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

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 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.

What jwp475 aka Sir John said.
Knights of the Square Table are champions of the .458 Winchester Magnum.
Saint is for those Knights gone on to the happy Hunting Ground.
Lady is just for good manners, not all is tongue in cheek.

BTW, Sir John,
Not saying smokeless won't work with paper patched bullets.
It is just a different kettle of fish regarding bullet diameters and whether the bullets are
heavy-for-caliber and soft versus light-for-caliber and hard,
and other variations to boot,
including jacketed versus cast lead, and BP versus smokeless.

I do have an article by Ross Seyfried filed away, pertinent to paper patch and smokeless loads:
"Paper Patched Bullets" HANDLOADER 220 Dec-Jan 2003, pp. 58-65.

"Modern rifles are often quite happy to use patched bullets.
Once again, where it might be difficult to get reasonable accuracy
from a .30-06 with bare lead bullets and velocity over 2000 fps,
it can be very easy to approach the magical inch groups with paper patches.
Further, while I have not pushed the system as far,
others have achieved reasonable accuracy out of 'magnums' with velocity over 3,000 fps.
I had a stock Ruger No. 1 .458 Winchester Magnum that was absolutely in love with patched bullets.
Inch groups were the norm at 2,100 to 2,200 fps, even with pure lead bullets.

"One more bizarre use of paper patches, in conjunction with 'modern rifles'
is making undersize jacketed bullets fit the rifle.
I have successfully fitted .458-inch bullets to .470 Nitro rifles ..."

Then forget the fire-forming mumbo-jumbo. 5 loads from 60.0 to 68.0 grains with 68.0 grains being a full case, non-compressed load, noted as maximum.
The velocities are ballpark anyway for anyone with a different rifle, and are not much different from fire-forming to formed-case firing,
in the .400 Whelen-Petrov case, another weak pun intended.

If anything, that would be a safety margin with the use of fire-formed brass for assembling the real-deal, hunting ammo.
I SWAG your 68-grain load is less than 60,000 psi.

Looks like the slower burning, heavier-charged, more compact CFE-223 ball powder
gives the faster burning, lighter-charged, bulkier H4895 a run for the money.

Which of the two powders is more temperature independent is a possible bonus for H4895.

BTW my "proof-of-goof" load was with compressed H4895, 67.0 grains,
only about 107% LR/net fill compressed without drop tube use,
in that cartridge so similar to the .400 Whelen-Petrov.
DON"T TRY THAT AT HOME WITHOUT ADULT SUPERVISION.

Will report back here when I get the CFE-223 loads posted at ammoguide.com.

Man, that 400 of Elmers is a helluva nice one. Holy smokes.

Gunner the bullets you listed indeed will work fine. I was specifically talking about the mono's or mostly brass bullets being too long. This is the 300 TSX, 400 Woodleigh and 400 North Fork CPS. The NF is noticeably longer, and I think a 400 gr mono spitzer is going to be even longer still


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