I saw the dardnest thing while going through Shotgun News (hardback edition) on the magazine stand while waiting for the missus to finish her shopping.

It was a standard 1911 clip conversion for .45 acp on a M89 mauser rifle (that provided you a new barrel as part of the deal). Price was $130.

Now, was this a new item or something that has been around a while? Either way, I bet someone on this list has some better information on it or some direct experience/insight about it.

Does anyone know about this item?

Oldfeller

Cool idea. Though I'd like to see a different mag.

.45ACP lends itself nicely for suppression as well.



Got to looking at the 1889 - good canditate -

lower pressure capability and the mag well looks like the

45 clip would slide right in.



The Destroyer Carbine is often converted to .45acp because the magazine is the perfect shape for a 1911 mag.

Their conversions are on the VZ-24 and M48's.

http://www.rhinelandarms.com/

Tim,

Thanks for the net-reference, I was going back to look for the Shotgun Times advertisment but the whole Southeast is snowed/iced in bigtime since Sunday morning. People are just now beginning to stir around starting Tuesday afternoon as the sheet of ice on the roads is breaking up now.

I was thinking Rineland Arms would offer their 45 acp conversion on a small ring 93 Mauser since it was a low pressure conversion, and sure enough they plan to do just that. That's good. Kind of like money in the bank since I have a Mexican small ring 93 all torn down at the moment trying to figure out something nice to do with it.

Oldfeller

I'll probably get one just to see how they do it. 'Said something like the Savage system. If that's the case it would be fun to do a switch barrel system with it. I'd also like to do a double stacked mag - like Thompson or such; even if it would take more work opening up the mag well.



For that matter, the .45 19ll clip will take .38 Specials and with slight modifications the 9x19 and 38 Super (note the Commanders in those calibers).



We only had 6-7" of snow and ice. Big deal for folks who grew up here, but having grown up in Iowa it didn't take much to get down to Wally's (they do carry Shotgun News here).



Besides, I've wanted to do a bolt or semi in .45acp for a LONG time.



Thanks,

Tim K

Tim, do you suppose that if you did a .45 acp barrel without the 1911 magazine and put big 500 grain LEE .458" Postal type bullet deep down into the .45 acp case with a small amount of pistol powder (to get the boost all over and done with well within the length of the barrel) ... do you suppose it would feed with the standard mauser rail set-up (if the magazine was intentionally blocked on the front side to the OAL of the round so it got picked up at the same point on the rails as a Mauser round would normally get picked up).

Next, I don't think it would really be a true mild whisper for you, but it might just be a "polite cough". That great big slug flying at say 600-700 fps would hit like a ton of bricks whenever it got there. Recoil would be very mild and by doing it this way you'd only be out the $76 for the modded barrel.

Last, would you size the bullet down beforehand or trick yourself out a .458" throat to do it automatically upon firing? Which way would be better, for accuracy?

Oldfeller

OF -

I LIKE that - the .458 Harrrrouggghhh ("polite cough").



Only Mauser in my inventory is a Swede. Assuming others are right much similar I would think that one could do exactly as you say - block the front with a pre-ramp to guide the round up. But I don't think that one could load anything very deep in the ACP case - it gets pretty thick walled close to the base. I would guess that restricting the size of the space for the powder might allow pressures to get high fast. That's ok if you plan for it, but with a very small volume any change in volume (variation in seating) might give more variation in velocity and pressure.



As far as bullet fit, I'd like to see a bullet with a close-fitting bore-riding nose - light engraving (.001 or so) and then match the throat taper with a taper identical to it at the right spot on the bullet. I'll guess here, but the three principles that I see that affect accuracy here would be maximizing the support for the longest length possible of the bullet, fitting closely to the throat for good obduration right off the bat and ensuring the size of the rest of the bullet is just slightly overbore.



There have been a few folks recently asking for 500 gr. .452 bullets to play with on one of these boards.



Lots of options - but some of these seem quite reasonable price-wise.

