Made some of these last night and shot them today.

They are hornady 50 caliber .452 muzzleloader sabot rounds.

I trimmed 454 casull cases to 1.280 and crimped them in front of the shank of the bullet.

Loaded with LIL'GUN powder and Federal 205 primers. CBC cases.

250 SST
LIL'GUN

25 grains=1576
25.5 =1574
26 =1602
26.5 =1643
27 =1623
27.5 =1645
28 =1637, 1644
30 =ERR2

All of the cases fell out of the cylinder easily but I would call 26.5 max as smashing more powder in these heavily compressed loads adds no more velocity.

Very interesting! But why did you trim the cases down?

So they would fit the cylinder of my raging bull.

The overall length is the same as a casull round.

This was an attempt I made a couple years ago with full length casull cases.

The one on the right is too long for my cylinder.

I smashed the tips with the seater in my 454 die.

The ones I did this afternoon I seated with the pointed bullet seater in my 500 S&W seater die.

Oh, okay, thanks for clarifying that!

What about using the shorter .45 Colt cases?

Just goes to show why I love BFR's with long enough cylinders.
Everyone has the idea that boolits must be at the end of the chamber to limit boolit jump to the forcing cone. What a bunch of crap! Cylinders for each caliber should be long enough to take any boolit, bullet made for the cartridge.
How about a glaring example of the Freedom and a common Lyman semi wadcutter.

To my understanding the casull case is built much stronger than the colt cases. 1.280" is the length of the colt case.

Oh, I see. You cut the .454 case down to .45 colt length. Clever.

quote:

Originally posted by RMiller:
To my understanding the casull case is built much stronger than the colt cases. 1.280" is the length of the colt case.

Maybe that was true in days gone by, but certainly is not the case today.. Ross Seyfried used Federal 45 Colt cases in his revolver to take a Cape Buffalo back in the 80s and he load 354 or 360 grain Hard Cast to 1490 FPS out of his 5 1/2" barreled Seville. Now that is about a 60,000PSI load. Ross only use 45 Colt cases and has written that when loaded to 454 speeds (presure) that he has never sxperienced a single problem and niehter have I.. 454 cases are not needed if you do not want to use them..

Another question:

Besides the cool factor (which is really high ) , is there another significant advantage to this load? It seems to be about in the neighborhood of other 250gr offerings, speed wise.

I think its just cool factor.

The 460 S&W is loaded with these so I wanted to shoot some in my 454.

They will hit harder and drop less than non pointed pistol bullets. But in my opinion if you can reliably hit a target with these at 200 yards you probably can hit with the other pistol bullets too. I dont think these will make or break someones ability to hit farther.

Jwp475 thanks for the info on the colt cases.

I just recently bought a muzzleloader, and was wondering if you could do this! Not that I really want to (my .454 load is ok as it is, I am the one that needs work), but I did wonder.