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

When I tried to PM you, it said you were over your PM limit...who knows.

Dangit man, what a deal that would have been, plus, you would have had to go buy an extra deep freezer ; ]

Nice ! Buy a donkey for that, Sir Dennis.

I went to Nebraska once and brought home the meat of a 3-1/2 y.o. bull in 6 coolers about 5-feet long.
That was done with a 404 Jeffery and a 380-gr North Fork SP at just over 2500 fps.
Kansas would be a little closer for me.

Your tale of the missed opportunity at 2 bison bulls is a woeful one. Condolences.
I once heard of a local farmer here who thought he could stock a try at a game farm with bison surplus from Land Between the Lakes herd in KY.
It did not work out and he allowed me to take a 5-1/2 y.o. bull for just a dollar per pound of dead weight on the truck scales.
That was with a .510/460 Wby Improved Jenkins and Berry aka .510 JAB aka .500 A2 with a slightly different shoulder and throat.
570-grainers at about 2400 fps MV.

I have changed my wicked ways and must take the next bison with a .458 WM or .458 WM+.

BTW,
Here is a way to index the bullets from a 4-cavity mould, like Sir Jerry does.
Saint Bagwell surely did it too, for barrel-sight groups on the 500-yard gong that most humans could not do with a scope.
I have noted the marks all the same on some lots of bullets, as with one mark for a single cavity,
but those could have been sorted from 4 different lots from a 4-cavity mould:



Seems anyone going for ultimate accuracy with .458-caliber cast bullets at long range indexes the bullets,
some even figure which side of their brass case is thinner and index the brass case and the bullet to 12 O'clock in chamber of the rifle.
Above mould looks like an LBT .458/ 300-gr WFNGC eh ? Not supposed to be an accuracy mould but someone has made it into one.

I thought about what it would take to skin and butcher out a Bull in that timber and let up on the trigger pressure. Without a tractor or two horse hitch to roll them over, I would think it impossible. Could not have gotten a tractor to where they were. I guess with chain, come-a-long anything is possible with a few stout buddies but...
They were in full winter fur and really beautiful.

Man, that would have been a chit-ton of cold, long work with two quick pulls of a trigger, but ho lee damn the rewards of eating and sharing the meat with 'GOOD" folk, skull mounts, and maybe a nice rug or two for Wife.

Yes indeed, a frontend loader standing by with chains to hoist nearly a ton of bison is a blessing, at a game farm.

Lookee here:

http://www.skinnersights.com/winchester_26.html



NOTE: If you have a Winchester Mod. 70 chambered for 458 Win Mag or 375 H&H please email me for special hole spacing. (.330" instead of standard .860")

^^^^^^^^^^LOL^^^^^^^^^Batter Up!

Ron, nice find on the Skinner peep! Would this require a higher front sight, or can it line up with the stock rear?

Hopefully Mr. Skinner did his homework and has made it work with the factory front sight.

Too bad one must choose between the NEAR Picatinny and the Skinner peep, one or the other.



The .458 WCF would have a throat like the SAAMI .458 Winchester Magnum of course.
The COL shown above with the 500-gr Hornady InterLock is 2.945".
Brass length is 2.125".

Is there a lever action that can handle a 3 inch COL ?
Gross case capacity of this .458 WCF (formed from .50 Alaskan brass by Starline, run into an RCBS .45-75 WCF FL die with Imperial Sizing Wax): Will pull the bullet and see.

Whooooaaa, now that 458 WCF is pretty danged cool looking!

How similiar is this to the .450 Alaskan besides the Win Mag throat?

Strangely enough, the one with the .45-75 shoulder and longer neck is little more than 1 grain smaller capacity, 89.9 vs. 91.1 gr, 1.2 gr difference.







Actual measure was 88.6 grains water gross for the dummy with the .45-75 shoulder.
The straight-taper/no-shoulder .458 dummy was just for fun.

Interesting

Well, is 2.85" the maximum COL that will work through the 1886 and M71 Winchesters and Brownings ?

About 72hr-no-campfire for me.

OK, until corrected by sumbuddy who know, I call it ~2.85" for the .45-90 maximum COL in an 1886 or M71.
Throat the well-known .450 Alaskan like a .458 WM and it will become the .450 A+ in an 1886 or M71.
The specs on Harold Johnson's .450 Alaskan seem to be well known and written in stone.
Better get to work with some dummies to see what I can see.
The .458 WM+ bolt action might have a sister in the .450 A+ lever action.
I would not call her the weak sister though ...
Rifles are female, cartridges are male.

Great Grandpa:







Grandpa:

The James H. Watts copyright of 1952 for the ".450 Watts Rimmed" appears under the heading
COPYRIGHT OF THE .450 ALASKAN CARTRIDGE
on page 73 of this book by Cal Pappas:





That account leads one to believe that Watts was in Washington state during 1950 to 1951,
teaching at a University in Seattle and having Harvey Anderson in Yakima, WA build his .450 Watts Rimmed
1886 and M71 rifles for him.
He went back to Alaska and built bridges on the Seward highway and as far west on the Kenai Peninsula as Cooper Landing,
where Watts showed his .450 Watts Rimmed to Harold Johnson in 1951.
Johnson adopted his version of it as the .450 Alaskan, and the rest is history, fascinating.
First .450 Watts Magnum on an FN Mauser in 1949, copyrighted in 1950 by gunsmith Harvey Anderson.
First .450 Watts Rimmed on a re-bored (by P.O. Ackley) .40-65 Winchester 1886 that had belonged to Mrs. Watts Grandfather,
chambered by Harvey Anderson,
second one done by a re-barrel of a new M71 .348 WCF, all circa 1950 to 1951, copyrighted in 1952 by James H. Watts,
probably after Harold Johnson started making them as the .450 Alaskan in 1952.

James Watts is the Rodney Dangerfield of the .450 Bore.
His pets in the H&H belted case included brass lengths of 2.00, 2.25, 2.50, and 2.85 inches.
Winchester liked the 2.5" case best.
James Watts killed a grizzly charging him in the middle of Black Rapids Creek,
with one shot from a .375 H&H M70 in 1938.
But the bear came on and smacked Watts' gunbelt off his waist with a paw as it ran over him.
That was the inspiration for the .450 Watts Magnum finally realized post WWII in 1949.
It occurred on a solo 400-mile walk from the Fairbanks area to Valdez.
I once drove it with the inlaws in the back seat of my SUV.
That was a test of endurance also.

Brother of the .458 WM:



More distant relative, was Winchester's answer to not being able to fit the .45-70 Govt. COL into the M1876:





Algorithmically, the smartly named .45-75 WCF is only about 1 grain of water bigger than the .45-70 Govt.
79.2 gr H2O versus 78.0 gr H2O, gross case capacity.

Let me go grab my calipers and a 348 Win and 50-110 WCF, be right back.

348 Win in M-71, COL 2.800" with 250gr Barnes.

50-110 WCF in Turnbull Browning '86, 2.985" with 600gr cast bullet from Brooks mould, .585" of bullet out of the case, runs great.

Ron, thanks for the Watts history. Man, that .46 WCF is a serious cartridge!

Since you are proposing making the .450 Alaskan better by giving it a Win Mag throat, couldn't we also improve it by lessening the case body taper to about 0.007" per inch like modern cases? This should yield about 2 more grains of powder--perhaps not worth it--while decreasing bolt thrust. I can't find a drawing of .450-348 Ackley Improved, so this may have already been done.