I remember a WWII conversion of the Lee Enfield to .45 ACP called the DeLile(sp) carbine. It was much like the 98 conversion except the barrel had a huge silencer. The overall length was not that long as the actual barrel was only 10-12 inches with the reset being the silencer can IIRC. It even had the striker buffered to reduce the firing pin noise. Obviously one of those "special service" weapons.

The plot thickens. I took a 45acp case and expanded it with the .45-70 expander. Not bad. Seated a 500gr FMJ in it - maybe 1/4" deep - still not bad, don't know if it would chamber in a standard chamber, though. A little tricky to align just right in the short case.

Then - put it in the Swede - actually coaxed it into the chamber with a little wiggling! The follower as expected would need to be changed - block front or rear, but with a short bullet there is almost no spring pressure at the front.

One step at a time....

Oh yea - the feller I worked for when I was in HS carried a Thompson in WWII - had three different ones, one that was silenced too.

I've been thinking about a 45 acp rifle as a means of developing low report loads that still have some wump.

The real bugaboo of "whisper" type rounds with cast bullets is the fast barrel twist. When you you with a fast twist to stabalize the heavy slow moving bullets, you get into problems with lead shearing.

My thoughts are using the ~300 gr pistol bullets @ 700 fps. That is still plenty of power, and you don't need a rediculously fast twist to stabalize them.

It's tough to ignore the effect of a 300 gr boolet at ANY speed. Even a 400gr wouldn't need that fast a twist - look at the .45-70's.

LEE for example makes a variety of big .457" bore rider style bullets. My pick would be the very biggest, the 457-500-F-GC Harumph with the maximum amount of bullet OAL to help feed correctly on the standard mauser rails and the absolute maximum mass with which to "carry the cough". The gas check would likely be needed when force-seating the big slug deep into the smaller case, putting a good crush to that pistol powder as the gas check force-expands the casing.



Pressure would intentionally spike early and high with medium pistol powders because of the heavy bullet weight and the small powder volume.



Note the use of a gas checked bullet for this high pressure reason as well. You want the powder to burn completely and boost really hard in the first foot of barrel and be coasting and to be very much cooling off and have lost a great deal of pressure by the time the bullet actually exits. That's where you get your legal reduced noise from, lower gas pressure and lessened gas exit volume on the bullet exit.



Question, what is the bore rider diameter of the LEE 457-500-F-GC bullet compared to rifling land top diameter of a .45 acp barrel?



Good thing 45 apc barrels have a pretty fast twist or they couldn't stabilize that big slug at 600-700 fps. I wonder what that Rineland Arms aftermarket barrel twists out at?



They do make a 300 grain .452 gas checked slug for the .454 Casull that would work for a lighter, more gentle harumph.



Oldfeller

Those of you who are in the bucks might take a look at this.

http://www.valkyriearms.com/images/delisle

The Rhinelander site says they're a 1/16 twist.

Mike

Could someone post the addy for the rhinelander site?

I punched some number in quickload and this is what it spit out.

45acp 20" bbl 500gn cast seated to 1.5", 8gns WC820

peak pressure 14.4k

velocity 707fps

pressure at muzzle 591 psi

looked at the wrong spot the first time.

Now try Unique or Blue Dot to get the same speed. Lots more very early pressure spike and the muzzle pressure will drop down drastically at muzzle exit for a lower "haruph".

Oldfeller

Life could be so simple if they'd do a run in .458 dia chambered for either .45acp or .45win mag.

I believe Lee still has a few moulds for the discontinued 452-315-F on their surplus page. I bought one for the 457-325-F version.

More numbers from quickload.
4.1 Red Dot 44.5k 706fps 280psi at the muzzle
4.3 Unique 26.7k 705fps 325psi
5.9 Blue Dot 18.7k 703fps 479psi
8.0 WC820 14.4k 707fps 591psi. Looked at it wrong the first time.
You would probably just have to decide what you might want for a max pressure and pic the powder appropriately.

I wonder if they will sell extra barrels.

