458 socom

[hornadylnl]

Just (back) ordered 200 pcs of it from Grafs. Anyone have any idea how long Star line is behind on this stuff? I was looking at 458 ammo at the 1500. One guy had Cor Bon ammo at $65 a box. He was giving me some spiel about being the only person in the United States to have that ammo on hand. Other people had hand loaded stuff for $55 a box. No way am I paying $2.75 + a round for this stuff when I can load it much cheaper.

I'm going to have about .78 in a piece of brass. even if I only get 3 loads out of each piece of brass, that's .26 a round for brass. I had the Remington 405's recommended to me for accuracy. They are $31.99 per hundred on Midway. I bought 200 off of a guy for cheap in a package deal so I only have about 10 cents a piece in them. Primers are 3 cents at today's prices. Even at a 40 grain charge, you're looking at 15 cents a round in powder.

.26 brass
.32 bullet
.03 primer
+.15 powder
--------
$.76 per round

Wouldn't take long to pay for a press that way. I was originally only going to get 100 pieces but figured since I was going to back order it, I might as well get 200. I may part with some of it once I get it.

 

[shibumiseeker]

I bought the ammo to get the brass. Got some of the 350gr from Midway at $41 a box. Given how low pressure the round is and the case profile, I would not be surprised to get 10+ loadings out of them unless you are loading really hot.

I'm running the 405s too, and just got in today some cast 405s to play with as well. The .458 may just push me into casting my own boolits.

 

[ZbornacSVT]

I am going to have to start stocking up on these components.....I just ordered a barrel from Marty Ter Wemme. The good news is I have about 3 months to get everything!!

 

[hornadylnl]

I've heard it may be several months before the brass is in stock again so I just went ahead and put it on back order so hopefully I'll be able to start putting it all together this summer for this years deer season.

I figured the 3 loadings was very conservative but thought I'd estimate on the safe side. One of the guys had the hand loaded ammo with 405's but I'd have no idea what powder they were using or how much so those rounds wouldn't help my load development. If I absolutely had to to get the brass, I would but surely I can get some new brass by summer.

 

[shibumiseeker]

I've heard it may be several months before the brass is in stock again so I just went ahead and put it on back order so hopefully I'll be able to start putting it all together this summer for this years deer season.

I figured the 3 loadings was very conservative but thought I'd estimate on the safe side. One of the guys had the hand loaded ammo with 405's but I'd have no idea what powder they were using or how much so those rounds wouldn't help my load development. If I absolutely had to to get the brass, I would but surely I can get some new brass by summer.

Since I can load and shoot from my range hut I'll do a test today and report back. Good idea to get on the backorder list. I figure I have 80 rounds of ammo and lots of reloading so I should be good to practice until fall.

 

[CountryBoy19]

I have plenty of brass. When I backordered last May, I decided to just get 1k since it was so hard to get. When I finally got my brass in September, I had lots of it. Star-line doesn't really give an accurate shipping projection. And because 458 isn't a big production item it doesn't get produced often (maybe twice per year) so you're looking at a pretty long wait.

shibumiseeker, this is likely the round that will push me into casting too. I have several hundred pounds of wheel weights saved up but just haven't got the casting equipment yet.

If anybody wants to buy/borrow some 458 brass PM me. I already sized it and chamfered the case mouths so its ready to load.

 

[shibumiseeker]

Back from the range hut. I had a piece brass from SBR (who makes their brass, Starline or in house?) loaded with 46.2gr of 4895 (best I have for .458 right now) pushing a 405gr gas checked lead bullet from Cast Performance. Primed with WLP. I loaded it five times and shot. By load 4 the brass just started to be cut by my lee trimmer guage. This brass was a factory load and then I had loaded it one previous time with a 405gr remington with 43.5 gr of 4895. So I shot it once as a factory load and six other times with my reloads. No evidence of case mouth splitting yet, and the paperclip trick shows no evidence of brass flowing, though honestly the case mouth is so large I can shine a bright light into the case I can do a visual check too.

I'll load it a few more times later this afternoon and report back.

 

[hornadylnl]

Thanks for the range report on the brass. That just further solidifies how much money there is to save by reloading it. I haven't bought any dies yet but I was planning to go with the Hornady dies. From those I've talked to, they are a lot better than the Lee dies. Even as $70 for the Hornady dies, it will only take about 50-75 rounds to pay for them.

 

[shibumiseeker]

No sweat, I'm an empircist at heart.

Well, I just got 5 more loadings for a total of 11 reloads plus the factory load. 12 shots. The brass is toast, but not because of brass failure, but operator error. I'd gotten lazy and was only lubing every other resize and I pulled the rim off the brass (a distince hazard with this small a rim for that large a brass). At a guess the work hardening was starting to play on the brass causing it to stick harder. Up until that point though the brass still looked fine and hadn't flowed any, I wasn't having to trim at all.

This is as I suspected since the case is almost a straight walled case and thus the failure mode will most likely be split case mouth. I'll try again with another piece in a few days once I get the %%^$ing brass out of my resizing die and let my shoulder recover

 

[hornadylnl]

Cool, that brings it down to the $.50 a round range pretty easily then. Now I feel bad about you sticking a piece of brass in your die. If we ever meet up, I owe you a beer.

 

[dtkw]

I have a set of Lee Prec. dies from Midwayusa.com. They work fine with my 458 reloads. Cost a lot less than the Hornady one. I have reloaded 68 rounds with 300 gr. HP from Barnes. 26 of them are with Remy 300 gr hp sp. Waiting for a better day to test those out at the range.

