Andy,
I personally think that may be the case but who knows....

As to the mysterious bullets I received from GS Customs, they turned out to be the European version of the .404 Jefferys, they are the .418 bullets...

I will keep them here in the states and try to sell them to someone with a .418 bore gun...I recall some poster bought a Cogswell and it had a .418 bore and he was haveing problems finding bullets..He also posted on Hunt America about this problem...Well if you are out there I have just what your looking for..about 125 of them...

Gina is graciously sending me a re order of .423 bullets..

Guess you'll just have to remain perplexed, I don't have the answer your after..I do know that there were many 404 built with a 418 bore early on....GS makes bullets for them and LW makes barrels, they both refer to them as the European version...David McGuire who posts here has/had a Cogswell & Harrison with a .418 bore and I have had a couple of them in my shop at one time...check with them, particularly LW, Woody is very knowledgable on the subject I suspect...

Yep the 418 is alive and well in the guise of the 404, as well as .423. It appears to be an English version as related by the A-Square manual, not a European version. It may be that they don't know what they(A-square) are talking about, but for sure my cogswell and harrison is made in London and is a .418. Think what you will. The truth is that the 404Jeffrey is not a SAAMI sanctioned round and is not standardized. If you are a manufacturer and you want to make a .404 you can make it any dang well size you want. Your liability insurer is your only limitation. Good hunting. "D"

.

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Hi Alf,

Our frustration with the 404 stems from the fact that, as you have pointed out, everyone seem to have given it their own name and no one seems to be sure exactly what size it should be. We have to tread the line between a bullet size that will work and still be absolutely sure of not delaminating the barrels of an old double somewhere. Looking at the current barrel manufacturers, all appear to make either a .418" or a .423" for the 404. Lothar Walther lists the CIP specs as .418" for the 404 as well as the 10.75x73 and they list the 10.75x68 as .423.



For several years we asked anyone who ordered 404 bullets from us to have the barrels slugged or measured. The majority of older guns were .417" to .419". One double that turned up in Hankey just down the road from Port Elizabeth, had one barrel at .417" and one at .419"



So there is another variable in that, whatever the spec was at any given time, sloppy manufacturing sometimes throws you a curve ball as well.



Fortunately, with bore diameters varying less than groove diameters (my own observation) we have standardised at two bullet shank diameters for the .418" and the .423" respectively and adjusted the drive bands to take up the slack of the much wider variations of the barrel groove diameters.



Ray obviously has a .423 die set and barrels and we shipped him a bunch of .418 HV bullets. We are also changing the weight of the .418 bullet from 320gr to 315gr so that the two sizes can easily be identified with a scale rather than a micrometer.



It is very interesting to see the DWM catalog listing the bullets by bullet length and not weight. And here I thought we were the only ones that had an obsession with bullet length.



Can anyone confirm the bore and groove dimensions of the 425 Express?

Gerard what is your shank dimension on the 404 bullets? Thanks. D

Alf, besides C&H who else chambered barrels in .418 and from when to when? It seems like there are lots of rifles out there that have both configurations. Thanks D

So all the C&H rifles are from the 20's? "D"

D Hunter,
On the .418 the shaft tapers from .4098" to .4102" front to rear.
On the .423 it is .4114" and .4118"
Tolerance in both cases is + or - .0002"

Alf,
We used a 425 Express borrowed from a PH in the East Rand to develop a bullet and load. The rifle was built locally and has a Walther barrel. It was a .418 so we have to rethink how we designate the use of our bullets in these calibers. I think we will stop specifying caliber and just state for which bore and twist rate the bullet is suitable.

Gerard, thanks for considering all the details of this oddball variance. Is the .418 404 common in Africa? Good hunting. "D'

D. Hunter,
As opposed to you buying my bullets, have you considered maybe I should buy the gun!!??

I just spent a lot of time reading about Gs HV bullets. Did Barnes just rip off the design or what? Can someone tell me? These bullets seem similar...do they perform similarly or not?

nope i don't think so. GS custom bullets are made for the speed freaks.GS bullets cause alot of meat damage(my personal opinion) With Barnes i battle to get the same speed as a conventional bullet but get excellent results from barnes with minimal meat damage. i think barnes was on the market before GS.

There is precious little truly new in bullet design, logos on the packaging excepted.
Pointy tips, hollow cavities, bore riding, grooved/ringed shanks, monometal construction and boat tails/rebated ass ends have all been around for several generations.
Like everything else in life, money buys time = closer tolerances = better performance.
JCN

Various small manufacturers and tinkerers had been turning out oddball monometal bullets (e.g. pointy varmint bullets for the .458 WinMag, etc.) before Barnes got bought by the current owners and shifted from the Barnes Original line to the "old" X-Bullets. Barnes popularized the monometal bullets to the masses. Yes the smooth shanked X-Bullets were great in some rifles and lousy in some rifles. It probably had to do with the better finished rifle bores shooting them well, and the rough bores throwing them wildly and fouling badly.



