Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Express Rifles and Big Bores Only Question for the .400 Whelen Crowd

Only you would name it the weak sister. Geeeeze….

LOL, if he charged me to draw down that pile of 400gr partitions he dang sure would be!

Weak sis my ass one of those guys said LOL

Thanks for the pics and for all the information. Really great stuff!

Glad to see the .416 Barnes size down ok. Certainly opens some options. Was just looking at some .416 Hammers and could be some good choices there. I think I am going to be glad I bought bullet resizing dies.

Anybody done any terminal tests with the 400 grain Hornady RN?

I have actually seen them pretty regular on GB. Not cheap but at least available.

That 416 400 Hammer drawn down might be a little demon.

https://hammerbullets.com/product/416-cal-400g-shock-hammer/

I gotta learn that operation. Never done it.



Uh, you ain’t cheap to be friends with either. I really need to turn my internet off sometimes when you all start spouting about all this cool stuff.

Brand new custom bespoke '74 Shiloh Sharps 50 2-1/2"...................................my pleasure Friend LOL!

I can see drawing down Partitions but I'm not sure about a solid copper bullet

Looks like RC got it to work.

You got me but good.

It’ll be interesting to see what he can do with them.

Some .400 Whelen Secretary Ammoguide business first:

whelenhunter has been busy since last I looked at the loads list.

Sir Jerry,

Check your load "view" here and tell me if I need to change anything:



The 400-gr Woodleigh RNSN is a mildly compressed load in unfired new brass, and just about exactly 100% LR/net fill with fire-formed brass.
I might ought to edit out the "C" next to the 68.0-gr powder charge if the velocity of 2255 fps was done with once-fired brass.
I might ought to leave it in and say the load is a fire-forming load, mildly compressed and probably over 50,000 psi,
since it gives such a pretty shoulder. LOL.

Sir Scotty my friend,
Thanks for ordering some 400-gr/.458-cal Shock Hammers,
the one-planet-one-bullet bullet.
You will not be sorry.

Those shallow, sinusoidal "PDR" drive bands on the Hammer bullets
would get their rounded peaks flattened, might spoil the magic.
Probably would be an easy squeeze, but better to wait for a Hammer .411 factory bullet.
Remember you can replicate .400 Whelen ballistics with the .458 WinMag and those 400-gr/.458-cal Shock Hammers,
and G1 BC might be 0.419 or thereabouts. LOL

Yes, a 1-ton arbor press will size 400-gr/.416-cal TSX to .411" diameter.
Use .412", .410", .409" dies and springs back to .411" to stay.
Not saying a 2-ton arbor press would not make it any easier.
Might get one of those one of these days.

So you loose 2 1/2 thousands in the dept of the grooves drawing down a .416 TSX to
411.

Will that be enough depth for the rifling to not be engraving the body of the bullet?

Sir John,

The diameter in the grooves of one of those Barnes TSX 400-gr/.416-cal bullets
that I sized down to .411":

0.395" +/- 0.001" after the sizing down, about same before sizing down, just now confirmed.
Gerard Shultz used to laugh about how much under bore diameter the TSX grooves were.
He said those grooves were cut with a bank of Dremel Tool cutting wheels
after the bullets were hammered out of a piece of copper wire.

Then the depth is enough to accommodate the squeeze.

Thanks.

I've seen how Barnes makes their TSXs they go through 6 form dies with punches. WWll bullet making machines. Then they are automatically go onto a spinning machine and metal cutting wheels one in and cut the grooves.

Sir Jerry,
Using BC for the Woodleigh 400-gr RNSN as 0.307 G1,
plug and chug in RCBS external ballistics calculator:

MV = 2315 fps and KE = 4760 ft-lbs if 18 YARD velocity was 2267 fps. HOLY COW.
Did you mean 18 feet or 6 yards ? Truly at 18 yards ?

You might have gotten one of those long-brass-pinches with brass stretch on firing (springs back if no bad-kaboom happens),
and got your pressure/velocity up even if not severe enough to cause problems.
I am especially strict on brass length since a teachable moment happened to me. I am self-taught on this one.

I once was tooling around on purpose with a cartridge very much like the .400 Whelen-Petrov
except that it had a chamber minimum length of 2.509" instead of 2.501",
and it had same neck-2 diameter (case mouth) but a neck-1 of 0.003" tighter at shoulder junction,
and it had 0.112" longer parallel-sided free-bore than the .400 Whelen-Petrov's 0.188" length.

On purpose, like a dumb adze, I was tooling around with firing brass cases that were all trimmed to 2.504" to 2.505"
A dumb adze is not the sharpest tool in the toolbox.
Let us say I successfully fired 3 loads of 400-gr .411 Woodleigh RNSN at a 100 yard target, with so-so accuracy,
then on the 4th shot velocity spiked a bit and the primer fell out of the case when the bolt was opened with no difficulty.
MV of that 4th shot was a bit over 2400 fps.

The average of all 4 shots was only 2398 fps MV, helped a lot by that 4th shot.
That 4th shot might have been a little longer in the brass than the others, like 2.505" instead of 2.504".
But maybe they were all stretch-pinching at the case mouths on firing.

Trimming all .400 Whelen-Petrov brass to 2.480" and letting it grow to no more than 2.490" is written in stone for me now.

From Elmer's GUN NOTES Vol. 1:



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