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A recap of great pictures to start page 47:





Sir Woods,
Yours is about the most outstanding bison shoot I have ever heard of, in all regards.
That is truly a most outstanding mount, foreleg chaps and all, so SCI occasionally shows good judgement in their awards.
The only thing that could warm the cockles of my heart anymore about your adventure
would be if you had used a SAAMI .458 WM and a 550-grain RNSN at 2100 fps MV.
Woodleigh recommends impact velocity maximum of 2200 fps with that bullet.
You were stunt shooting with your 460 WBY, but that is OK, I understand the impetuosity of your youth.
I have been guilty of a few Tarzan yodels and thumping of my chest too.

Little wonder that the side-neck-shot bullet was recovered,
and the sound and sight of the hit was like that of a lightning bolt from directly overhead.

The Delta herd in Alaska was started in 1928 with Yellowstone plains bison by Judge E. B. Collins, Mayor of Fairbanks, AK.
I hope your bull's kin are roaming about there now.
Hopefully some of the genetics made it over to Kodiak Island where the Alaska Natives have a herd too.

Another nontraditional "buffalo rifle":



Even the .45-70 Govt. Marlin Guide Gun will handily take buffalo, but the Lottites claimed the .458 WM was inadequate ?

Bubba has been at it again.
The balls are seated by using a .45-70 Govt. seater die with properly shaped seater plug, to center the ball bearing,
and pushing the bullet and balls up into the seater die with the usual short pusher rod from a LEE bullet sizer kit.
Die and seater plug are adjusted in the press for a precise BOL every time with one pull of the press to bottom out.













This encourages even greater desire for a Hammer Bullets custom .458-400gr hunting bullet
with a BC near 0.400.
Simple as this (another repeat for emphasis):



The custom 400-grainer could be up to 1.500" long, the sleeker the better, with a 3mm hollow point diameter.
Even though the unadulterated .458-402gr Shock Hammer with quarter-inch HP diameter is quite useful out to 300 yards,
I can't help thinking about how fast it will shed those 2600 fps from a .458 WM+.

A review of the Layne Simpson article in the September 2021 SHOOTING TIMES follows.

The article is grandiosely entitled .458 WINCHESTER MAGNUM -- THE COMPLETE STORY.
HA !!!
It comprises 3-1/2 pages of the page range 36 to 42, with 3-1/2 pages of advertising included in that range too.
No two consecutive pages are devoted to the .458 Winchester Magnum.
Not a single double-page spread to show respect for the magnificent war horse !

There are multiple inaccuracies in the first two sentences to quibble over.
The .450 Nitro Express 3-1/4" was not immaculately conceived and named "back in 1898."
The first one survived proof as a Rigby double rifle in November 1897
after years of development of brass cases and barrel steels, by John Rigby.
Many sets of barrels were destroyed in proof before the correct steel and contours were found.
The case that John Rigby loaded 70.0 grains of cordite into was not the "old .450 Black Powder Express" case.
It was internally a new and stronger case.
It was originally called the ".450 Special Rigby" and it took several years for the "Nitro Express" moniker to catch on
for the entire class of big game cartridges that followed John Rigby's lead.
True, W. Jackman Jeffery had a single barrel .400 S. Jeffery shooting a few months before the .450 S. Rigby,
but it was also several years before it came to be called the 450/400 Nitro Express 3".
I also think Jeffery developed his new and stronger brass from industrial espionage findings regarding John Rigby's "Special" developments.
At least the author recognizes the basic ballistics first proving adequate for anything worldwide,
but doesn't every Tom, Dick and Harry start his article similarly, if not so pompously inaccurately ?

The second paragraph quotes John Taylor's praise of the .450 Nitro Express 3-1/4".

The third paragraph beats the bush about interest in African safari by Americans and the Winchester M70 .375 H&H circa 1937.

The fourth paragraph:
"During the 1940s, Alaska school teacher James Watts began planning a lengthy safari in Rhodesia and decided to duplicate the performance of the .450 Nitro Express 3-1/4" by necking up the .375 H&H Magnum for .458-inch 480-grain bullets made by Kynoch and fireforming the case to straight taper with no shoulder. He called it the .450 Watts, and obtaining a rifle was as easy as switching barrels on a Winchester Model 70 in .375 H&H. Except for being 0.050 inch longer, the .450 Watts case is identical to the .458 Lott introduced about 30 years later."

I spewed my coffee when I read that paragraph, it is so comical.
The "complete story" deserves better.
To be continued.

Thanks for the history lesson,Riflecrank!

Yes!
Thanks, Sir Ron!