One might say that the first GSC HP bullets (smooth sided aerodynamic hollowpoint monometals) were copies of the Barnes concept, but nobody owned that idea. Barnes had just made it popular (yet cursed by many). GSC did add the bands and develop the HP soft into HV soft and the FN solid concepts, to perfection. These bullets, with driving bands of the proper configuration, fouled less and worked better in most rifles across the board, regarding better accuracy and velocity, compared to the "OLD" Barnes-X. The driving band and grease groove concept goes back to the 1800's, i.e., the minnie ball, etc.



Barnes saw this, or got plenty of requests for emulation of the GSC concepts, so they did the easy thing and began cutting 3 or more cannelures on the shanks of their hollow point X-Bullets. Remember when it was hard to find an X-Bullet with even one cannelure? Then there was also the XLC with the blue coat that also was more forgiving than the "Old X," but apparently not as good as the ringtail bullets.



The New X-Bullet is the Triple Shock. This could be said to be a copy of the GSC HV, in the timeline of things.



Is the Barnes as good as the GSC? How good is good enough?



And when is Barnes coming out with a ringtailed FN solid? Soon?

.

Alf,

Thanks again for insight into "Your Africa." It is indeed a big ol' world, and everything old is new again, and again, and again ...



GSC bullets are my "first love" in bullets, but there are plenty of good bullets to fill the void. The world was a nicer place when GSC could ship them to me in 2 weeks, then six weeks, then six months, then over a year's wait and much whining and they finally delivered my last order.



Have you gotten your last big order through yet? How many years has it been?



Yes, as to quality they are tops. If anyone can get them, do grab them. I will grab them with my own hands when possible, but I won't be wiring funds to the black hole of Africa anymore. Osama Yo Mama didn't help things one bit, and I hope Gerard is back in the saddle and riding herd on the turtles at the plant.

When things go totally to shit in the RSA, and GS has to relocate to the US of A, there is a very nice, brand new Haas 12 station CNC three axis center with automatic bar feed, automatic scrap chip auger (copper is expensive), and an automatic parts catcher waiting for them. Gerard can have run of the machine for one shift per day. Hell, we even have three older machines that he can rebuild to his heart's content. There is a nice desk (window even) for Gina to interface with buyers, jobbers, and suppliers from. Oh, and that distribution system. You want three day, we can do three day, two day?, no problem, one day even?, it hurts the pocket book, but it is not difficult in the least.

Barnes will always be ok, but GS will always be at least tied for first place.

Political realities brought Rigby to the US, and they will eventually bring GS Custom here as well.

JCN

If the buffalo died, the bullets did their job!

.

As always Alf,
Thanks for the thourough research, based on your real world experience. I would have enjoyed having you as a pilot in one of my squadrons. There are certain traits that fighter pilots and skilled surgeons have in common.
JCN

We have taken gone to a lot of trouble to minimise meat damage caused by the faster HV bullets compared to our original HP range and seem to have solved the problem without giving up lethality. Feedback from customers over the last 8 years support this. Of course, mileage varies and we do get comments like those from Charl and note them with concern. I have asked Charl to give me some indication of the circumstances leading to the damage he experienced with a view to reducing the problem and he kindly replied very quickly. It seems that he used our older HP bullets and I will be advising him on which HV bullets to try for a better result.



One must always bear in mind that, what sometimes passes for meat damage caused by the bullet, is often bone fragment damage caused by hitting large bones. Nothing can be done about that by any bullet manufacturer. Another reason for meat damage with HV bullets is where complete overkill is applied. A customer sent me an e-mail with pictures of horrific meat damage on a small buck of about 150 to 180lbs. He used a 375 H&H with our 265gr HV at around 2800fps. The only advice for reducing meat damage in such a case is to switch rifles. Use the 375 and the HV loads for Cape Buff and Ele and use a 22-250 or 220 Swift for anything under 200lbs.



Alf,

I do not understand why bullet manufacturers insert plugs into hollow point bullets to aid expansion. Bullets deform when the forces acting on the nose of the bullet exeeds the tensile strength of the metal and the mechanical design of the construction of the bullet. In the case of a lead tipped, jacketed bullet, the force (stagnation pressure) develops at the centreline of the bullet at the nose. When the tensile strength of the lead core, supported by the hoop tension of the copper jacket is exeeded, the bullet will deform. The tensile strength of copper is higher than that of lead and a different mechanism (hollow point) is required for copper monometal bullets. When stagnation pressure in the hole exeeds the tensile strength and the construction design of the nose, the copper will yield outwards and the bullet will open. Placing any type of metal plug in the hole, or filling the hole with lead, will reinforce the construction and prevent stagnation pressure from developing in the hole. An already robust bullet will then require even higher forces before starting to deform.