If you made your .45 ACP cases from 30-06 or 308 cases cut back and inside neck turned to bullet seating length, I would have no worries about high pressure.

Ed Barrett

OK, you are really asking are we organized enough to MAKE a custom run of barrels.

The chance of doing that cheaply gets real slim when looked at it in "reality eyes" because everyone is fitting to a different gun. Rineland is beating this by using a sub-diameter barrel (possibly with a thread adaptor) and using a locking-nut system like Savage does. One barrel fits all and headspaces for all when you put it together. Rineland does sell their adaptor & nut for $8.50 though.

The only sub-diameter barrel blanks that are really cheap right now are 18" long .45 caliber acp 15/16 diameter (in the white no chamber no blueing) for $43. You'd have to pay extra for shipping, $10 for the Rineland threaded adaptor and for having somebody thread the barrels, chamber them, crown them and blue them.

http://www.e-gunparts.com/DisplayAd.asp?chrProductSKU=314090&chrSuperSKU=&MC=

So forget making a up a barrel for the $69 cost that Rineland will charge you for one of their barrels. Economically, I don't think you can touch the Rineland $69 barrel.

Rineland isn't going to go to .457" diameter because then people would be making 2" Americans out of them right and left and unscrewing them right off the guns when they fired them.

However, you really don't want a sub-diameter, adaptor mounted 45 acp barrel anyway, you want a real, solid threaded shoulder-mounted 16 twist .457" caliber blued 98 Mauser barrel pre-made to drop into a standard 98 action and headspace a .45 acp case off the mouth like it is supposed to work. (now what sort of throat diameter & length?)

Question then becomes how much do you want to pay for it? My best guess would be $120 from some barrel supplier with extra charges if you wanted to send him an action to specifically fit it on to.

Oldfeller

Ed, you could buy .45 Super cases pre-made that will handle the same pressure as a 30-06 case (or a bit more because they are extra wall thickness full-hard rifle type brass to begin with to get the needed 6:00 web support in a 1911 chamber). None of Lar's loads exceed what the .45 Super brass can take if fully supported in a rifle chamber like they would be in a Mauser action.

Face it, that Red Dot load is at the upper end what the M-93 mauser actions could be expected to take reliably and if they leaked some gas at the primer pocket they would be no different than any rifle load that was pushed a bit too far in an M93. The action won't fail, it just handles the escaped gas badly.

280 psi at the muzzle is interesting, that is a mild harumph indeed for a great big slug flying at over 700 fps.

Oldfeller

More dirty tricks to lower harumph significantly. We know our pressure spike is over very early on in the barrel on these red-dot style loads and we are using the longer barrel length simply to reduce the exit noise.



Supposed we drill some "recoil reducer" holes in the barrel like they do on the Marlin Guide guns and bleed off a good bit of that 280 psi by hissssss leakage BEFORE the bullet goes out the end of the barrel?



Look at a guide gun barrel, the venting idea would work to get the pressure out from behind the bullet.



We could get the gas pressure at exit down to well under 100 psi, depending on how far back down the barrel we put the bleeder holes to give them time to work effectively. Put them on the stock side (bleeding off into a cut channel in the wood) then there would be less audible hisssss involved in the exit noise event.



Need to use a gas check slug, holes in the barrel and all.



Could we get down to a completely legal whisper cartridge flinging 500 grains of fully-effective wide flat meplat cast lead at 700+ fps?



Oldfeller

Putting the pressure bleed off holes on the underside of the barrel into a channel in the stock would technically make it a suppressor, so I don't think that we need to go that way.

I looked at the site and the barrels are 16.5", so the numbers would need to be adjusted somewhat.

As far as the higher pressure goes, then I have a bunch of TZZ military brass that seems to hold high pressure rather well. I inadvertently overloaded my first 45acp loads by useing a buddies 700x recipie without accounting for military brass. When we went to the range the 230 LRN was going in the 1300fps range from a 5" barrel. The brass was fine, but the gun suffered somewhat. I pulled the bullets, reduced the load and worked up to about 15% less than his load and it was all good from there. So I don't think that cut down 06 cases would be neccesary, but I do have some 44 Auto Mag forming dies that might work for that if need be.

hmmmm ... what is the legal definition of a silencer this week, anyway? Does anybody know? And what are this week's associated penalities?

