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

Sir Goober,
You have earned a seat at the Square Table for that.

I am having internet connectivity problems, got a service call coming tomorrow.
I got temporarily reconnected seems to die after 15 minutes. Will see how long it lasts,
hopefully long enough to post a review the Colt Sauer Grand African .458 WinMag.
Lots more great stuff here by the other Knights of the Square Table for us to ponder too ...

'Puter modem died. Trying iphone now.

Nabbed from the internet, especially good at

https://coltsauer.com/

I like that one Sir Ron!
(J. P. Sauer)

HS 58

From Sir Ron’s sublime - the Grand African - to a ridiculous non sequitur, my current project - the Ruger Hawkeye African 458 WM working DGR. It’s a Ruger Hawkeye African rebarreled with a used Ruger #1 458 WM barrel. The plan is to carry this rifle as part of a 2 gun battery in Zim this summer.

Current status, with pics below, was to get the rifle to operational DGR status. That is flawless feeding and ejection with modern FP monolithic solids and accurate out to DG ranges. So, it shoots accurately with both open irons and rear peep sights out to 25 yds so far, feeds and ejects reliably, and handles well in the Rimrock/Pacific Research stock I carried over from when this rifle was a 404-375 Ruger.

The exterior appearance - the ridiculous part - is not pretty, but businesslike with past use in its prior life obvious. When I get back I’ll have the barreled action properly polished and reblued. Next task is to develop loads with the 500 gn CEB BBW #13 solids, aiming for 2150-2200 fps MV. Given the longer mag box of the Hawkeye, AA-2230 should get me there. Pushing the range out to 50 and 100 yds should complete the testing.

Sir Tony,
Here are some more that were undo-able until I got a new 'puter modem and could shrink them to gallery-capable size here.
First, across the thigh of a nice lady who did her hubby a favor on the AfricaHunting.com forum:







Some more from www.coltsauer.com:

Some years ago I came across this SCI rifle somewhere on the web:









Nostalgia. Before the time of the Lottite quislings.
Sure would have been easy to convert the Grand African to a .458 WM+.
If it had a .458 Lott SAAMI chamber it would not be Grand anymore.

Sir Khulu,

I applaud your project with the Hawkeye-No.-1-Hybrid rifle,
not to mention the other project of yours in converting a Ruger M77 "Mark I" into a "Mark II" CRF .458 WinMag, WOW !!
That will be a remarkable feat for us to try to copy.







You will have no problems reaching your goals with the Ruger No. 1 barrel on the Hawkeye.
That Ruger No. 1 barrel will be stiffly accurate !
Sir Bob and I have lots of Ruger No. 1 .458 WM+ load data that might save you some powder and bullets.

My rediscovery of the .458 WinMag Wondergun started with something similar,
a CZ 550 Magnum barrel fitted to a Pre-'64 M70 .30-06 action from 1950.
The CZ 550 Magnum barrel is whippy by comparison to your barrel.
However, accuracy can be tuned into even a whippy barrel.
This will be a good chance to show an accuracy node illustration for a .458 rifle ...



... not to mention the pressure ring in diameter changes bouncing back and forth along the barrel from breech to muzzle at +18,000 fps,
whatever the speed of sound is in the barrel steel !

Accuracy node illustration:



















The three-shot St.dev. for the 2250 fps load was 6 fps.
For the 2342 fps load the St.dev. for three shots was 5 fps.
Not statistically significant, OK, but hints that mean velocity level is important for the sweet spot,
more so than the standard deviation of whatever higher or lower velocity.
Every record-keeping, velocity-checking handloader looking for best accuracy in a particular rifle has noted that fact.
For the rest it is just a happy accident, we hope.

Good information, Sir Ron. I’ll take you up on the load data. I’ve found that powder data for the Barnes Banded Solid produces extremely similar MVs with the equivalent weight CEB BBW#13. That finding was reproducible with the 570 grain 0.509” in the 500 NE 3” with different powders, within the same burn rate range. I’ll have to look at my data for the 404s to remind me if that was the case in those cartridges as well.

Experienced good news/bad news today. USPS dropped off the Win M-70 Classic Gene Simillion built for me in 460 G&A. The quality is exactly what I expected. I’ll post some pictures and details in a few weeks. The bad news is that the mail handlers had cracked the stock clean in 2 at the wrist. Curses!!!

As soon as I let Gene know he immediately said - send it back and he’ll replace the stock and bed it again. Still have high hopes the G&A will make it to Zim, but based on the Hawkeye’s performance so far, I’m leaning to using each rifle for each tuskless. Shows the value of always having a plan B because nature tends to be perverse.

Sir Khulu,
Condolences on the broken stock. $#it happens.
I had some early CZ 550 Magnum "Safari Classic" rifles from circa 2006.



