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

I love me some big meplats. The 500 JRH 440’s might still be orbiting that I shot last month!

I just read an announcement that was on 4 January 2022. Wison Combat has purchased Lehigh.

Bill Wilson: First we will be increasing production, we have a fairly large backlog of orders that we need to fill. Then it will be signing up new customers and all the time working on new innovative products.

Bill Wilson: First we will be increasing production, we have a fairly large backlog of orders that we need to fill. Then it will be signing up new customers and all the time working on new innovative products.

Bill Wilson: The only significant change in the near term will be that we will no longer sell products directly to the consumer, rather we’ll direct them to our business partners like Brownells, Graf, Midway, Natchez and Wilson Combat for retail purchases. Eventually most operations will move to northeast Texas.

Well, if Hammer won't make that perfect 400-gr/.458-cal copper HP and FN combo, maybe the New Lehigh Defense under Wilson Combat will .

Some history related to the .458 WinMag:

Circa 1949:


Circa 1952:


Circa 1953:


Circa 1956:


And then by 1958 Fred N. Barnes was advertising this:

This is a 1994 publication of a sort of business guide for beginner gunsmiths.
I think that one of my 1987-1988 adventures with an apprentice gunsmith of the author
was thinly disguised as advice on what not to do to a customer's rifle:











The .450 BS barrel and action also came as a package deal.
Willis Fowler had barrels and actions just gathering dust at his shop.
He had Barnes Supreme reloading dies from RCBS and Barnes Ammo basic brass galore too !
Double lucky me !
Two birds with one stone and then some !

There is very little consistent information on the .450 Barnes Supreme.
Above may be as good as it gets.

From JJ Donnelly:





From the defunct domain of AEM, it was once a promising thing:











Despite the text speaking of a sharp shoulder, the table of dimensions and drawing sure do not show it.
7*10' was calculated using RCBS software on the tabulated measurement in AEM.

Measuring my fire-formed brass and plugging it into RCBS shows 23 degrees per side for shoulder, or 46-degree cone angle.

Stay tuned for that 1958 brochure from Frank N. Barnes,
and a picture of my fire-formed .450 BS shoulder.

The 1958 brochure:

Brass from 1987 still good,
I got 200 pieces of it from Willis H. Fowler,
a hundred for each rifle.

The .458 Winchester Magnum was a scapegoat for commercialism,
sacrificed for the sins of the many who lusted after wildcats. MEOW !
I am a sinner. My dalliance with Barnes Supreme demonstrates this purrrfectly.

The .458 Winchester Magnum has always been plumb righteous.
It never was a failure except for when human sinners failed it by faulty factory ammunition
or just plain old lies about it.

That 226 Quick Twist was well ahead of it's time! Man, that is some cool reading RC. Thank you!

Damn! man it'd be cool to hang at Sir Ron's place for a weekend looking over his pile of 400's and 458 rifles of one flavor or another, hell, i'll have butcher put us up 50lbs boneless country ribs, have Wife make us up a bucket of baked beans with vinegar bbq sauce and a bucket of coleslaw and 4 loaves of fresh rising wheat bread and rolls! you bring the beer! ; ]

I could get on his press and mash my .416 cal partitions down to .411" too!

That’s a damned deal! Holy smokes.

^^^^^^^^LOL, you bet^^^^^^^^^^

Kentucky is one of my favorite places to visit...

Sir Scotty,
I found that very interesting too, 120-gr/.22-cal at 2700 fps from a 1:5-1/4" twist barrel, using surplus 50BMG powder in a .30-06 neck-down.
If it were a true .226-cal with thick jacket, there would be a pencil of lead somewhere in the middle of it, nonbonded.
If so, sectional density would be 0.336 and that there bullet would be a Roy Weatherby style buffalo buster.

Sir Jerry,
I do have a humble colletion of mostly shop mule .458-cal rifles,
but would be embarrassed by your armory, I am sure.
A Square Table Picnic would be fun though,
after a Square Table Hunt one of these days.
Heck, we might even get the chickens involved for a Square Table Dance after the cookin' and feastin'.