They can't get too wordy about bleeding off pressure because every autoloader rifle and shotgun out there do this up barrel bleed off already.

Oldfeller

The associated fines are $10,000 and or 10 years in prison. I'll look up the official definition at the ATF website.

Muffler or silencer. Any device for silencing, muffling, or diminishing the report of a portable firearm, including any combination of parts, designed or redesigned, and intended for the use in assembling or fabricating a firearm silencer or firearm muffler, and any part intended only for use in such assembly or fabrication.

http://www.atf.gov/pub/fire-explo_pub/nfa.htm

Clear as mud?

I remember several years ago that there was a muzzle brake advertised as the Quiet Brake and that it actually lowered the noise level. The BATF made them stop selling it.

It didn't take any effort to email them:

> How many orders would you need to produce a .458 bore (vs .452) yet
> chambered for the .45acp (Mauser conversion)?
>
> Tim Kuntz
>
> ---
And their response:

Hello, it is usually 100 barrels. Is this for a wildcat?

Thanks
Thomas

Thomas@Rhineland Arms Inc
www.Rhinelandarms.com
972-342-2105


FWIW - It seems that 100 would be a LARGE number for us to come up with. But they might do a smaller number for a slightly larger fee. Really the major difference would be a small lot of barrels (made by someone else presumeably) in a slightly different bore diameter. Perhaps a special chamber reamer - but that's a wear item anyway.

Got a correction to my earlier post. Didn't read very carefully (or else they posted some additional information).

Rineland does NOT blue their separate $69 sporter barrel. Add finishing costs to your estimate. With shipping and adaptor you are talking $90 to get into a Rineland threaded adaptor barrel. And your barrel is only 17 inches long.

Paying $120 for a real full length Mauser barrel suddenly doesn't seem too bad.

If you paid this much for it, would you really do it in 45acp or would you do it in a .308-.458" wildcat like the 2" American? You could stuff the big bullet down in really deep in the case for your quiet rounds and then also you could leave it sitting out proud for your 45-70 equivalents.

Seems like Rineland has hit a a real nerve with the shooting public and is cashing in on it, making as many .45acp conversions as they can as fast as they can charging as much as they can. You do realize they are selling you only HALF a barrel blank for $69, don't you? They are raking it in on this conversion kit, selling it a piece at a time for something that really stacks up costing quite a bit.

Smart boys, get their investment back fast because like all fads it will fade away fairly quickly ....

We need to talk to somebody who CAN chamber a real barrel and who might just do it for the fun and giggles of it since he just got his new big lathe. Somebody who has done this conversion very recently and is currently struggling throught the details getting it to feed right. Somebody who can give some of these ideas a thumbs up or down based on personal knowledge.

"Oh Buckshot ...."

(time to change channels)

Oldfeller

Very interesting web site, I have not seen this one before.

The barrels we have are in the white only because most customers to date prefer to add there own finish. We may be making some with a black oxide finish, no additinal cost.

The Mauser barrels are $75 each with the lock ring. In the end our barrels are cheaper as they do not need any additional lathe work to get them headspaced and locked correctly. This is time consuming for all gunsmiths.

Also they are custom made for us by ER Shaw and are not blanks cut in half, although that is a good idea. I really wish there was a way to get the price down and we are looking into that. Hopefully we will have something in march.

There is a company called Montana rifleman, he does enjoy doing projects like the .458/45acp project and he has the ability to do them as a 1 off or in small runs. We only have the ability to do large production runs.

Thomas
Rhineland Arms

The plot thickens - and comes significantly closer to becoming reality.



Thomas (of Rhineland Arms)is looking into finding "us" a connection with a low-volume vendor of (.458 dia) barrels "at a reasonable price".