I could never see myself in the "SIR', Category as you are, Sir!

With all due Respect, you, as others are a definitive, cut above!

Thanks!!!

Those Hammers with the BB’s in the HP don’t look half bad. How do you think they will expand?

I have my doubts on the ball improving expansion. My guess would be that one would see less expansion to poor performance but in experimental work; one moves in steps. Ron found a way to improve BC. Step one.
One really need a pointed collapsing medium in that big cavity that would add to flight profile but collapse back to expose the hp on a rib shot. We can look to Hornady and others for the design shape. Bubba has to work with what he has.

Makes sense to me!

The Hammer bullets shed the petals rather quickly which leads me to believe that expansion will be fine

I need to get on this. RC is having all the fun here with this stuff. I need to get my butt into gear.

Glad to hear you enjoyed them DF, i'm ripping to find another buffalo hunt, going to be a bit different without Saint Bagwell.

Sirs,
Allow me to resume with comments on paragraph four of Layne Simpson's "Incomplete Story" of the .458 Win. Mag.

The fourth paragraph:
"During the 1940s, Alaska school teacher James Watts began planning a lengthy safari in Rhodesia and decided to duplicate the performance of the .450 Nitro Express 3-1/4" by necking up the .375 H&H Magnum for .458-inch 480-grain bullets made by Kynoch and fireforming the case to straight taper with no shoulder. He called it the .450 Watts, and obtaining a rifle was as easy as switching barrels on a Winchester Model 70 in .375 H&H. Except for being 0.050 inch longer, the .450 Watts case is identical to the .458 Lott introduced about 30 years later."

I read again the Cal Pappas biography of James Watts, to give proper context to the comic lines above.


James Watts was born July 11, 1913, in Mulvane, Kansas, son of a Methodist Minister, George, and his wife Rebecca.
His middle initial was "A." on a Boeing Engineer ID card circa 1945.
His middle initial was "H." on a 1952 copyright for the .450 Watts Rimmed, a .458/.348 WCF.
Nowhere in the book is this discrepancy addressed or clarified.

James started grade school in Oxford, Kansas in 1918.
He attended college in Kansas and had a bachelor's degree by 1936.
He taught at a Kansas high school, English and history, for one school year in 1936-1937.
He had a summer job in San Antonio, Texas in 1937 where he became acquainted with the infant discipline of seismology being used in the oil fields.
He went back to graduate school to study physics and geology from 1937 to 1938, but never got a master's degree.
In the fall of 1937 he ordered a .375 H&H M70 from Winchester and eventually received the 17th rifle of that chambering.

In the spring of 1938 he heard a church lady in Kansas giving a presentation about Alaska and he "got the bug" to go there.
She was the daughter of the mayor of Fairbanks, AK, pioneer Judge E. B. Collins, but had married and moved to Kansas.
By the summer of 1938, young James Watts had landed at Seward, AK and boated over to Valdez where he started a 4-week, nearly 400-mile hike to Fairbanks.
It was a solitary backpacking adventure and test of himself, carrying a 60-pound pack and his .375 H&H M70.
He was about 5'6" tall with his boots on, and a skookum explorer.

James worked through the winter, all over interior AK, with Fairbanks as base, and Judge Collins setting him up for all sorts of labor and skilled jobs,
from ditch digging to flying around for surveying and assaying mining claims.
In the summer of 1939 he was ready to hike another 4 weeks to Valdez from Fairbanks, along the course of the Richardson Highway.
He got charged by a grizzly boar along the way while he was wading a creek.
James got one shot off with his .375 H&H before the bear slapped the 7.5"-barreled Colt New Service .45 LC off his hip when the bear bowled him over.
Thus, in 1939, the .375 H&H and the .45 Long Colt had a baby, and it eventually grew into the .458 Winchester Magnum.

Returning to Seward by July of 1939, James Watts stayed there until December 1941, stevedoring, longshoring, and railroading.
He married wife Bea there on October 30, 1941, just over a month before Pearl Harbor. She was from Montana, where her family still ranched.
The couple were back in Kansas by January 1942. Bea got a job at Boeing. James enlisted but had asthma problems there in Kansas that got him medically discharged inside of 3 months.
So James went to work at Boeing in Wichita, Kansas too, initially as a tool and die inspector and then finally as an engineer in the function testing division,
sighting in the 50 BMG and 20mm Buford guns on the B-29 bombers being built by Boeing.
James and Bea left Boeing in May of 1944, tried Seward, Alaska for a few months, but the employment did not invite that time,
so onward to Montana from October 1944 to March 1945, to stay with Bea's parents while the couple looked for work.