I shot them a few times, just test fired, then
I dutifully sent them to a wonderful gunsmith for crossbolts, pillars and glass bedding that the factory neglected.
He was moving from a shop in Knoxville, TN to Murfreesboro, TN at same time he got the job done.
He drove them in the back of an SUV to Nashville, TN where I met him for the pickup.
The .404 Jeffery emerged from the transport with a broken stock, the .505 Gibbs was fine.
Bad grain structure in the Jeffery's wood is all I can figger:



CZ-USA replaced the stock free of charge. I got a "Kevlar" synthetic as they called it back then.
They renamed it the "Aramid" after the Kevlar folks wanted royalties on the name, I guess.
Bell & Carlson has been making them all along for the CZ 550 Magnum,
and subsequently selling them for about 2/3 the price that CZ was getting.
Those broken pretty stocks probably hastened the demise of the CZ 550 Magnum, bottom line thing.

Lesson learned, this is how I pay insurance on wooden stocks:



I gave the same treatment to a CZ 550 Magnum walnut stock with better grain in the grip and have perfect confidence in it.
I would recommend this for any really powerful rifle like a .458 WM+.
It is, afterall, more powerful than a SAAMI .458 Lott.

Other important securities to be considered in magazine-repeater bolt action rifles:





Not all rifles have bottom metal built like a bank vault,
but some can be rebuilt like a brick dunny:

458 Winchester trial loads with RL7 done. Range / chronograph day hopefully within a couple of weeks.

COAL = 3.225" for 380 Lehigh Flat Point, 350 NF E-CPS, and 325 CEB Safari Solid #13.

These feed smoothly in the Super Express's original factory "ML" magazine box, and the factory Interarms Mark X.

RL-7 should be speedy with those 380-gr WFN coppers.
53.0 grains of that in my 45-70 Marlin 1895 22" gave over 2000 fps with 400-grainers.
Same charge of IMR-3031 was just a little over 1800 fps, satisfied Elmer just fine.
I guess Sir Larry will be working up towards 70 grains of RL-7 in the .458 WM.
Keep us posted, please.

70, 71, & 72 grains loaded with the 380 Lehigh.
72 & 73 grains with the 350 NF E-CPS.
73, 75, 76 grains with the 325 CEB.
All loaded at 3.225".

Yesterday I started looking for loading dies for my 350 RM reamer that I have.

Ended up looking at 458 Lott light loads.

A 350 Speer and a starting load of RL 7 makes a nice 45-70!

Dang, what a way to burn up powder.

Yes, those .458 Lott's do waste more powder and kick harder than a .458 WinMag
when both are loaded to duplicate the .45-70.
Funny how you can have your cake and eat it too, with a .458 WinMag.
The SAAMI twist for the .458 Lott is 1:10".
Just one of many reasons why a SAAMI .458 WinMag is better with cast bullets than a SAAMI .458 Lott.
However, I am awaiting a .458 WinMag build with a 1:10" twist,
just to show how the .458 WinMag can overcome this handicap better than a .458 Lott.

Those who favor the SAAMI .458 Lott are like "woke" sheep, serving a nefarious agenda,
like the K-12 kids being brainwashed by these teachers:



Nose ring:





Horus has no nose ring because it thinks it has a beak, and drilling a nose ring hole in a hawk beak is like fingernails on a chalk board:




Nose ball stud is same as a nose ring for IQ indicating sign:





Lower education has new meaning.
Pray for the children.
A Lottite can only be helped by a religious conversion.

ROTFLMAO

I'm truly living in a World that I Don't Understand!

These are the same people that want to blame Firearms for their low Mentality.

HS 58

From the cyclical reading of the Torah today.
The guidance is clear as is the consequences to persons and nations.
F01

21 You shall not give any of your children to offer them to Molech, and so profane the name of your God: I am the LORD. 22 You shall not lie with a male as with a woman; it is an abomination. 23 And you shall not lie with any animal and so make yourself unclean with it, neither shall any woman give herself to an animal to lie with it: it is perversion.

24 “Do not make yourselves unclean by any of these things, for by all these the nations I am driving out before you have become unclean, 25 and the land became unclean, so that I punished its iniquity, and the land vomited out its inhabitants. 26 But you shall keep my statutes and my rules and do none of these abominations, either the native or the stranger who sojourns among you 27 (for the people of the land, who were before you, did all of these abominations, so that the land became unclean), 28 lest the land vomit you out when you make it unclean, as it vomited out the nation that was before you. 29 For everyone who does any of these abominations, the persons who do them shall be cut off from among their people. 30 So keep my charge never to practice any of these abominable customs that were practiced before you, and never to make yourselves unclean by them: I am the LORD your God.”