Thomas@Rhineland Arms Inc

www.Rhinelandarms.com

972-342-2105



We've excanged only 2 e-mails, but he's responded very quickly and positively.



There is an opportunity here for someone to exercise a bit of leadership and put a group together....



I, for one, would prefer a .458 bore in a standard chambering (.45acp .45 Super what-ever) with a longish throat to handle 300-400 grain bullets. That coupled with a standard .45acp barrel would become a switch-barrel rifle.

Sure sounds like pretty fair pricing to me. Compared to Contender barrels or any other custom barrel, even from lower end makers like A&B, it's a pretty fair-sounding deal, IMO.

And, I really like it that Thomas visited our site and posted here so we can address him directly instead of making a lot of false assumptions.

For those wanting a 45 ACP Mauser, this looks like about as good a deal as a body could get, and for sure would save a helluva lot of time in "trial-and-erroring."

RhinelandArms. I think It's a great kit. I was going to call and order one on Friday, but got detained with the wife at the Dr. office. I'll be calling on Monday to get a kit.
I emailed previously about the extra bbl.

I think I'll get an extra bbl to play with long throating it. Anybody know how long of a boolit we can get to stablize at 700fps in the 16.5" bbl?

In the white doesn't bother me. I have a new bottle of Belgian Blue just looking for a project.

I'd go in on a group buy of .458xshort-something if there is enough interest.

It's not 500 grains, but Lyman makes a 450 grain .451 bullet mold that should work. It is about as long as the 45 acp case but in a 45 colt case, crimped on the front lube groove, it will just fit a Ruger Blackhawk cylinder and feed in a Winchester 94. I have fooled with loads in Blue Dot and H110 in the pistol and will work up some Blue Dot loads for the rifle again to tell you something about it. I will sometime try trimming the brass to get an even smaller case for even lighter powder charges, but I don't get many off days. I have been fooling around with 45 colt cases, but the bullets should work for you unless you want round nose.

It looks like the 16.5 inch twist rate is a more than ample twist rate to stablilize a big 500 grain LEE .458 bore rider slug even at slow 700 fps speeds. Everything else just gets even higher twist rating numbers, both as the bullets get lighter and the speed goes up.

Overspin a la the 6.5 Swede is not a concern with this twist rate in this caliber as the bullet can go a whole lot faster than you could stand to shoot it before it got "dizzy" on you.

I'd be a bit more concerned about shooting such heavy slugs at any real speed out of a barrel that is actually mounted in an aluminum thread adaptor while the whole shebang is being held in place with a locking collar .....

I think shooting heavy loads could possibly lead to the locking ring or the aluminum adaptor coming loose over time. This is an unsupported opinion, of course. No one will ever know unless somebody does it.

Oldfeller

Wow,

This sounds like the perfect way to inexspensively get into what I wanted to play with. Other than the barrel being shorter then I'd prefer, the $75 can't be beat. The one question is, is this barrel a small ring thread ie .98"X12, or the larger 1.1"X12? I have a turk mauser action, 98 style with small ring thread that would be a perfect candidate for this project.

I personally think the .451" is the better way to go, you can use existing dies, and the large quantity of pistol bullet molds. If you go with the .458" dia, at the minimum you'll need a custom seater die.

As far as using a larger case, ie 458 American, I would predict you'll loose some the low report of a smaller case. The expansion ratio of a small case is greater, so you don't need much powder to get the pressure spike, and it more quickly drops off then if you started with a larger case.

The barrels we have at this time are only for the Large ring mausers. The thread OD is 1.1"

We are working on the small rings, but I am having a terible time finding small ring actions or rifles for sale at this time. The Turks will use the small ring barrel. Our usual suppliers are out of all the Turks and other small rings and we need at least 1 more 1893 or similar small ring and a Turk.

On the bullet wieght. What about a LBT designed WFN bullet by Verel Smith. I remember he used to design custom bullets very inexpensivly. He could stick with a .452 bullet and get 300+ grains I am pretty sure. .