Loading Lee C452-300

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Loading Lee C452-300

Postby ojmjr » Tue Oct 27, 2009 11:50 am

Anyone tried this in the 450BM?
I have some and some cases and need help trying to come up with a load for it.
Any ideas???
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Re: Loading Lee C452-300

Postby BD1 » Wed Oct 28, 2009 8:22 am

If you can give me some particulars, I'll see what Quickload has to say. I'll need to know: brass, (Hornady or cut down .284?); cartridge overall length, (make up a dummy and find the length that will chamber without sticking in the throat), a selection of powders you'd like to try, or I can look for what Quickload "likes"; and your barrel length. If you run some of the resulting loads across a chrony, we can adjust the program to reflect real data.

I looked for one of these molds to try last summer, but everyone was out of stock. It looks like it's got the bearing length and meplat to do the job.
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Re: Loading Lee C452-300

Postby ojmjr » Fri Oct 30, 2009 8:14 am

Thanks for the reply.
I have the hornady 450BM bras.
Have not tried any loading with my Hornady dies yet.
The only other thing I have on hand is Hornady loaded factory ammo.
No powder favorite at this time.
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Re: Loading Lee C452-300

Postby Siringo » Fri Oct 30, 2009 8:33 am

On this site is loading data for the Hornady 300 gr. bullets. Safe to use that data, since it is for jacketed bullets. My favorite is 30.5 or 31.0 grs of Lil'Gun with a Winchester Small Rifle Primer. Max load per Hornady is 32.2 grs of Lil'Gun. Velocity of the 31 grs with jacketed bullet is around 1850 fps.
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Re: Loading Lee C452-300

Postby BD1 » Sat Oct 31, 2009 7:25 am

This mold just showed up on a Midway sale flyer so I have one coming to try. Just playing around with Quickload leads me to Lil'gun and 296, (as usual), and it looks like 1900 fps + should be easily obtainable with a COAL of 2.250 in Hornady brass. There is a caveat on using data interchangably between cast boolits and jacketed bullets, and that is bullet shape. It is possible to have significantly different case capacities at the same COAL. Spitzers, (typical for a jacketed rifle bullet), are commonly seated much deeper into the case than a cast boolit of the same weight, (often round nose flat points which carry more weight in the nose, outside of the case). In this case you'd be extrapolating in the safe direction, but that's not always going to be true.

This bullet appears to have more bearing surface than the 300 grainer I designed, so I have some hope for better accuracy. It is also in the Quickload data base which should make it easier to come up with accurate pressure estimates.

Unfortunately this is another Saturday at work, when I should be home putting my reloading room together :)

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Re: Loading Lee C452-300

Postby ojmjr » Sun Nov 01, 2009 12:09 pm

I have about 20 lbs. of 296, so that would be good for me to use.
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Re: Loading Lee C452-300

Postby the_mad_rshn » Tue Nov 03, 2009 1:15 am

ojmjr wrote:Anyone tried this in the 450BM?
I have some and some cases and need help trying to come up with a load for it.
Any ideas???


What kind of metal did you use for your bullets? Are you using gaschecks? If the alloy is not hard enough, you won't be able to push them anywhere near as hard as the jacketed bullets can be pushed.
Cheers,
Mad
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Re: Loading Lee C452-300

Postby BD1 » Tue Nov 03, 2009 9:55 am

The .450 Bushmaster is really not "pushing the envelope" for cast boolits. Folks have been running 300 grain, and heavier, cast bullets out of .45 caliber rifles with great success for over 100 years now. An awful lot of buffalo were killed with 45/70s using pure lead slugs cast over campfires with a ladel. The difficulty is in finding the bullet design and load that will give the best accuracy out of this particular cartridge and platform.
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Re: Loading Lee C452-300

Postby the_mad_rshn » Tue Nov 03, 2009 11:19 am

And they also ran pure lead for over couple hundred years in even larger caliber rifles. The problem is not in the diameter of the chunk of lead, but in the pressure. Take a look at what the 45-70 had in mind 100 years ago - 25K CUP and below. On the other hand, 450B is putting out 38K psi on average, which is too high for pure lead and I think might be even too high for wheel weights unless you water quench them at least and then put a gas check on. If you don't, your accuracy will go to hell and you will end up having a nicely leaded bore.
Cheers,
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Re: Loading Lee C452-300

Postby wildcatter » Tue Nov 03, 2009 6:42 pm

You guys are in areas that interest me greatly. If 38,000psi is too high for pure lead, then at what pressures are CAST PERFORMANCE bullets at, when they advertise 3000+ fps or did I answer my own question, being pure lead?
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