RIP,

Alf recieved all his bullets some time ago and that is a tale in itself. We had his parcel ready (again) to send, when a gent from Canada on a hunt in SA, walked into the shop. He had some spare room in his luggage and offered to take Alf's parcel with him. Well, the airline lost his luggage. Eventually it was found and he forwarded the parcel to Alf from within Canada some weeks later. Talk about the luck of the draw.



In general we have seen a huge improvement in speed and reliability of global postal systems compared to two and three years ago. One thing I regret is blaming SA post for all our transport woes at the time. Since we have been recieving the lost parcel claims, it is clear that by far the bulk of parcels were lost by the carriers that SA Post handed over to in country of destination.

Hi Gerard,

I had not heard of Alf getting his order through until now. I think you have shown your good intent, even heroism, in the face of such adversity to have suffered through all that mess. Indeed you dug the hole, and now the hatchet is buried in it.



It seems that the destination country postal services were more often to blame than RSA? The mess the world is in post 911 has screwed up a lot of commerce, quite royally, eh?



However, you do need to spiff up your packaging a bit to make it more durable, as broken packages and spilled contents may have been part of the problem with the posts. It was with my last order, but all contents were taped back together by the USPS and delivered to me in a plastic bag with a note about damages in transit. Luckily I lost nothing there, but your boxing was really flimsy. A corn flake box in Afrikaans on one side and English on the other, with six boxes of the best bullets in the world inside. Add extra shipping and handling charges if necessary to buy decent cardboard boxes and packing foam peanuts!



I would love to try another order as a test of the current state of affairs.



My African Sheep Rifle is in need of your .423/320gr HV bullets to be complete. Hope you can help with this deficiency.



Not only do you offer the best quality, but the greatest variety of calibers and weights of any manufacturer in the world, of both softs and solids. No other maker dares to offer so much. This makes GSC supreme, but it is a tough row to hoe, eh?



I am sure it is impossible to keep stock on the shelf in all that variety, due to idle materials alone. Is the operation a custom manufacturing of each order as it comes in?



I'll look into your website.



Best Regards,

Ron Berry



PS: I am now gone to Nebraska to shoot a bison with a North Fork bullet.

ALF - I still have a few of the monometal bullets from Kruger. I picked up a bunch from Tim Otto who had several thousand of them. Unfortunately, the guy who made them had stopped. Do you know if they are any still available?

Being monometal they are a little long for .458 WinMag, but for my .450 Dakota they are perfect.

ALF,

I shot a bushbuck once with a wildcat we had developed on the 404 case - what else?! - necked down to 277.

I cannot remember the actualy velocity, but think it was in the region of 3800-3900 fps.

He was walking away at a slight angle. The bullet hit him in one of his rear legs, and came out at the base of the neck on the opposite side. He was about 180 yards away.

His meat was totally destroyed. It was very hard to find any of it that was not blood shot.

The bullet was the Winchester Fail Saif, 140 grains.

I stopped using that rifle on game after that animals.

When I got home, I replaced the barrel with another one chambered for a 270/404 short. This one was shortend to the standard 270 case length.

I have little doubt that GS either discovered or popularized the pressure rings, and that several other followed suit, a natural spiral for things that work...

I have had nothing but good luck with GS HV bullets and I will state outright that I have not had any amount of meat damage, more like a large cored hole with about 3 inches of blood shot around the hole. I have never recovered a GSHV bullet from game, and I have truly tried...

Furthermore there is no better solid than GSs flat nose with the pressure rings and they can be shot in ANY good quality double rifle of English or American design, and that is a major plus IMO....It tells me the pressure rings work...

As to Barnes triple X, I have only shot them at targets, but they sure are shooting well in my 375 H&H and 416 Remington, and thats something the regular Barnes wouldn't do in either of these rifles, albiet the 270 gr. and 350 gr. Triple Xs shoot about 13 inches high in both rifles and thats a pain, but I can live with it by simply using them solomente!

Boy, we have a lot of good bullets out there today...

Gerard,
All the 404s you sent me BTW were 416s in 404 boxes! I have sent you 3 emials and no reply?

Hi Ray,
Every bullet manufacturers nightmare is mislabeled boxes. Two things - Please weigh one bullet and let me know what the weight is and also what e-mail address have you been using? Contact me at gerard@wol.co.za. I have checked all the incoming mail to gscustom@wol.co.za for the last two months and there is nothing from you. Something is wrong.