Sir Dennis,
You are invited too, but personally, I think Alaska has more to offer.
The main difference is the scenery.
I always stop in at the KFC in White Horse, Yukon when I drive.
I was the only white guy in the place last time I was there. The natives love that greasy stuff.
They don't have to dip it in seal oil.
Hope this covid mess is over soon.
Seems to be turning back into the common cold like it was 45 years ago in that microbiology course.

Besides the Barnes .226 Quick Twist (gee whiz) that Barnes brochure from 1957 does give an interesting glimpse of
bullets and loads competing with the then new kid on the block .458 Winchester Magnum.
The .450 B-J Express was out a few years before that, and nomenclature became fluid,
with Barnes also calling it the ".458 B-J Express" and ".458 Winchester Improved."
Stated: "Rifles chambered for this cartridge will also shoot the new .458 Winchester factory cartridge."
And I bet they made some serviceable .450 BJE brass thataway.

Seems the .450 BS "Magnum" came after the .450 BJE "Short."
Maybe Barnes got wind of the .450 Watts Short that followed the .450 Watts Magnum ?
Whatever, undeniably everybody was riding on the coattails of James Watts.
Any other fiction would be stranger than that truth.

Many of the Barnes-Johnson Express carts based on the 2.5" H&H-belted case
were recommended for 3-5/8" (3.625") magazine length,
from .276-cal on up, due to the long bullets seated out, long COL.
Maybe Watts and Barnes-Johnson used the long-leade throat and Winchester copied it ?

The .416 Barnes Supreme seems to have been a post-1957 development.
You know, after James Watts handed some .416/.450 Watts Short dummies to JackO'Connor, years earlier,
who then gave them to Mr. Chatfield-Taylor.

Who was the Johnson of Barnes-Johnson ?
Surely not Harold Johnson who got the idea for the .450 Alaskan from, yep,
James Watts' .450/.348 WCF when Watts was building roads on the Kenai Peninsula.
So James Watts claimed.

Bullets and loads of .458-cal interest from that 1957 Barnes brochure:

.45-70 Gov't. bullets, all with 0.032" jacket, RNSN 300-, 400-, 500-gr.
.450 "Magnum" bullets, all with 0.049" jacket, RNSN 400-, 500-, 600-gr.

.458 Winchester Imp. and .458 B-J Express aka .450 B-J Express:
500-gr bullet, 78.0 gr IMR-4320, 2200 fps, 22" barrel

.450 Magnum or .450 Barnes Supreme:
500-gr bullet, 93.0 gr IMR-4320, 2400 fps, 24" barrel
600-gr bullet, 87.0 gr IMR-4320, 2200 fps, 24" barrel

On 15 Sept/09, I made loads for the CZ550 using the 500gr Hornady RN from six powders: 83 grs748, 78 grs H335, 80 grs AA 2460, 78 grs 4320, 78 grs Varget and 76 grs IMR4064.

The 78 grs 4320 gave 2165 fps (corrected to MV) with this note: "Not max." (Compared to Barnes data)

COL for all was 3.34".

The 78 grs of Varget gave 2158 fps (corrected to MV); 78 of H335 = 2204 and 80 of 2460 = 2206 (each corrected to MV). 83 grs of 748 was a big disappointment at 2076; 76grs of IMR4064 = 2108 fps corrected to MV - that was not max in MV but in compression. I did 79 grs H4895 later on Jan 7/10and got 2266 ( -7 *C) AA2230 wasn't available in this neck of the woods at the time.

The CZ had a 25" barrel. Just some history from my experience.

Bob
www.bigbores.ca

No judgment here Sir Ron, i would be a mere humble student listening to the stories, looking at the weapons, and maybe even reading over notes/documents/machine work of decades and decades of discovery and experimentation, all that uptake would surely split my wee pea brain!