James Watts went to NYC, NY in January 1945 and interviewed at the Standard Oil exploration division.
Standard Oil did not pan out but he stopped in at Griffin & Howe's NYC shop and had his first thought of an African safari for himself.
.303 British were the only rifles in stock at G&H's shop near the end of WWII, a disappointment for James the gunnutt.

The Watts returned to Boeing in early 1945, this time to Seattle, WA. But the A-bomb was dropped in August and massive layoffs from Boeing followed.
By September 1945, James was hired as a teacher, thanks to the GI Bill boom in education for returning military servicemen.
That trickled down (or up) to high school teacher employment too.
James and Bea settled in Yakima, WA, he as a teacher of history and coach of football, wrestling, and track, she as a secretary.

James was a winning football coach his first year. The captain of the HS team was Harvey B. Anderson, Jr.
Harvey Senior was a gunsmith-inventor-tinkerer and had an apartment to rent to James and Bea. They really hit it off.

By early 1946 Harvey, Sr. had re-chambered a .35 Remington take-off barrel to .35 Whelen Improved on a G-33 Mauser.
James Watts stocked that rifle himself, his first from scratch.
During the period 1945 to 1947 James Watts claimed to have written to Winchester twice, about necking up the .375 H&H to .458.
The first time he was rebuffed with a reply that the British had the big bore market sewn up and that nothing bigger than .375 H&H was need in NA.
The second time he did not get a reply.

In the summer of 1946, James and Bea and Bea's brother Edward went on a 400-mile hike/"vacation" in the Northwest Territory of Canada. It was a doozy.
He used the .35 Whelen Improved to feed the crew. They got back late for school and James had to sit out the rest of the school year, but resumed teaching at the Yakima, WA high school in fall 1947. They lived in the Anderson apartment again, adjacent to the gunsmith shop.
Watts began tinkering with his "idea" and by 1948 Anderson was on board by making the reamer.
By 1949 the first complete .450 Watts Magnum rifle was produced. Anderson installed a P. O. Ackley barrel on an opened-up FN Mauser.

It went like gangbusters for a while.
For Christmas vacation in 1949, James Watts visited Roy Weatherby in CA. Roy's biggest gun then was the .375 Weatherby Magnum.
1949-1950, Ralph Hammer wrote of the .450 Watts Magnum in "a national hunting magazine."
1950: Fred Barnes started making 400-, 500-, and 600-gr, heavy-jacketed (0.049" thickness) bullets in .458 caliber. Kynoch 480-grainers were too fragile.
Harvey B. Anderson, Sr. copyrighted the .450 Watts Magnum.
1950-1952, Fred Ness of the AMERICAN RIFLEMAN research lab got a .450 Watts Magnum and did an extensive writeup, and Jack O'Connor took one to Africa.
1951-1952, James Watts shortened the case to 2.5" and called it the .450 Watts Short.
1952-1954, Watts corresponded with Winchester and says he "gave them a release" so they could produce the .450 Watts Short as the .458 Winchester Magnum.
Winchester did not do it short to make it fit into a standard M98 !
They did it for ease of fitting it into an un-opened-up Pre-'64 M70 which is the same length action as used for the .30-06 !

Meanwhile, James and Bea Watts moved back to Seattle in spring 1950 where work was beginning on a "stratocruiser" that eventually led to the B-52 bomber.
Thank the Cold War for that uptick in employment.
James worked the night shift as a Boeing engineer and he taught at the University of Washington school of mines, daytime. All that for a year.
In spring of 1951 to December 1951, James returned to Seward, AK to work on highway and bridge construction from Seward to Anchorage.
January 1952 to "spring" 1952 James returned to his dual gig at Boeing and U. of WA.
In the spring of 1952, James and Bea drove to Alaska to stay.
He continued highway construction work until beginning a high school teaching job in the fall of 1952 in Seward.

FINALLY HE BECAME AN ALASKAN TEACHER LIKE LAYNE SIMPSON SAID IN HIS GROSS OVERSIMPLIFICATION.
James Watts did not dream up the .450 Watts Magnum to use Kynoch bullets in Rhodesia.
He hated Kynoch bullets in the .450 Watts Magnum.
He dreamed up a transcontinental African safari in 1958, after he and Bea recovered from the polio epidemic that hit Seward in 1956.
James was mildly afflicted, Bea had it pretty bad.

There is much more needed to complete the "Incomplete Story" of the .458 Winchester Magnum by Layne Simpson.
To be continued with his next commission and/or omissions.

