Am I not thinking clearly or is there any reason I couldn't rather easily make workable (practice) .450 Dakota brass out of .416 Rigby brass??
I am soon to stumble into a .450 Dakota and have a friend that I might be able to talk out of some once-fired .416 Rig. brass.

Also if anyone has .450 Dakota dies they want to sell I would be interested.
Some of you have been kind enough to email your favorite .450 Dak. loads and I got the (limited) material from Dakota too, but if anybody else had any loads to share I would sure appreciate it.

Thanks,
Kyler

The 416 Rigby brass may be a little too big for the 450 Dakota. There is about .010 difference in the base diameter so it can be a problem. If you have the fund and desire to have a custom 450 Dakota built, you may as well go all the way. Why would you want to save a few pennies and take a chance to run into a problem if you do not have to? 450 Dakota brass are available from MidwayUSA or directly from Dakota and it is not much more than 416 Rigby brass from Norma. Good luck.

I think you would have to fireform after forming the brass to get the taper and shoulder correct. Also, the neck thickness would thin out a bit, but that shouldn't matter. You could use the BELL 416 Rigby basic (straight) brass, but the price is probably about the same as Dakota brass. In mine, I use IMR 4350, and for the lighter bullets, IMR 4064. I based my data on the published Dakota load data. You can also go off of 460 Wby. load data, especially for reduced loads or lighter bullets, as this is the same cartridge, just without a belt. I wouldn't load quite as high as Wby data in the Dakota cartridge though.

Mingo,
I mentioned "stumbled" into the .450 because I could never afford a Dakota. An extremely generous client is offering to give me one. Now I have to figure out a scheme to feed it.

Ken,
Thanks for the advice. I'll give it a try.

Kyler