Thought this might be of some interest. Moderator, I guess this could also go in the cast bullet forum and the reloading forum but I felt it would find the most interest here.

I have had a Ruger #1H that used to be chambered in .458 Win Mag. I had it re-chambered out to .460 Wby as a cheap way to get into shooting a big gun. While a Weatherby bolt gun in .460 is over $1,200, I bought this gun used and after a re-chamber job that cost less than $100 I am into a .460 for just over $400.

I have worked up some pretty stiff shooting loads for it with jacketed bullets. My �normal� shooting load is a Hornady 500 gr. RNSP with 120 grs. of Accurate 4350 pushing it out at just under 2,700 fps. I also load a Sierra 300 gr. JHP that was made for the 45-70 in front of 117 grs. of Accurate 2520 which sends it out right at 3,000 fps.

I had recently started getting into casting. And although I hadn�t really thought of making lead bullets for the .460 I did see that Lyman lists a reduced load for a 550 gr. Bullet in the .460. A friend mentioned having been given an Ideal .45 cal rifle mould and he doesn�t even have a gun that can use it. I looked up in my Lyman book to see what it was and found it to be an old 375 gr. RN GC design. I decided it might be fun to shoot some reduced lead loads in the .460 so I ordered a Lee 500 gr. Mould, gas checks and the proper sizing die. I also got my buddy to loan me his Ideal mould so I could try two different bullets.

Using straight wheel weights the Lee mould came out at 500 grs lubed and gas checked and the old Ideal mold produced a 397 gr. bullet after being sized and gas checked.

I first decided to use the bullet that was closest to the listing in the Lyman book so I only tried the Lee mould. . The starting load is 20 grs. of Unique and the ending load in 28 grs. of Unique. Working with a limited number of cases (they are almost $2 a piece) I just loaded up a few rounds starting with the 20 grs. and ending with the 28 gr. Load. Because I was dealing with the large case capacity and the charge of Unique no where near filled the big Weatherby case I chose to use a small square of Dacron stuffing to keep the charge against the flash hole.

I ran them across the chronograph and got:

Lee 500 gr. Bullet & Unique
20 grs. � 1157 fps
25 grs. � 1317 fps
26 grs. � 1337 fps
28 grs. � 1386 fps

I have since loaded up and fired some of the Ideal mould 397 gr bullets with the same 28 gr load of Unique. I was just shooting them at about 50 yds at a steel gong just to get the feel of them and make sure they were worth continuing with. They shot well also and I will continue with them.

Next step is to get out and put some on paper to see how they shoot.

I am curious if anyone else has done any cast bullets in the .460?

Intel6,

I never used cast bullets in the 2 460s I had but used a very similar load to you with 400 grain Speer Flat nose bullets. My 460s has the older Pendleton Dekicker and after that I decided to never again own a rifle with sort of of intergral muzzle break. Even with those very light loads it still gave a very bad crack to the ears.

The main difficulty with the 460 (and also the 378 of which I have also had 2 of) is the huge freebore when trying to use mid range loads with lighter bullets. Hangfires can beome the order of the day.

2 other loads I had very good success with were 85 grains of 4064 and 500 Hornadies. Velocity as I remember was a bit over 2000 and it was very accurate. Another load was 100 grains of IMR 4350 and the 400 Speer for a bit over 2000. The bullet had to be seated deep to the front cannelure because when seated out to the rear cannelure hangfires occured. The load was alo very accurate. Although seating the bullet out reduced the freebore the freebore was still so big that seating the bullet deeper removed hangfires by reducing the case capacity.

In fact I have just started a new project on CZ 416 Rigbys to make 375/416 and 450 Rigby and one of the reasons is to have basically the 378 and 460 but without the huge freebore.

My best accuracy in the 460s came with 115 graisnof IMR 4350 and 500 Hornadies for right on 2500. I have noticed some others on the forum also using the same load. Accuracy with 4064 at about 104 grains was also very good and velocity a bit over 2400. 96 grains of 3031 was also very good and I think velocity was about 2350.
For about 2 years in the mid 1970s and about 2 years around 1990 I used no other rifle but the 460 Wby!!! Shot heaps of kangaroos and pigs with them.

Mike