Great info Sir Ron

Sir John,
Buy a donkey for your positive opinion on whether Bubba's Ballpoint Hammer Shock bullet will expand.
Though I do understand the concern of Sir Dennis, maybe the final refinement will be best.
I take a .460" diameter nitro card wad from Circle Fly and punch a 0.250" diameter wad out of its center,
drop the bead in, then push in the snug fitting little card, and seat the steel ball bearing atop the HP.
Same beautiful contour and BOL as the double steel ball.
The plastic bead is easily crushed when the steel ball rams home, should encourage expansion.
Seating a second steel ball after the first one may not be as securely gripping on the exposed ball. Sloppy seconds !
Plus, two steel balls are too heavy. Might as well use a 450-gr TSX !



Just another bullet for the 400-grainer shootoff, to see what happens to 400-grainer velocity when the bullet weight is increased by 23 grains,
all with same powder charge: 80 grains of AA-2230.

The Maytag Repair Man moonlighting at Winchester:

Ron
Since son has been an Airsoft crank for some years now and I’ve got a couple of dents in my head from opposing forces, I can tell you all Airsoft bb’s are not equal. 15 gram to 45 grams with same diameter and the 45’s at 450 FPS will darned sure draw blood and leave a heck of a welt. I’ll spare you the pictures. So using the 15’s or 25’s and drilling a hole in them to provide a point of collapse would be my suggestion. Trapped in that hole they won’t collapse easily. Getting the whole BC improved shape to collapse inward enough and soon enough will be the key to getting that open point to do its work.
Kudos for the whole effort and best regards.

Sir Dennis,
Buy a donkey for the suggestion, but no drilling of Air Soft beads for me just yet.
Initial R&D with the .458-423gr Ball Point Shock Hammer will proceed.
I will shoot some 402-gr Shock Hammers alongside the 423-gr Nitro Bubba just for accuracy and velocity check, using the 80-gr charge of AA-2230.
Both will have 0.380" seating depth.
The Buffalo Bore 400-gr TSX with 76 grains of "maybe-same" powder and short COL will make for an interesting comparison.

And that reminds me of the "Incomplete Story" of the .458 Winchester Magnum.
Layne Simpson did not mention the throat anywhere in his 3-1/2 page "Incomplete Story."
How complete is that ?
The only way the .450 Watts Magnum could have approached its claimed performance would be by throat, plus a generous helping of exaggeration or inaccurate instrumentation.
The only way that the .458 Winchester Magnum can actually beat the .458 Lott at same or lesser COL is by throat, no exaggeration required, just the truth.
No mention of the short, tight throat of the .458 Lott.
He also does not mention the COL problems of the .458 Lott, COL often exceeding 3.600" SAAMI restriction.
Yet he insists on limiting the .458 WM to 3.340" COL and an effective case length of 1.875" with a bullet seated to 0.625" depth for his conniving of load comparisons.
He does not mention the SAAMI Maximum Average Pressure, higher for the .458 Lott than the .458 WM.
It is journalistic malpractice.

My first buffalo was a water buffalo, a killer cow:



Bubalis bubalis mad cow that was killing sheep on a Western Kentucky farm. She had to be culled.
When farmer sold the dominant bull, the old cow went mad.
Farmer called me and I went out to the farm with a Mk V Deluxe .460 Wby and 500-gr RNSN at supposed 2700 fps, a factory load.
My gunbearer carried the featherweight Pre-'64 M70 .375 H&H that was required for the second shot with a 300-grain Swift A-Frame bullet at about 2500 fps.

A shot to middle of chest at 50 yards on the running cow just made her come to a standstill, stood there bleeding from the nose.
A shot to the neck with the .375 H&H dropped her.
The .375 H&H through neck exited.
The .460 Wby in the chest did not.
As my gunbearer and I hurriedly skinned the mad cow, we could not find anything of the 500-gr RNSN in the mess inside the mad cow's chest.
She did not kill anymore livestock at the farm.

I can now imagine how a properly loaded .458 Winchester Magnum might be a better buffalo rifle than a .460 Wby for several reasons.
It would also be perfect for plains game, like this blue wildebeest taken at 150 yards with the same .375 H&H.
The handloaded 300-gr Barnes X-Bullet at 2530 fps MV was a one-shot killer on my first African game, the poor man's buffalo:



A 400-gr to 450-gr TSX from a .458 WM would be perfect for that too.
Velocities of 2400 fps to 2600 fps would do fine out to 300 yards, whatever the BC.
If not for Lottite lies in my days of gullibility I could have used a .458 Winchester Magnum.

Livin’ in the country and being known as a guy who will help has its advantages.
Great story Ron.

Get on it man, it's a blast! ; ]