Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Handguns Question about Keith bullets

This is MBC's 300gr "hammer". .360" meplat. It is an Ogive Wadcutter, not a WFN.

Bullets LtoR; 1,3,5,7 and 8 are traditional styled Keith bullets.

The others are all Keith bullets with a lack of the long range, radiused ogive and have meplats on par with WFN designs from LBT molds.

The only really wide meplat bullet Keith made was number 7, designed for the 45 Auto Rim; but the ogive is still present. It's featured in Sixguns and is readily apparent its cut off shorter than the 454429 at the nose and is wider than the 270 SAA, number 8.

The bullet on the right is an LBT OWC; not a WFN.

They can call it whatever they want to, but that's a semiwadcutter profile.

I agree.
You seated over the driving band, otherwise it would look like MBC's I posted.

The failure of the OWC design is that a heavy bullet ends up too long for a S&W cylinder.

The ones you have above are probably too long, definitely for the Smith; you have a Redhawk of some flavor or Anaconda launch those hunks from?

Mine are actually seated to the crimp, in the crimp groove.

Thats a 150 in a 38 S&W case.

I'll try to get more pics for ya.

For our friend dla and for the thread discussion.

Here is the now defunct order form from LBT describing the Ogival Wadcutter; they were not designed for heavyweight punching, but were for creating the widest, flattest meplat that could be driven fast for semi-long range stability. Part of that stabilty is a snug, as is a semi-stiff push from the thumb to chamber fit that has no abbreviated short driving band to facilitate fit. The big misunderstanding of LBT designs is that in order for the weight forward concept to work accurately, they literally needed snug fit to the chamber throats. They were custom molds to custom fit to your gun. A lot of commercial designs are beholden to fitting a wide array of guns, negating how part of the heavy, nose first concept works, at least as far as optimizing accuracy and speeds needed to attain it.


I have two of them; the 38 and 44.


Here's a mini synopsis of some LBT and Keith bullets.

We have a 44 Mag with the 230 OWC, a 44 Special with a 200 WFN, a 44 Special with the 230 OWC, a 45 ACP with 300 WFN, a 45 Colt with 270 NOE Keith and a 45 AR with the 452423 Keith.
Look at the meplat area if that's what you are judging the bullet on. The next thing, for the average shooter, is to look at loading flexibilty. The LBT LFN is about the most agreeable design made, IMO, but in most instances lacks the frontal area of even some Keith standard designs, let alone the WFN/WLN and "improved" Keiths that NOE makes in 38, 41, 44 and 45 calibers.

I’ve shot both quite a bit, not by that mfg but my own. The lbt I’d choose but the 250 Keith is no slouch and I have shot through a bull moose and exited on a shoulder.

OK, I sit corrected - thank you for posting the information.

I am confused however as I don't see the difference between the OWC and WFN.

The OWC has a larger meplat than the WFN and WLN; the WFN and WLN's were the same in each caliber.

If you look at my (crappy) pic, the 230 OWC 44 Special has a larger meplat than the 45 300gr. ACP load right next to it.

I haven’t had the reported accuracy issues with WFN’s and find at 1000-1100 fps they are as accurate as any other design at least out to 100 yds. Personally I think the ogival wad cutters are a better design than the sec because the lack of a shoulder allows for the bullet to cleanly allign itself with the bore as it leaves the throat of the cylinder. Also the bullets are slightly shorter than a sec of the same weight so more powder capacity or less pressure for the same charge weight.