For reloading, I use H110 powder, 32.8 gr and max 34.5 gr. I don't do max but it's up to everybody else. I have been using H110 ever since I got my RRA upper. All my reloads fired fine without any problem.

 

[shibumiseeker]

Thread ressurection here...

I just took a once fired piece of brass and was working on loading up and down with 4895 to see what I could see and to play with my Chrony some. 405gr projectile, WLP.

Started at 44gr and worked up to 48 gr in 1 gr increments. No pressure signs but the case could not hold any more powder as 46 and up are compressed. So I went back down to 46 and loaded several more times to see what the failure mode was. I got a total of 11 loadings before I had a very small, 2mm crack at the shoulder. Starting velocity was 1238fps and highest velocity was 1414fps.

I want to try loadings for Lil'gun and Ramshot TAC but I have to get some first. Just thought folks might be interested in my brass life report, I know 4895 is not a good powder for the .458 socom.

 

[CountryBoy19]

Thread ressurection here...

I just took a once fired piece of brass and was working on loading up and down with 4895 to see what I could see and to play with my Chrony some. 405gr projectile, WLP.

Started at 44gr and worked up to 48 gr in 1 gr increments. No pressure signs but the case could not hold any more powder as 46 and up are compressed. So I went back down to 46 and loaded several more times to see what the failure mode was. I got a total of 11 loadings before I had a very small, 2mm crack at the shoulder. Starting velocity was 1238fps and highest velocity was 1414fps.

I want to try loadings for Lil'gun and Ramshot TAC but I have to get some first. Just thought folks might be interested in my brass life report, I know 4895 is not a good powder for the .458 socom.

Do you think annealing would improve life? I have an automatic annealer that I've been working on in my spare time over the last couple years, I think I've finally got it to the point that it will work good now. I just haven't really put it to the test yet because I don't have a need to anneal any brass yet. And annealing works best when the brass is clean, the cleaner the better, and I want to finish my homemade tumbler for SS media before I start annealing anything.

 

[ZbornacSVT]

I want to see what you are cooking up for the tumbler!!

 

[fireball168]

Do you think annealing would improve life?

The necks start getting "squeaky" on the 5-7th firing for me, generally - then it is time to introduce them (again, started doing it to the new brass as received by Starline awhile back) to Ken Light's wonderful machine.

By that time, if you've got an overgassed upper or your loads are a bit on the warm side - you're probably going to have to take a file to the case head/rim in spots to clean up the extractor damage.

 

[shibumiseeker]

Do you think annealing would improve life? I have an automatic annealer that I've been working on in my spare time over the last couple years, I think I've finally got it to the point that it will work good now. I just haven't really put it to the test yet because I don't have a need to anneal any brass yet. And annealing works best when the brass is clean, the cleaner the better, and I want to finish my homemade tumbler for SS media before I start annealing anything.

It may, and if you have an automatic annealer it may be time-effective. I've never been a big fan of annealing since doing it manually is a lot of effort. I'm going to repeat this test on Friday if I can get some of the other two powders tomorrow when I go in. I thought the failure mode would be a case neck split, but this crack formed along a gouge that the brass got at some point early and I don't know how much effect annealing would have on that type of problem.

The downside of annealing may be more brass flow since it's softer longer, especially in an autoloader. It'll be an interesting test when you get it going!

 

[Terry4570]

I see the subject of annealing has come up,i was going to ask if anybody else thought maybe the necks and shoulders are little hard?I have had some problem with the expander getting hung in the case,they are lee dies and the expander was rough its polished up now and a lot better now but still a little sticky.I plan on annealing any new ones i get and once fired will get it to.Expanding just enough to get the bullet started.

 

[CountryBoy19]

I want to see what you are cooking up for the tumbler!!

5 gallon bucket with 4 small paddles inside.

The bucket is supported on it's front edge with 2 rollers, and the rear edge by the gearbox.

1:100 gearbox driven by a 3/4 hp 3600 rpm motor (should give me about 33-34 rpm on the tumbler).

Small stub shaft attached to the bucket slides into the female driver of the gearbox.

Essentially you just lift up the front edge of the bucket slightly to clear the rollers, and slide the bucket/shaft out of the gearbox.

The only downside to this is that you can't stand the bucket up unless you have a table or something with a hole in the middle.

The only part that I haven't finished is mounting the gearbox, and making/attaching the stub shaft to the bucket. I have all the materials, just don't have the time. I also don't have the resources at my house, I have to wait until I go home to visit my parents, and that doesn't happen very often due to distance, so my time is always limited when I go home.

 

[IndyGunworks]

i had 4895 up to 52 grains under a 325 grain leverrevolution. i do NOT reccomend this, i had some pretty high pressure signs and accuracy pretty much blew. i dont recall the exact velocity but i want to say it was above 16 or 1700. it was a compressed charge even in my longer throated .458 BFG barrel.

 

[shibumiseeker]

i had 4895 up to 52 grains under a 325 grain leverrevolution. i do NOT reccomend this, i had some pretty high pressure signs and accuracy pretty much blew. i dont recall the exact velocity but i want to say it was above 16 or 1700. it was a compressed charge even in my longer throated .458 BFG barrel.

One thing I love about the .458 is that it's got such a wide range both in bullet weights and charge loads. I was using 4895 since I have a lot of it for other calibers, but I think I'm going to have to stock something else for the .458, I'd like to push the 405gr faster while keeping the accuracy.