .458 WM+.
But I sure do like Powder-coat painted, gas-checked bullets loaded with Blackhorn 209 for imitating the loads Selous slew so well with.
They even make more smoke and foul more than most "smokeless" powders.
I will call that Selousing, which is a lot like Bagwelling.
Yes, I quest after Bagwelling with BP as well as Selousing with Blackhorn 209 in the .458 WM and .458 WM+.

Here is my first bullet for Selousing: Big Blue







Big Blue bullets are perfect at 3.340" COL as shown above.
Weight in my alloy is 579 grains as shown above, after one coat of Eastwood Light Ford Blue PC paint and sized to 0.461" as the gas check is applied.

Sub-MOA at 200 yards for 3 shots, despite the accumulation of Blackhorn 209 fouling.
Plus-MOA at 100 yards for 3 shots, blame me for that.
0.44 MOA at 50 yards for 3 shots.
I like that load with Big Blue Bullet the 579-grainer:
3.340" COL
41.5 grains of Blackhorn 209
0.4" tall foam wad of half-inch diameter
F215 primer
R-P case
Adequate for Selousing with the SAAMI .458 WM.

First was THE MISSION of .458 Winchester Magnum study, so enlightening.
Then came THE CRUSADE FOR TRUTH well won and undeniably establishing that the .458 Lott eats the dust of the .458 Winchester Magnum.
Now comes THE QUEST TO BAGWELL AND TO SELOUS with the .458 Winchester Magnum.
More to come. Little Blue and Big Blue:

Sir Ron, you've got it going on, soon as I get through driving my tractor from farm to farm around here breaking pond ice for folks cattle and horses the weather will obviously be clear, at that time i'll fl size and trim the WW cases I've dedicated to the 458 Win Mag +, tumble em up nice and clean, load the 450gr TSX and 500gr TBSS, get in a little range work, save the rest for another 'maybe' African Safari this fall, if I find a 40 inch Buffalo up on the Limpopo he'll get to meet that rifle.

For "The Crusade" of course.

Sir Jerry,

Hopefully nobody dying around there with power failures and cold like in Texas, pradoxical in many ways as that may be.
Good work watering the herds. Folks gotta eat eventually.

Weathered in here too, with 6 to 12 inches of snow hereabouts and temperatures in the single digits F.
This allows a time of preparation for future (and always) work on 3 fronts.
THE MISSION: Any and all information related to the .458 WM history and handloading technology.
THE CRUSADE: Full power .458 WM and .458 WM+ handload proving in the hunting fields.
THE QUEST: To Bagwell and to Selous with the .458 Winchester Magnum.

Selous was a forward looking chap who survived the muzzle-loading, huge, ball-tossing bore rifles,
gushed over the BPCR and PP .461 Gibbs No. 1 and No. 2 for their comfort and efficiency with light express bullets and the heavies,
and he even worked his way through .450 NE ballistics, the 425 WR, and even 6.5mm.
That malformed 425 WR was the first "short magnum" ancestor of the .458 WM.
It was able to accomplish what it did largely through long-leade throating, probably an influence on Winchester's engineering of the .458 WM.
Selousing with a 400-grainer at about 2150 fps is quite fitting, with a smokeless "'Light Nitro" .458 WM, scopes permitted too, with Little Blue Bullet.











That charge of AA-2495 (72.0 grains) is about 101% LR/net fill, and perfect with no drop tube needed.
It is a bulky and slow powder with very low pressure and very complete burning at low pressure.
A "benchrest" sort of powder great for cast bullet loads or moderate velocity jacketed loads with no filler.

Speaking of those Winchester engineers, their work in designing the .458 WM was plumb supernatural.

Here is a great bullet that should Bagwell&Selous well in a .458 WM.
At .461" diameter sizing for best accuracy in .458" to 459" groove diameter barrels (THAT HAVE A SAAMI .458 WM THROAT !)
3.385" is the longest COL it can be loaded to in the .458 WM.
Longer than that jams into throat.
Maybe throat is the more important factor for the bullet sizing than a mere 0.001" difference in groove diameter.
For whatever reason or both reasons, .461" works very well in the .458 WM with cast bullets.

In a 23"-barreled .458 WM (McGowen .458"-grooved) at 3.385" COL,
a starting load of 65.0 grains of AA-2230 with no filler gave 1943 fps 5-yard velocity and good accuracy.





So, in Linotype and with PC paint and a gas check added it would be right near 500 grains.
Linotype is maybe too brittle to Bagwell&Selous well.
In 92-5-2-1 "hardball with arsenic" alloy it is 525 grains, harder, heavier, and less brittle than Linotype.
Probably would be about 530 grains in clip-on WW alloy which is softer and only slightly heavier than 92-5-2-1 alloy.
The clip-on wheel weights can be heat-treated harder.
92-5-2-1 alloy is my substitute for clip-on wheel weights.
92-5-2-1 alloy casts a larger diameter, less than 1% lighter, and harder without any heat treating other than water dropping.
Any hardness lost by tempering in the PC-painting process (375 to 400 *F for 20 to 30 minutes) is regained by aging for 4 weeks.

Where is Global Warming when you need it ?
I cast bullets outdoors in back yard and have been weathered out of that too !
Next up is a new thing for me, one of the N.O.E. Bullet Moulds offerings for a slick-sided "HTC" bullet.
I am hoping the PCP and GC on this slick will work well with smokeless, like paper patch and black powder, like peas and carrots.
I believe others have done well in the .458 WM with N.O.E. HTC bullets using powder-coat paint,
and they even went on to post youtube videos of it: fortune cookie 45lc

The .458 WM COL for the HTC459-600 will likely be inside of the SAAMI COL limit of 3.340":



In hard alloy and PC-painted it will be sized to .461" as gas check applied.
Weight should be close to 600-grains without hollow-pointing, using the FN pin.
Using deepest of 3 depths of HP, it could be reduced to about 570-grans.







There is no exact drawing for this mould at N.O.E., but dimensions can be pieced together from 3 other drawings of HTC459-600 moulds:







Seated deep, to the only crimp groove, over about a 1-1/4" tall column of Trail Boss, might make a subsonic load requiring no fillers.

Sir Spruce,

Take note of a reduced load using Unique with 500-grainer, should do well with your 485-grainer.
Here is a snapshot of a fortune cookie 45lc youtube video
with my comments "Painted" upon it, taken from the words of FC45LC:



That pointy bullet is an N.O.E. slick/HTC 500-grainer that has been PC-painted.


In another video, FC45LC fired a grease-grooved cast 500-ish-grain bullet in a SAAMI .458 WM.
5 shots were grease-lubed naked lead and sized to 0.458" and key-holed into a turkey-choke shotgun pattern at 50 yards.
5 shots were PC-painted plus grease-lubed and sized to same 0.458" yet formed a 5-shot group slightly bigger than one inch at 50 yards.
Powder charge was same, about 50 grains of AA-2200, no filler, IIRC, and chrono velocities circa 1700 fps for both groups.
Short-COL seating was same for both.

I bet if fortune cookie 45LC had sized all the bullets to 0.461", both batches would have done better.

They say that cast bullets with longer ogives are less accurate than those with shorter noses.
Here is another mould from Accurate Molds, another substitute for the 400-gr TSX denied to the public when Remington owned Barnes:















The 40-65 WCF mould was made sometime after 1887 and still makes good bullets.